Artist Statement

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Welcome! First, I confess that I have never really liked Artist Statements!  As a college art student, my friends and I would find the most ridiculous ones and practice creating our own. We used outlandish  words and phrases to describe our art and even our very existence. It didn't matter if the final statement made no sense. We figured if no one understood it, then people would perceive the artist as brilliant!  But when an Artist Statement was required of me for an event, I acquiesced but opted to have a little fun with mine!

So my Artist Statement is written with a sense of humor.  Some may be offended by my cavalier attitude,  but what is Art if you cannot have a little fun with it and maybe even laugh at yourself?

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Although I admire, appreciate and even love the world of Art, I no longer take much of it seriously! Pull away the fluff in the biographies of the great working artists through history and for most, it was their means of survival using their creative skills! And I love that reality!

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So here you go! Art, in any form, is all about expanding one’s creativity while embracing and experimenting in areas of artistic interest or even need. And in my many years of being a professional, (thus self-employed) painting artist, specializing in portraiture and the fiber arts, my views on Art have changed dramatically over the course of those years! Life happened.

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As an 18 year old art student, I envisioned myself a creative genius and the world was my oyster. At 28, as life intervened, I realized I was a sometimes creative genius. I was a mom and successful business woman. But I was wondering why I had all this artistic ability yet managing unrelated businesses? At 33 I was a divorced artist mom dumped unceremoniously into my new reality of re-accessing my dormant skills to feed four little children. 
 
My collegiate art history courses had shown me the parallels between my current reality as an artist and those of past historical artists. And they were similar. My goals, once so easily set aside with procrastination, shifted into productivity. I expanded into areas of art that I formerly dabbled in with a new determination. Need definitely influences productivity!  With that need came creative exploration and the eventual realization that I was happy and thriving in my new art environment. Every hurdle I faced, every challenge thrown at me just made me more determined to succeed!

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As time passed, I also embraced my college area of understudy, printmaking. And from there, my fiber art began to expand more and more into ecoprinting  (a form of botanical printing) I had continued my controlled methods of art in my portraiture to embrace silk painting but the ecoprinting began to open up an artistic area of spontaneous results that I did not realize I needed. In my painting art, my supplies come from an art store. Step by step, my final pieces emerge from the oils or pastels I purchase from a supplier. But in Ecoprinting, my supplies are coming from Mother Nature. Leaves, weeds, flowers, fresh, dried…and all subjective to the whims of Nature and her environment. No guarantees, no “off the shelves” supplies. And it was a freeing experience! Ecoprinting embraced that lost teenage side of me -the girl who took long walks and horseback rides through the woods surrounding her family farm in NY. It was nice to be back in that mindset!

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Now my “creative genius” is no longer that 18-year-old college student (who I freely admit was an elitist along with her classmates!) but as a 60 something “creative genius” who tossed out the rules and restrictions long ago! I love the power of encouragement to all levels and fields of interest in the arts. ALL the arts. Frankly I don't care if you paint snow scenes on sawblades if it makes your creative voice sing! There is no room for art bullies in my world!

The beauty of Ecoprinting is that everyone starts on a level playing field. There is just the artist, the fabric, Mother Nature and the great outdoors. And honestly, art doesn’t get any better than that!

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