STATEMENT
I’ve always loved texture in a painting. Peaks, shadows, cracks, all of it. It makes a work of art come alive, gives it depth and enhances its meaning.
Through the years I’ve worked with acrylic, oil, and more recently lime paint. I’ve used and continue to use many of the Golden products. Options like medium (matt, satin, and gloss), gesso, sand, molding paste (light, medium, and heavy), crackle, glass beads, and heavy gloss gel continue to be favorites.
I’ve also explored more unusual materials like dry wall powder, lime spachtel, marble dust, lime putty, micas, and dry pigments. I love the timelessness of the look and feel of these materials. This is what makes up the majority of my small heavily textured works.
Every once in a while out comes the plaster of paris and soon there are many unusual shapes and pieces strewn across my work table. Many will be added into or placed on top of one painting or another.
Awhile back I bought a ballpeen hammer and an adorable little anvil to pound thin pieces of metal into the shapes I want which may or may not end up being stacked and/or wire wrapped. I love my little anvil. Cheapest therapy ever.
Sometimes I paint paintings, sometimes I build paintings. Sometimes I just want ice cream.
BIO
I came to art late in life and with no background. My first creative endeavor came as part of my recovery process after an extended illness. I was creating paper collages on large pieces of acrylic. Where the idea came from I don’t remember. In time the collages were backlit and wired for hanging. As I recovered this turned into a small company (consisting entirely of me) that did road shows in one of the two Costco Home Stores, this one in Arizona. Their Home Stores lasted about two years before going under, taking my small company with them.
At this point I joined a local women’s group for support while exploring my next career move. A few months into it the facilitator offered a weekend retreat to her vacation cabin in the mountains and off we went.
Long story short, one of the members, a teacher who taught art to special needs students, had brought along her finger paints for us to relax with. Oh did I have fun tossing that stuff around. By the end of the weekend I decided to learn to paint and started searching for classes.
Fortunately the Drawing Studio, in Tucson where I was living at the time, had been established several years earlier and offered exactly what I was looking for. Before year’s end my work was in several galleries across the state.
I continued classes there for about eight years, supplementing my self-directed education with various workshops across the country and hundreds of hours of YouTube tutorials.
Today I live in Sarasota, Florida and continue to learn, paint, show and sell my work.
“Art is when you hear a knocking from your soul – and you answer.” — Terri Guillemets
“Round and Round” is a mixed media painting on stretched canvas and measures 36″ x 48″.
