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What can you do with some leftover scrapbook papers, stickers and some beeswax?

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How did I do that?

I traced a Gothic arch onto my scrapbook papers

Cut them out

cut out two sets of letters- the black letters slightly larger than the yellow ones

rubbed brown colored pencil on the edges of the yellow letters

glued the layers down

added some fall leaf stickers and some orange and yellow glitter flower stickers

dipped into melted beeswax to give it all a softer old look

punched small holes into each corner and threaded it with hemp

lastly I used a lark's head knot to put some fall colored raffia between each letter

I have been experimenting with paints and papers-the yellow letters is a pieces of paper that I hand painted before I cut the letters out because I wanted paper with some texture and color variations.



I am an artist

Over the years I have had many high school students spend their day shadowing me. Part of the experience is the interview. The student has to ask me questions so they can write a paper about what I do.

"What made you want to be an artist?"





And I answer the question: All my life I have always been different and I can't imagine my life as anything but an artist. I am not in it for the money- although it is nice to sell some work to pay some bills. I am an artist because there is this deep need in me to make things- to create. It's a 24/7 thing too. Artists look at things and life differently. You see a piece of paper blowing down the street and think of it as garbage. I stop and watch it move along the sidewalk and wonder what its story is. Like the day I was cutting across this abandoned parking lot behind a warehouse and saw this skull sitting on a trailer hitch. I took a photo of it because it reminded me of Georgia O'Keefe . When I got back into the studio I played in Photoshop with it .... one of these days I am going to print the photo and go in an alter it with my acrylic paints and create something but for now it's just a photo on my computer. 


Suffer for My Art

 

 






I hear music and I see colors in my mind's eye and fleeting images. Sometimes I drop everything I am doing just to create a piece based on that music because it moves me so strongly. 

 When I worked on this cello Bach's Cello Suite played in my mind over and over. And then it played on my iTunes over and over until I finished the piece. 

Everywhere I go and see and do is a source of inspiration to me. I see colors, textures, lines and shapes. I want to capture the feeling of walking through fallen leaves on a crisp afternoon or the mellow mournful sound of a cello. I want to celebrate the fact that we are living breathing beings and we are surrounded by a universal energy. I want the viewer to be amused, surprised maybe even taken aback by the images I create. I want to make them stop and think for a few minutes. My name is not Picasso or Rembrandt or Van Gogh. My name does not matter. What matters is that I am an artist. And when someone walks into my studio and stares at something I have created and they say it speaks to them then I know I have done it right because we are speaking the same language.