“The View From Here” - Solo Exhibition April 5 - 22, 2017
You may take the long view
or the close up view, but when you gaze at nature’s beauty, fury, or stillness
you are gradually brought into its intrigue. If you gaze long enough it will
offer you its gifts.
Artist Statement:
“Literature, painting,
music – the most basic lesson that all art teaches us is to stop, look, and
listen to life on this planet, including our own lives, as a vastly richer,
deeper, more mysterious business than most of the time it ever occurs to us to suspect
as we bumble along from day to day on automatic pilot. In a world that for the most part steers
clear of the whole idea of holiness, art is one of the few places left where we
can speak to each other of holy things.” Frederick
Buechner, Whistling in the Dark
I often wonder why
I paint... why create…?
One might say though, "Yes, but this painting, is remade according to who I am, my delights, my sorrows, my vision and senses." This thought feeds my creativity.
Fulfillment comes when light and colour clash or flow into one another and reflect back to me from the paper, when acrylic paint is burnished to form the look of worn leather or lightly touched to the canvas to form mist. Paint put to paper or canvas reveals nature’s beauty and mankind’s creations as I see them.
How grateful I am
to be able to see, hear, smell and touch - and how grateful I am to live life
where I can "glimpse the infinity that hides in the simple sights,"
and respond creatively to what is.
After setting aside
my high school paints and immersing myself in academics and family life, I
found my way back to my brushes in 2004 when I took a watercolour class. I attended
sketching and painting classes and critique workshops with Cecelia Jurgens,
Jack Reid, and Brian Atyeo and have spent many hours mulling over books written
by favorite artists who have indirectly been my mentors.
The members of the
Big Sky Artists group have encouraged me on my journey since inviting me to
join them and it has been a privilege to show with them annually since 2006.
I paint in watercolour,
acrylic and oil media. Subject
wise, I paint what resonates with me, what seems to call me to paint it
for some particular, sometimes inexplicable, reason. Places I have been,
images I have seen or imagined or that hold a special memory.
I
hope my paintings will cause you to pause, to call forth in you a feeling of
“being there,” a special memory, or perhaps they will awaken within you the
desire for more creativity in your life.
“Creativity is a way of
living life – no matter what our vocation, or how we earn our living… The
creator is not afraid to leap over the ‘accidental fences’ and to plunge into
the deep waters of creation. There once again, and in yet another way we lose
ourselves to find ourselves…” Madeleine
L’Engle, Walking on Water
