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Why are you an artist?
What I remember most about being a small child is the way I
used to put my hands in the dirt and make something. (There is gravel in
that1965 purse just so you know.) A fort made out of saw horses and sheets, a
figure hidden in the tree bark, the smell after a rainstorm, cloud formations
on distant horizon, made me happy, held my complete attention. As a young
adult, I could still go to these places, when the world upset me or I felt out
of place. Animals made me as content as my hands in the dirt. Isn’t this all
art?…creating and recognizing beauty in simple things at the same time?
Somehow my art is connected to being human, to the earth, to loving things. The
goal now, as a painter, is finding poetic meaning within the same set of simple
truths.
As far as being an artist goes, I don’t think there was any other choice for me, but to be creative. It was the thing that came to me, naturally - the making and the thinking involved. In time, I knew I had to learn more about it as a discipline and a vast learning zone. I wanted to educate myself in an advanced way and did do that. I am not sure I am skilled in any other way, but this one. Thank god, artist is such a wide definition and so expansive as a mode of work.
What is art?
Art is that thing that makes us feel, fully and completely,
beyond the everyday routine. It has the ability to make us think in unique ways
and is visual intelligence. It goes far beyond the paint, the material, or the
scene or the depiction. It is something connected to truth, authenticity,
discipline and freedom or it is not art. It can be found in everything . It is, at its best,
lasting, far-reaching and a language of its own. Politics, Religion, Education,
Ethics, Medicine, Science, Industry… have an aesthetic component at their
quality core. Thus, art is civilization. It certainly civilizes the mind and
the heart. Without it, we are doomed.
Why do you paint what you do?
We paint what we know. I suppose it is the same thing for writers or musicians. We come into the world and if we go art bound, we better want to create every day and spend some of our time in solitary ways, or don’t even think about this career. I guess I felt I wanted to remind people that goodness, and answers to many of our questions, still exists in the natural world. The resolutions to many of our problems can be found in the smallest of wonders, constantly at our fingertips. Do my images convey that? I don’t know. My abstractions, organic images and physical marks all have to do with a kind of love I feel about the earth and how that ties into my personal experience. I am just a nature girl I guess, but not that free-spirited; I am actually big on formal know-how within the intuitive process. I am an independent, foreign film buff and literary person, which plays into my work. I have my heroes in the history of painting, too – Soutin, The Nabis, Manet for their use of paint…. Deibenkorn, Theibaud, Joan Agnes Martin, others who just know paint amid other genius qualities. Being a painter is about paint, but it is also about other influences and attitudes, about all the things that grab us, move us emotionally and even physically.