Selected Works
Tree of Life
Mother Island
Mixed Media
Nature Morte
Steadfast and Always Dreaming
Longhorn #11
Vision and Inspiration
My favorite artists throughout the years- are Georgia O’Keefe (for her color sense) and Picasso (for everything!!!!). I love Picasso because he teaches me to stop second-guessing myself. I can go to a museum full of art, and my eyes will always go back to a simple line drawing of his - he can create a woman’s face in five bold lines or less and achieve a total likeness. He also said that when painting, to always paint out your favorite part because you will paint around it, and the painting will never be whole. The next artist I love is Hundertwasser, a painter and environmental activist who is very interested in maintaining a balance between the manmade world and natural elements. Instead of dominating, we should integrate and preserve. He was also a colorist and had a very strong sense of design. Some other of my favorites include Pierre Soulages, whom I had the pleasure of meeting in France, and Robert Motherwell, both of whom are known for powerful abstract compositions, usually massive but minimal at the same time. The Elements of water and earth (rocky coastlines) seem very inspiring and agree very much with my constitution. I am 100% inspired by nature, by organic and ever-changing things. I am inspired by the opposites in nature, light and darkness, stillness and silence versus perpetual motion and constant noise.
Art is essential to people because it creates a response on a vast emotional spectrum. Sometimes, art makes one very comfortable and familiar. However, it can also make one feel very uncomfortable because to try to understand, one must reach outside their usual scope of thinking and question the artist, themselves, and maybe even their reality. I think relativity comes into play when a person finds themself responding to a particular piece of art. Art evokes true emotional responses in a society (our own) where media (from traffic to T.V.) constantly tells us exactly how we should feel and react. I believe art allows for reflection, contemplation, and meditation.
I love to create art. I love to be inspired and make a painting in thirty minutes or plan and work the details out as I go. Art, for me, is also problem-solving, working out the composition, and using all the principles to find something that is unique to me and who I am. I believe that I paint with my subconscious, working with all my experiences and memories behind the brush, and it is only afterward that I can make conscious interpretations of meaning. When I paint, I am complete; I am in the moment and of it. I believe it takes me ten to twenty paintings to make a masterpiece, and each masterpiece is a culmination of who I am up to that point, whether understood and appreciated or not.