Summer 2017

Summer 2017 - a little reflection 

It is my sincere wish that you have had a wonderful summer so far. My summer has been filled with many good things. I’ve kept to my promise to only say yes to things that will be enriching. Having a zest for life means that I say yes to a lot, but who can say no to awesome opportunities?

As a teaching artist, I get to work with a lot of really wonderful people. Many of the people I work with are coming in from different parts of the country, even globe. So, it seems that travel is becoming a large part of my creative undertakings and workshop offerings. Being in new surroundings, or in new communities of people really helps to broaden my skills. 

By the time you read this I will be on my way to Ireland for The Art and Soul Journey, where I will be teaching a workshop alongside my dear friend, Lora Murphy. In my portion of the workshop I will be focusing on the landscape and how our surroundings impact us in powerful, yet sometimes subtle ways. I feel so strongly about understanding the language of the land, that I have developed a course around this concept and am taking it with me to Ireland and to my future workshops. 

I am eternally grateful to Mike Lesczinski, owner of Enkaustikos, where I have worked for over 10 years. The experience and knowledge I continue to gain from working there is crucial to my teaching and reinforces what I am capable of sharing. It has inspired me to dive deep into the world of pigments, where they come from, their true nature, how they mix, and how all of this applies to expressing ourselves with color and responding to our environment in visually creative ways.  ~ This is what I bring to my art and to my workshops.

About the image above… The Inspired Landscape. I often wonder what makes us see things the way we do. How programmed we are from infancy. I had a teacher once say to me that all you need to create the feel of a landscape is a horizontal line. He went on to say that it really didn’t matter what colors I used; the line was the strongest element in the painting. I have explored this many times in my work. In this painting, I wonder if you would read it as landscape if the suggestion of trees did not exist. The patchwork of colors in a loosely formed grid speaks nothing of reality and resembles more of a sketchy pattern for a quilt.  Oh, but the colors are soft like a rainy day.