Another Opening, Another Show!

As September winds down, and summer as well, my attention is fully on preparations for the gallery show in October.  Selections have been made, titles chosen, labels printed and postcards mailed.  In other words, I’m ready to get this show on the road.

As someone who has done a turn or two on the stage, I can easily compare this first show to opening night – the anticipation, the touch of anxiety, the knowledge that anything can happen, and the pure joy of finally bringing the work into the world come what may.

At the same time, I’m already thinking ahead.  I’ve built a good body of work with my most recent pieces, many of which will be in the show, but I’m itching to explore further and new ideas come to mind.

I don’t question that color will be the defining aspect of my work, but the possibilities are many.  And they gypsy in me wants to travel a few new roads.

I didn’t do much painting over the summer, but I did create a few 8×10 pieces to sell at the show.  Here are samples:

I’ll also include a few collage pieces from my Celestial Bodies series:

Again, color all the time.

And about that color, here are the opening lines of my Artist’s Statement that lend a little insight into how that all came about:

“Perhaps it was the 50-color paint set my grandmother bought me when I was nine. Or perhaps it was the technicolor movies, especially Walt Disney who animated music with color. Or it may have been my first college art history class where I fell in love with the vivid colors of Raoul Dufy and the Fauves (as well as my art history professor) when I was eighteen.

“Whatever it was, despite work with charcoal and pastels, clay, collage, or pen and ink, I’ve been hooked on color ever since.”

The show opens October 6 and the reception is Saturday, October 7 from 6-9 p.m. at Hype Gallery/Studio Door on 30th St. in San Diego’s arts district.  I plan to be there!

 

 

 

 

 

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Beginnings – What the Heart Wants

As a pre-Internet child growing up in small towns in the American west, I was not exposed to much “great” art.  There were no art galleries that I recall or art museums in these little places displaying the work of the masters.

We didn’t have art classes in school beyond the occasional time spent with construction paper and crayons.  I’m guessing there must have been artists in the communities in which we lived, but our orbit and theirs didn’t cross.

Like most families in my various neighborhoods, mine had framed prints hanging on the walls – prints purchased at local fine art emporiums like Woolworth’s or J.J. Newberry.   Poker-playing dogs were a favorite as well as misty landscapes and floral bouquets Mr. Turner and Mr. Redouté would not recognize.

No one in my family was an artist per se, although my dad was a good wood worker, my mother crocheted beautiful tablecloths with complex stitches, my grandmother grew prize-winning flowers, and my aunt was a terrific seamstress who created many of her own clothes and the ones I wore as a child.

It was a good long time before I heard the names Michaelangelo, Picasso, DaVinci, O’Keeffe, Matisse or any of the other artists I eventually came to admire.

Still, a seed had been planted somewhere along the line, perhaps by a willing librarian who saw more possibilities and introduced me to one book or another, one illustrator or another who called me to art.

However it happened, I hungered for it and found myself as a college freshman enrolling two weeks late in a Modern Art History class, understanding nothing and with no book because they’d all sold out, but so enamored by the daily slides of the masters that I felt I’d finally opened the door to the banquet hall.  Over the years, I remembered every artist and could identify them all in the galleries and museums in which I eventually found myself.

From that first day until now, it’s been art for me.  I wrote for a living, but it was always art on my mind.  It took years to get here, but get here, I did.

I still have the first two pieces of art I bought for myself soon after that first college class – inexpensive prints, to be sure, but painted by artists whose names I now knew and whose work resonated – Pablo Picasso and Raoul Dufy.

We all have a beginning somewhere with our work.  Mine began here.

    

They have informed everything that’s followed for me with regard to art, and they continue to do so, especially the Dufy.  Dufy was one of the fauves, the wild beasts of art for whom color was everything.  I now understand where my own sentiment found its beginning:  “Color is an animal that wags its own tail.”

The heart wants what the heart wants.  Every time.