Feminist Teacher

This is a post card I created in 2012 as a part of exhibition for the NAEA Women's Caucus

The Erotics of Flowers

So we see flowers every day but do we really look at them?  There's a certain "eroticism" in the form of different flowers. I enjoy finding it and photographing it. Here's just a few of my favorites.....

Where the Hell have I been

Frustration is the in ability to accept what is.

It occurred to me after a few people asked to see some of my more recent art that I had not put anything out on the web beyond Facebook in years.  Where the Hell have I been? Busy!!!! I've been living the life taking care of my family, teaching high school art full time, starting and completing graduate school, traveling in the US and Spain, Italy, France and Jamaica, painting and photographing when I can,  presenting at Art educator conferences around the US, sledding into poles, spraining ankles, loosing screws, and running into deer with my van. You know, all the joys of daily life!

So on that note, ill put some not seen in a long time, or never seen before stuff here. While I've been doing a lot of portrait photography for people I consider that work for them. The work I post here is work for me. If someone just happens to like the art enough to buy it that's a bonus.

Calligraphic and Reduction Prints

             

Color Experiments

I did this experiment with my high school art and photo classes to explain 2 things. 1 - HOw rain is formed. 2 - Basic Color Theory and pigment distribution. Yeh, sounds complicated and in-depth but really we just played with water, shaving cream and food coloring and took pictures of the results as they were happening.

This of course inspired me to paint. I used some of the images I took as a foundation to get started, but of course the painting takes on its own life in the process of its creation.

Sampler

It's been awhile sence I last updated this blog. Here's just a little sample of some completed works

A View of Alhambra

A View of Alhambra originated from an image I photographed in 2004 in Granada, Spain. This place of earthenly beauty and seeminly spirital energy has been a place of inspiration for me since the first time I explored there.

Georgia O'Keeffe once said that "Nothing is less real than realism.... Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get the real meaning of things."

The Alhambra has such gradure; that to try and capture its entirety is overwhelming. It is the way the paths all lead to another, to another area of beauty and serinity; to another covered walk, arch and window. It is a unique blend of water, earth and man.

Most of what I paint comes from my responce to locations, people, events and thoughts. My camera is my tool for documenting of the original beauty as my eyes saw it. My brush is my tool in illustrating how my soul felt it.

Swirls in August

On a night I couldn't sleep sprang 2 new abstracts. Blue then Green.

Both paintings are oil on canvas 16"x20"

There is energy here; a process of movement, color and intensity.

I only wanted to work with cool colors as to help calm down the energy.

I'm not sure quite what to call them yet. But I'm leaning toward "Curving In" for the green "Journey" for the blue.

But as usual, I'm also not quite sure they're finished.

Behind the bars and new adventures

'Behind the Bars' is an oil painting I begain after hearing of the death of T.T. of Powhatan, A young soul shot down too early in life. With such a large spirit and a smal glimmer of hope for escaping Powhatan now permanently traped behind the bars of the ultimate fatal obstrustion. The choice of cool colors contradicts the violence of his death but acts as a glimmer of hope that one day the light from within his earthly soul will transend the bars of violence and earth and float gracefully into the afterlife. Peace be with you T.T.

Between the Bars

BETWEEN THE BARS oil on canvas 12"x16"

As with anything I seem to do, this to seems incomplete to me. The design is set but I think it still needs more layers. Dimension and texture variation would help.

This painting was started on Monday 6/30 after a day filled with morning for a slain student. A funeral unlike any I have ever attended. One life still holding on and one life passed. My community is rattled; many families fractured, my students devistated, my coleagues stunned and me? I paint it. I've learned from 2 great artists that it is not neccessarily the recording of an event, but the expression of the effects of the event and the avenue in which the artist chooses to take in that expression is of greater importance. While I don't paint realism; I instead break down more complex memories, thoughts and specific details into the most basic elements. Line, shape, color, texture, value and form. No matter what I end up producing I am bound by finding and creating a good composition. Even if the subject does not make sence to anyone but me.

I am so fortunate to have a job that forces me to learn more about my most favorit artists and my own world an d history so tht I may share that with my students. What I absorb finds it way into how I view and create. It's inevidable that the artist creates from which they live. All actions have reaction. All experiences change the next.

The 2 artists: William Turner and Pablo Picasso

1week of art works

Here's a great video I stumbled upon. Yep, It's all about the process.

Ode to the U

Here is a work truly therapeutic in origin. One that is created and then put away because the process of creating it was and is more important than the final work itself. Here I reached back to my sisters Freda and Georgia. After an evening of research about my pending procedure I was compelled to paint. " Ode to the U" I will call it for now. Oil on board. About 16x20 I know there's significance to the colors, but I just can't put it into words yet.