Artist Statement
I have sketched ever since I can remember, but my mom didn�t officially recognize it until I turned nine. I happened to be sketching Snoopy when my mom caught me in the act. She was sure I was tracing him, so she made me redraw him in front of her. I did, and before I knew it I was whisked off to Aaron Bros. where I received my first set of oil pastels, pencils, and a sketch pad.
I did pencil sketches for over twenty years before I ventured into color. Pencil sketching really helped me explore detail, contrasts and values, and it taught me how to loosen up my strokes while working. Oil pastels were always in the background, and for years I had a love/hate relationship with them. I loved the fact that I could draw with color, but I could never get them to work the way I saw the paintings in my head. My art teachers all taught me the proper way to work with them, but it just never worked for me. I can�t begin to tell you how many times I put those oil pastels away in a drawer wanting to forget completely about them. It wasn�t until my mid-twenties when I was moving from New York City to Austin, Texas, that I made an out of the way trip to Taos. I went to the R.C. Gorman gallery by accident, and was blown away by what he did with oil pastels. I loved all of the different methods he used in each one of his paintings, and I loved that even though everybody else was painting in oils, he used oil pastels. He inspired me to not forget about them even though I never thought I could master them the way he did.
I didn�t start working with color until after my divorce. It was pretty emotional for me, and I needed an outlet. I wanted to paint all of the emotions I was feeling and seeing and black and white just didn�t cut it. All of my life I�ve seen colors swirling through faces and landscapes, and I was always accused of having an overactive imagination. Well, I was on my own now, and I didn�t care anymore about what others had to say about my imagination. I decided to let it finally express itself after reading a comment by the infamous Santa Fe artist, Fritz Scholder. He said, �Learn all the rules, and then figure out which ones to break.� I did the moment I pulled out my pastels once again and began painting how I see things and the way I wanted to work with the medium instead of the way I was told to. All of the years of sketching finally saw color, and I began developing my current style, which is still growing as I explore oil pastels, acrylics and encaustics today.
Many people ask me where my ideas come. I don�t sit down and plot out the images that I paint. Most of them come to me in my dreams, and they hang around until I finally commit to working with them. I would say that 95% of the time the image chooses me for some unknown reason to paint it; which is a blessing to me. Every animal that I paint is also an animal that I have had some sort of interaction with. Behind each painting, there is a story behind it�they are stories that I learn as I paint. The story rarely comes to me before I begin the painting, and each one has been a huge lesson for me.
I was born and raised in San Diego, but I have lived all over the country including Florida, New York, Texas, New Mexico, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Canada and now Western Colorado where I have lived for fifteen years with my dogs cats and boyfriend. All of my paintings are prayers. My adopted Unci (Lakota for grandmother) on the Pine Ridge Reservation taught me to put prayers into every single bead of my beadwork. I do the same with every single stroke of my paintings. If I have to label myself and my art, I would call it Shamanic Art�.You can also see my art at the Cat�s Lair Art Gallery in Eddie McStiff�s Plaza or Wildcat Studios in Telluride, CO.
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