Thank you for your interest in my website; the paintings and drawings. I invite you to comment or ask questions about my work.
Considered by my parents to be an artist child prodigy by the age of 3, I won scholarships for a local art school in Paramus, New Jersey for 2 consecutive years, 1965 and 1966. I attended the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan after a high school in 1969. I dreamt of illustrating children’s books and majored in Graphic Illustration. Discouraged by the incredible competition in my chosen field and the amazing talent surrounding me, I dropped out of college at the age of 19. Feeling that I didn’t have the fortitude or the gumption to vie with my peers, I put down my paint brush, seemingly forever. I wallowed in drugs and self-pity for a few years and then decided to get a grip. I lived a life of art appreciation, but not one of creation for the next several decades.
Thirty four years later (January, 2004) my husband arrived home from work one evening toting an easel and a box of oil paints. I asked him, “What are you doing with all that?” He plopped them down on the living room floor and said, “I thought that you might be interested in trying again.” I rolled my eyes and thanked him for being so thoughtful, while inwardly wondering what had gotten into the man’s head.
For a week or so, I tried to ignore the fact that a brand new easel and a box of oil paints were sitting idle in my house. So I thought, what the hell, and purchased some canvas and stretcher strips. After a few false starts, I rediscovered my passion of self-expression through paint.
From that point on my goal has been to make up for lost time, not necessarily in volume, but in learning the technique and type of medium that best suits my expression. I have flip-flopped between oil and acrylic paints. Since I am an impatient woman, most of my finished pieces are in acrylic.
My artwork has a few constant themes running through it. Christianity (and all my questions about the dogma and the ritual) takes center stage more often than not. Almost all of my pieces have a woman as the central character. My appreciation for a fine glass of red wine shows up frequently, also. Often my work has a cynical or amused viewpoint, cryptically presented. I may start a piece that is perfectly straightforward – romantic, even – sketching it first on paper, then transferring the design onto the canvas. But, after the initial attack of paint on canvas, an urge within me takes over and turns the reasonable theme around to something more dark or angry. I constantly feel the need to create more than a pretty picture.
“A successful photograph raises more questions than it answers” was a quote by Beth Wald that I found in a 2003 issue of National Geographic. I feel the same applies to a good painting. My hope is that the viewer will want to stand in front of my paintings long enough to wonder what is going on within the canvas.