Welcome to AllArtWorks Featured Artist Series!
1. What other profession is similar to being an artist and why?
I was an elementary teacher for 23 years and after thinking about it, I actually feel that teaching is similar to being an artist. Your classroom environment is your canvas, and your text books, personal style and ideas, and materials are your "brushes or tools." A teacher uses these "tools" to design lessons that will help shape the lives of the students - the "painting." I know I always felt very satisfied as I watched my students understand a new concept or achieve a new personal goal. I love that I was able to help "paint a picture" on the canvas of their lives!
2. What’s the nicest thing you can remember someone said about your work, or an individual piece?
The nicest thing that anyone can say about my painting is that it "speaks to them." "Your painting is a story." "A truly exceptional, beautiful and peaceful piece of art." "You really captured the feeling and I just keep seeing more and more things. So much left to the imagination!" "I can almost smell the yeast in the bread dough!" But probably one of the best feelings is to see a group of people gathered around a piece of my art, pointing things out and discussing what they are seeing! I love that!!!
3. What’s one thing you’d like everyone to know about you as an artist?
I would like everyone to know that as an artist I am constantly learning, trying new things and growing in my art each and every day!
4. What was the last piece of art that you saw that blew you away?
The last piece of art I saw that blew me away was a landscape painted by a Holland artist, Doug Klemm. His skies in particular and his luscious colors really astound me!!
5. What’s something you haven’t done but you want to do in art/painting?
I have never painted a really BIG painting. I would like to do that!
I prefer the art of Ingres over that of Delacroix. I like Ingres' focus on the human form as opposed to Delacroix's focus on action in very complex scenes. Ingres' contrast between light and dark pulls me into his paintings. One of my favorite Ingres paintings is "Oedipus and the Sphinx."
*The reason we ask about Delacroix and Ingres is because they were contemporaries with wildly different styles!
