I received an email from
Patience Brewster (check out her website of lovely and unique Christmas ornaments ) inviting me to create a blog post
answering some questions about myself as an artist. Hope you enjoy my answers and check out
Patience’ website!
Q 1. As a child, do you recall a significant moment when you felt truly affected or inspired by any particular artwork or artist?
A. I grew up small town, 1950’s rural with no particular big exposure to art or artists. I enjoyed advertising art in magazines and book illustrations, but in school we always just drew from our imaginations with subjects selected by the art teachers. My strongest art motivation was the feelings I experienced about things I admired or enjoyed. I was a horse lover and so, much time was spent drawing them from magazine pictures or books – a way to express the joy I felt at their beauty. My motivation was always to increase my skill at “saying” what I felt about horses and other things that touched me.
2. As an artist, what do you hope to convey with your work?
A. I still have that same motivation in my adult artwork – sharing the joy that I feel at happening upon certain meaningful things. I want to turn a spotlight on what is often missed in the business of life and small groupings or items that suggest or recall a story. I have morphed into doing many still life subjects because of my own intense connections to the comfortable, common things that reflect the past lives of ordinary people – things that are tattered and worn and have been “used” by people in other times and places. My house is filled with old things in little groupings and I am constantly delighted by the play of light over these treasured items as the day passes to night. I still love to draw horses, but my love of old “things” has grown to be predominant. I like to inject a bit of whimsy in my works and to produce art that is complex enough to stay fresh and interesting no matter how many times it is viewed.
3. What memorable responses have you had to your work?
A. I have often been told that my art was mistaken for a photo when seen from a distance. That is somewhat surprising because I don’t think it is photorealistic, as such. I like to think that it is a compliment to the effort I put in my drawing. I do not want errors of perspective or sloppy drawing to take away from what I am saying and so I expect my best effort to avoid such distraction. I start from my own photo and spend a lot of time on the technical correctness of objects and placement, but once I have transferred my basic, finished drawing, I work in a fairly intuitive manner and make changes and alterations from my initial photo as my feelings dictate.
4. What is your dream project?
A. Right now, I think it would be exciting to interpret the same finished core drawing in colored pencil, pastel and maybe oil paint. I have a certain motivating feeling for the subject matter and I would like to see if I could convey my same “message” effectively in multiple ways.
5. What artists, of any medium, do you admire? (Famous or not!)
A. I love the artists of the Golden Age of Illustration – NC Wyeth (and family), Howard Pyle, Norman Rockwell, Alphonse Mucha, Maxfield Parrish, Gibson, Christy, etc. I also like Alma Tadema and Gerome and Sargent, among many others. It is a crime that they mainly forgotten. They were wonderfully skilled artists who were masters of draftsmanship, color and composition and prolific in the production of stunning art.
