I want to thank my friend and fabulous artist Kris Wiltse of Whidbey Island, Washington for passing the Around the World Blog baton to me. If you don't know her exquisite, multi-facted body of work, please check it out. You will be so happy you did.
Here's how this works. A blogger answers four questions and then invites another blogger to answer the questions on their own blogs the following Monday.
Here are my questions and answers.
What am I working on?
I'm in the beginning, exploratory stages of paintings with mountain imagery as a point of departure. I've written about this recently so I won't repeat myself too much, I hope.
I have on paper, on board, and in my memory, images of mountains in Italy:
Mountains in Norway:
Mountains in Iceland:
I'm not sure how the new mountain pieces will go and what they want to be. We will find out in time. Of course, I have to go and see more mountains! I am a passionate traveler, always looking to get back to the Source. (Most any excuse will do ;D.)
Why do I create what I do?
The real subject of my work, and my reason for making it, is my deep response to the energy I feel everywhere around me. Call it the ch'i, the life force, the vibrations that, according to string theory, are the pulse and generator of the universe.
It is present in the landscape and it is present in and through human beings and other creatures:
I foresee for this year at some point and as a complement to my mountain paintings, a return to my first love in art, the human figure. Somehow, some way. I'm seeing, with my mind's eye, loose portrait-ish pieces made by drawing with paint, incorporating some cut and torn paper and some pattern elements. My recent illustration work using pattern and cut paper has fueled my imagination.
How does my work differ from others in my genre?
I work in several ways, with different approaches, purposes, and different media. Maybe my pronounced mutability is a key difference, though the other artists I most admire are seekers like me and their work is always evolving and varied, too.
How does my creating process work?
I keep a deeply personal, introspective sketchbook journal in which I record ideas, images, as well as observations and facts. It is the wellspring for my work as well as a record of its progress. The work I care about emerges from this dialogue with my deep self.
In terms of the physical making of my imagery, I feel more and more as if I'm becoming a kind of human divining rod. I approach a subject or idea with an open and inquisitive heart and I wait to feel the energy that I know is there. That process, when I'm lucky, gives me a gestalt, a sense of the basic gesture and forms involved. Looking at the examples I've included here, you will agree with me that they are nothing if not gestural!
The materiality of my work gives me so much pleasure, too. Really, on some level, I paint and draw just so I can immerse myself in paint and ink and graphite, crayons and paper and gessobord.
I have asked my brilliant and multi-talented friend Beth Adams of Montreal, Canada to follow me in this blog hop. Beth is a publisher, writer, editor, graphic designer, painter, and printmaker. Her blog The Cassandra Pages is worth a long, long visit.
From an island in Washington state to a college town in Piedmont North Carolina to the major city of Québec...we're hopping!
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