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Artist Statement
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Colour is a power that directly influences the soul.
-Kandinsky
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My stylistic inspiration is born from the works of the Impressionists and Abstract Expresionists –Think Van Gogh meets Kandinsky at Gutav Klimt’s house. I am fascinated by the ability of intense color and texture of line to convey an emotional expression from the artist to the viewer. My design inspirations come from the natural landscapes around us. The flexible linear elements of trees, the solid elements of earth and the changing colours of the seasons all get combined in my original work. Such design elements are powerful tools for the imagination. Working with vivid color oil pastel, I create images that are recognizable to welcome the viewer into the scene. By using the hand cut Gold Leaf , I have stepped up the energy level of my work with the reflective brilliance that only a metallic surface can provide. I draw because it makes me feel good and energized, and I want the viewer to experience that same energy that inspires me to create. My use of black outlines around the shapes are deliberate and necessary and intend only to define and intensify the emotion of my work.My imagery is taken from my surroundings and I am not afraid to create new images and places from my mind’s eye. I do not work from photographs as I feel that they interfere with my creative process. I want a finished work that I can proudly say purely represents my vision.
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Artist Story
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My artistic background begins with illustrating a magazine named “Corny” in grade 5 - it had a distribution of one, myself. My family and I were involved in the art industry from early on. We sold hand-coloured etchings and pastel drawings by my step-mother to galleries and directly to the public at various arts festivals. After graduation (1988) from the University of Washington in Seattle, where I grew up, I moved to Bellingham WA. My full-time art started there. My first creative works were hand-pulled serigraphs (or silk-screen prints). I do not recall how many actual images I created, but I hand-printed and sold my serigraphs until 1996. It was at that time I finally realized that all those printing inks, thinning solvents and screen cleaning chemicals were extremely toxic and very harmful to my health. So I turned to what I have always found enjoyable - drawing. Creating screens to print through required my drawing of course, but silk-screening did not allow me to be spontaneous with colour and texture.
Me at my booth, Circa 1993
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Every serigraph I produced was totally planned out in advance. There was not room to change an idea in mid-stream. So I looked for a drawing medium that was still hands-on and intense in color. I had purchased a set of oil pastels but had not yet found the time to experiment with them; I was still printing serigraphs - I had to make a living of course.
The event that prompted me to work with the oil pastels full-time was the following: I had loaded up my truck to go to an art festival to sell over the weekend in Corvallis ,OR. I arrived in Corvallis on time and proceeded to check into my hotel. They did not have my reservation, but they discovered they had booked me for the following weekend. No problem, there were plenty of rooms. I then went to the show site to start setting up and saw not a soul. No spaces were marked and there was no staff around to answer questions. I finally dawned on me that I drove down on the wrong weekend! I turned around and drove home. So there I was, completely ready for this show, all my book keeping was caught up, and all my orders were filled. So finding myself with a completely open week, I decided to finally experiment with the oil pastels that I bought. I almost immediately discovered that I loved to work with the oil pastels. I could not believe that it took me so long to figure that out.
"Island Nights" serigraph 1994
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I fell in love with the colours and the feeling of freedom to be able to add spontaneity to my work. Using black paper as the background to my drawings occured right away, since I was already silk-screening on it and I had 100's of sheets. Also, as it turns
Deepwater, 18 screen serigraph Circa 1993
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out, the black paper I had been printing on, I discovered, was a paper designed to be used by pastel artists. My work has grown quite a bit since I first started silk-screening and even since I first started to draw with the pastels.The style that you see is uniquely me. It is my natural drawing style. I do not work from photos. I discovered early on that if I see a photo, I will try to make my image look like the photo. One, I do not do that very well and two, I do not wish to create realistic drawings. If I just let myself freely draw what I see in my mind's eye, I believe that my energy is fully expressed in the finished work. This is what I wish to portray and for the viewer to experience. In 2005, I started to expeiment with incorporating metallic leaf into the imagry. This is where I am today - still working developing my style. Oil pastel, metallic leaf and now working on wooden canvases.
An interesting side note about my unique style, is that I can see the definite effect that the years of creating serigraphs has my oil pastel work. Serigraphs have very sharp edges to color areas because you print through stencils. I became accustom to the look. In general, in my pastel drawings, I don't
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"Valley Vista" oil pastel, 2000 Portland Arts Festival Poster Image
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like the large color areas to touch. On a conscious level, the black outlines in my work serve to deliberatly define and intensify the emotion of my work. But on an unconscious level, they perhaps originate from my serigraph days of creating stencils and I am creating that stencil-like appearance. Also, I have noticed that I will work on a single area of a drawing exclusively. I will not start another area of the drawing until what I am currently working on is completely done. This harkens back again to when I would hand-print one stencil at a time on a serigraph. I still may go back and do a some
additional colour work on my drawing (my sponteneity will kick in), but in general I don't work on several different areas of a drawing at the same time.
In 2007, My partner and I immigrated to Canada and settled on the Sunshine Coast, where we are quite happy in our new home and Country. The move to British Columbia has been quite inspiring, so much so, that I find that my style shifted slightly more toward a abstracted landscape view. The colours are deeper and the elements of design are more freestyle.
To this day I continue on the family tradition of selling my original art and reproductions directly to the public through juried art festivals in the US and Canada as well as through private galleries and my home studio in Sechelt BC.
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Projects
2010 - Artists of British Columbia, Vol 3, Book Cover( back )
2007 - The Pastel Journal Magazine -Full Page Article ,Oct ‘07
2006 - Official Event Artist & Poster commission La Bella Strada Arts Fest., Bellingham WA
2005 - Awarded Skagit Valley Tulip Festival poster commission & Official Event Artist , Skagit Valley WA
2004 - Book Feature : NorthAmerican Art Collector Vol. 1. Issue 1.
2003 - Album Art Commission, Neurodisk / Capital Records
2002 - 2003 selected by NHK Japan & UNESCO as one of 60 artists to participate in their annual “OneHeart One World” traveling fine art exhibit. Stops in London, Tokyo, 2002 Olympic Games
2000 - Portland Arts Festival poster commission, Portland Rose Festival Association
2000 - Poster Commission by the Corvallis Arts Commission
Awards
2011 Comox BC - Filberg Festival Featured Artist
2011 Official Event Artist & Poster Creator, Oklahoma City Arts Festival
2010 - BEST IN SHOW, Utah Arts Festival, Salt Lake City UT
2007 - BEST IN SHOW, Saratoga Fine Art Show, Saratoga CA
2007 - Festival Award, Art & Air Fine Art Show, St. Louis MO
***** 5-Time award winner at Portland Arts Festival, Portland OR
2004 - 1st Place Drawing , Portland Arts Festival, Portland OR
2003 - 1st Place Drawing , Portland Arts Festival, Portland OR
2003 - “Critics Choice” Award, Corvallis Fall festival, Corvallis OR
2003 - 2nd Place Drawing category, Edmonds Arts Festival, Edmonds WA
2002 - 2nd place Drawing category , Portland Arts Festival, Portland OR
2001 - 2nd place Drawing category , Portland Arts Festival, Portland OR
2000 - 1st place Fine Art category , ARTFEST, NW Museum of Arts & Culture, Spokane WA
2000 - 2nd place Drawing category , Portland Arts Festival, Portland OR
1994 - Best of Show , Wenatchee Apple Blossom Festival, Wenatchee WA
---& several more.....
Notable Events
2012 - 2009 Filberg Arts Festival ,Comox BC, Canada
2009 - 2008 Circle Craft ,Vancouver BC, Canada
2012 - 2010 Oklahoma City Juried Arts Festival
2010 Bayou City Arts Fine Arts Festival, Houston TX
2012 - 2001 Utah Arts Festival ,Salt Lake City , UT
2009 - Brookside Arts Festival ,Kansas City MO
2012 - 2001 Bellevue Festival of the Arts , Bellevue WA
2012 - 2001 Kings Mt Arts Festival, San Francisco, CA
2012 - 1994 Best of the Northwest, Seattle WA
2005 - Washington State Convention Center
1998 - 1997 Art in the Pearl, Portland OR
Many,many more... ( 23 YEARS WORTH of Juried Art Exhibitions in N. America )
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