The Unseen World

The Mirror- Mixed Media Spirit Boat Painting0 2014

I admire many other artists who paint from the seen world and bring landscapes, cityscapes and portraits to life through their art. I used to love painting all of those subjects - working from the external world. Each of these gave me a particular foundation and helped build my perspective as an observer and responder to what I would capture in my art.
My earliest introduction to drawing was to practice by working off of cartoon heads and sketching from life.  My family had great patience to sit for me so I filled my sketch books with their likenesses.  I took a landscape painting class at age 8, and remember painting a scene with rolling grass fields, a winding grey road with yellow stripes, a white fence, big tree and a horse. It represented the kinds of roads we took through Illinois, Kentucky and North Carolina on our way to visit my mother's family. At age 10, I took a drawing class that took us outside on the porch of the Chicago Art Institute where we drew from the line up of buildings along Michigan Ave.
Architecture has been a great source of inspiration for most of my life. From 1996-2004 I painted Mediterranean hill towns and streetscapes relishing the abstract elements and relationships. I especially loved painting dark skies and artificial lights creating patterns of colors on old stucco walls.

In 2004, things changed radically and after my father's death. I needed a new avenue and voice. The Spirit Boat came to me through a journey in 2002 and I could access this archetype in my own way. The boat that held spirit became the total focus of my artistic output and I went deep inside of me to reach for a source that was most generous and provided context.
In paintings, I can play with the space that lives behind, in front, below, above and around the boat. The environment evolves as I work and it tells me what it needs- not the other way around. It works best when I stop and listen, pause to hear what kind of place the boat wants to rest within. It is not as much seeing as listening and feeling my way through the unseen world to bring it onto the canvas.