My history as an Artist

When I think about my earliest recollections of art work, the first thing that comes to mind is being four or five years old and having a fascination with the magical, to my young mind then, boxes of “Crayola Crayons”. Those boxes with tiered rows of many colors held my attention for hours on end as I transferred imagination. When I was a little older, my young artistic interest was further piqued as my parents with gifts of those intriguing little tin boxes of “pads” of colors that could be transferred to paper by means of a wetted brush. I’m not sure and coloring. I like to think that there was some psychic Millie whom I never knew and who during a period of her life was engaged in producing painting and firing pieces of which I am lucky enough to own today.

During my school years, particularly high school and college, I pursued my interest by taking many painting/art classes and art history. I expanded my interest to ceramics and China painting, influenced I guess by the luminous pieces on my shelves that were produced many years earlier by mysterious Aunt Millie who died in the early 1900’s. Many hours of  working for a ceramic studio, financed my painting classes in those days!

In the mid seventies I discovered Decorative Painting and became “hooked immediately, going through the baptism of oils and spending hours practicing the basic brush strokes to produce leaves, daisy flowers, strawberries and all the rest. I have been totally enraptured ever since. Like many of my sister painters (and even some brothers!) I began to paint items that I could sell at local boutiques. This led to early efforts to design and paint some of my own one-of-a-kind pieces. I then began teaching classes and designing pattern packets.

The advent of the new acrylic paints propelled me to take more classes to learn about this new medium and I have loved them from the start. They present the potential for a very vivid color palette which I have taken full advantage of and have been rewarded by many positive comments. I enjoy immensely the bright Turquoise Blues and Purple (which I believe adds a touch of whimsy to my painted projects), the bright Reds, Oranges, Greens and Golds. I look forward to the continuing pleasure of experimenting with and using these wonderful paints and the great new Black Gold and Dynasty brushes being developed – and I look forward to many more years of painting!

QUOTES & QUIPS

 "If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done".

     Ludwig Wittgenstein