January 17, 2011 - Introduction

A friend of mine suggested I start a blog to promote my artwork, since it is a good idea, here I go! 

I suppose I should start by telling you a little bit about myself.  I am a proud Navy Wife, and my Sailor is currently deployed on the USS Enterprise.  So I have some free time on my hands.  To keep my mind off missing my Hubby, I have been painting.  Lately they have been commissioned pieces requested by friends and family but I am hoping to go farther.  I love art!  Art has helped me through the most difficult times in my life and continues to do so now. 

High School.  I think it was difficult for everyone. I am pretty sure that the fact that I could sit in my older brother's room and draw until 2 am (when the bars closed and he came home) weekend nights kept me out of a lot of trouble.  Don't get me wrong, I still went out, I was just in by curfew and content with drawing instead of sneaking back out. I still have a box full of drawing from that time...and it is interesting.  Lots of tribal designs and potential tattoos in there, and I do not personally have any tattoos. There is a painting I did on newspaper while I was painting my room black...it is a silhouette of a surfer and his surfboard.  If I wasn't out surfing or at school or work, I was usually drawing, or painting. Despite my love of art I didn't have many art classes in school.  My first Drawing class wasn't until my Senior year of high school and the only other art class I had prior to that was 3 dimensional design in middle school.

So when I went to college I scheduled stress relief time, I minored in art!  I majored in Biology. So along with my love of art is my love of science.  My favorite subject in both is the human body. So I focused on the human figure in my art studies. I took classes such as Artistic Anatomy, which I took at the same time as Anatomy and Physiology, which deemed helpful on both parts. I also took figure drawing, and figure sculpture.  Here is one of my sculptures from college:

My figure sculpture class was one of my favorites!  I was the youngest by far in the class, most of the other students were auditing the class. It was a Saturday morning class.  One of the students was a Plastic Surgeon, his father was a General Surgeon under which my then boss had studied (I worked for a General Surgeon). The Plastic Surgeon's father was also an artist, his mom was into pottery, and I later took a painting class from his sister.  The Plastic Surgeon used to tell me I was sculpting myself instead of the model... I would evidently add a little in certain areas, where they were not as well endowed. The models never complained. 

A little over a year after I graduated from College with a Bachelor's of Science in Biology, my younger brother was killed in a car accident.  That was the worst phone call I ever received in my life. The following fall semester I decided I would register for some therapy...I enrolled in three art classes. I can not explain in words how much it helped me but I can post a few pictures:

This is Bill.  He holds a lot of the emotions I let go of after my brother passed away.

This is one my still life paintings from that time.

I learned a lot from those art classes, I really dove into soaking up as much about technique as I could. I learned how to stretch my own canvases, and I learned the importance of quality paint! I also took a design class, where I learned about gauche, and illustration techniques, of which I have incorporated into my drawings and paintings.  

I am fascinated and a little afraid of Watercolor.  Which brings me to my Mom.  She should have been mentioned before now since she is were I get most of my artistic ability!  She is the one who taught me how to paint when I was four.  That is usually when you play around with watercolor, not us...we used acrylics.  My first painting was of a bunny rabbit. I have no idea where it is or if it still exists, but I will never forget painting it with my Mommy. She majored in art in college. She loved to draw, but didn't do it often enough. She became rather sick and fought hard for a long time.  She started to knit and crochet to pass the time and when she was feeling up to it she would draw or paint.  She was really having fun with Watercolor.  I think her favorite subject was birds. She also liked flowers. She passed away about 5 months ago. So I set up an art room in my house and I am doing therapy in my own house this time.