“My interest in art, as with most, began when I was a child. I won a county art contest in the first grade and was hooked. The tempera painting was of my family on vacation, riding in a car along a road; everything was in red and green. When asked by a newspaper reporter why the color choice, I told him that those were the only jars of paint that I could get open. Despite that fact, I liked and was intrigued by the two colors appearing in unexpected and, through the eyes of a child, in somewhat strange places.
As a young adult I earned my bachelors degree with plans to teach art in a high school setting. When planning to teach, you must know “a little” about “a lot” of media: drawing, oil painting, watercolor, scratchboard, pottery, all kinds of printmaking, copper enameling, clay and wire sculpture, textile design, and so on. The point, after all, is to expose students to a wide range of artistic approaches and then enable each student to delve deeper into his/her chosen medium. I taught art on a part time basis for six years, and found that I enjoyed all of the media without identifying a favorite or finding a particular area of talent for myself.
My art was soon put aside as I pursued masters degrees in education and then in psychology (with an emphasis in organizational development). I found a profession in adult education, initially teaching teachers effective teaching methodologies and later, for 22 years, overseeing education for judges and personnel in the state court systems of Arizona and then California.
Now retired for three years, and living in Plains, Montana, I have returned to art, with some new and some residual aspects. I have not really exhibited my work before now. I have had a few of my oil paintings appear in “Art on the Walls” at the Clark Fork Valley Hospital, an ongoing event sponsored by the Sanders County Arts Council.
My art is the result of my inclination to find the essence – what is fundamental, striking, and memorable – of specific subject matter at a particular moment and to depict it. I distill what I see, experience, and feel, minimizing what seems be less important and emphasizing what seems most significant. The basis for most of my work is a landscape and Montana provides a rich array. I may capture a landscape in paint, glass, or clay. When my work is naturalistic, my goal is to reflect the character and mood of what I see. When it is abstract, my goal is to reflect the basic attributes of a subject – patterns, movement, or objects in concert with one another.
I approach art with three strong expectations: first, to create a work that honors the character of a subject through a particular artistic medium; second, to satisfy a sense of adventure and experimentation as I approach each new piece of work with anticipation; and third, to stimulate and involve all of my senses – the sight of color, the smell of the medium, the sound of working, and the actual feel of the medium and tools.
Like Impressionist painters, I believe light changes what we see and influences how we respond. I prefer rich colors to reflect the impact of light on a subject and I incorporate visible textures to accentuate what light can do to the finished piece. My paintings retain many brush strokes and involve a variety of colors; my glass combines vibrant transparent and opaque glass and is often bas-relief; my clay work incorporates the texture created by natural objects, tools, or my hands.
I also believe each piece of art has a life of its own and I try to allow every one to develop in its own way. Regardless of the vision I have in mind, as a work progresses, the unexpected or unanticipated happens, and the piece changes. Based on working with and through those unexpected variables, I always appreciate the finished product more than what I originally envisioned.
My signature pieces are art dyads or art clusters that focus on impressions of subject matter from two or three different frames of reference. The inspiration for these complementary works is that I experience subject matter in varying ways. A landscape may appeal to my sense of beauty through color and shadow, lending themselves to a painting; it may also appeal to my sense of design through strong verticals and horizontal lines and shapes, lending themselves to fused glass; and finally the physical mass of objects may appeal to my sense of structure, lending parts of a scene to clay sculpture. Although pieces in a dyad or cluster complement one another, each individual piece remains unique and has its own independent message. I also produce other, stand-alone pieces that involve only one medium; they sometimes become the initial inspiration for a larger, more complex dyad or cluster of work.
