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I never chose to become an artist, I always felt that I was born to be one. Before I knew how to paint, I doodled and sketched. I loved to create pretty things and I loved to make “people”: I assembled things with construction paper, felt and glitter. I made puppets so that I could paint faces on them. I sewed fabric dolls so that I could paint features on their little faces. I taught myself how to draw with pastel by copying models’ faces from magazines. When I first began my formal art education in my late twenties, I was fortunate enough to study with some excellent teachers and I learned the basics of drawing by studying artistic anatomy. In my thirties, I studied “Painting the Head in Oil” at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. That was where I first learned to paint in oil.
I have a routine I follow before I begin working on a new painting. After I select a subject, I decide whether to work in pastel or in oil. I generally paint people and animals, and my choice of medium depends upon the mood I’m trying to convey. My pastels are vibrant and a little bit out of my control. When I’m working from life, or when I want to paint in an ethereal style, I choose pastel. Oils are a more intellectual pursuit. They require the same good drawing skills, the same elements that make a pastel painting sing, but they are different because I have to mix the colors, I have to be aware of drying times, and I have to work with opaque and transparent colors. I have to make my brushes do what my fingers do intuitively with pastel. But I love working with oils because I can express an infinite variety of nuanced emotions and beauty. Every time I pick up a paintbrush, I learn something new and I expand my artistic horizons.
A painting of mine that has turned out well looks like the subject or subjects but has more energy, life, and drama than the photograph or the live subject I worked from. The colors are cohesive but a little bit more intense than they would be in life. The cool colors are colder and the warm colors are hotter. The images are compelling and the viewer wants to know what the subject is thinking about. The composition is dynamic and the paint (or pastel) has a unique quality all its own. If it’s a pastel painting, the edges are a little bit raw. If it’s an oil painting, there are light impasto passages and thin, translucent areas. All of the disparate parts come together to make a complete, unified whole.
At this stage in my life, although I still enjoy portraiture, I now find that painting the nude is more gratifying because it allows so much room for personal interpretation and it requires me to solve complex artistic problems. I feel very fortunate to be able to experience tremendous pleasure from painting while sharing my vision with others.
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