Available Art

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

How did it start?

This drawing is from 1994!  I loved drawing from comic books and Rouge was my favorite character.  Just keep reading to see how far I've come :)

I am following along with Dani Keith's blog.  She is applying for a grant and is posting the answers to her questions and I thought it would be fun!  So here is the next one.

How did you get started as an artist? What events moti­vated you to start your com­pany?”

I started as an artist at a very young age! I started when I was 4, at that age everyone is an artist!  Thats before you let the world tell you that you can't draw, or you can't paint.  Thats when everything was free, free to color outside of the lines, free to throw splatters on your castles....more about that later.  My mom still has a particular drawing that I did.  It was of the family and we were all stick people but I got my dads eyes just right. See, he has a glass eye so they are slightly different from each other.  I drew the glass eye smaller than his real eye (which is how it is in real life)  and so mom says thats when she knew I was an artist!  If you've read Dani's blog her mom knew well before her that she was an artist too.  Somthing about those mommas!

This drawing was selected for the student section of the Laguna website in 2005.
I drew all throughout school.  I quit taking art my senior year in high school.  I didn't figure there was much I could do with it, plus it was much more important to me at the time to get half days than to stay all day just for an art class. When I was 20  I started a community college in Hawaii (my husband was a Marine and we were stationed there)  I took a drawing class just to fulfill a credit and I fell in love all over again!  I had a great teacher, Snowden Hodges, who I thought could teach anyone to draw!   I took as many classes as I could while I was there and of course thought I was an awesome artist....ah the pride of the young.

Flash forward a couple of years and I started attending Laguna College of Art and Design.  I had the pleasure of studying under Betty Shelton.  Who is an absolutely fabulous teacher and artist.  I still ask her questions...and she still answers them (I think that is the true sign of a teacher! and I hope to be like her some day) Back to LCAD, I absolutely loved it!  And I truly did some exceptional work while I was for one year.  bum bum bum then I got pregnant.  So I was an art school dropout.  Thats ok though, Faith kept me from going into even more debt than I already had!  Oh, and I love my baby girl!  :)  After having Faith I took some time off from art.  When I started back up I thought I would sell art through home parties, kinda like Tupperware.  It didn't quite work out but you learn more from your failures than from your successes!  At that point in my life I felt like I absolutely had to make it work and it really sucked all the fun out of painting.  Now, I'm at a place where I can relax and enjoying creating artwork.  I'm not desperate to make my art sell and I love it!  You may ask, what changed?  In that time period I became debt free!  Who knew that debt could cloud all your creative processes?  While painting I would think about how I needed to sell it so I could pay off debt, or buy more supplies etc.  Now I don't have to worry about that its awesome!  So now I've got an etsy shop and I'm doing arts/craft fairs....and of course I'm always interested in gallery representation :)

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Is summer over?

I set out to take a break in July from blogging because I had so much going on. But then  it turned into an extended holiday!  (I know, I know I said holiday, but I swear I'm American! I've just been watching a lot of International House Hunters lately)  Friday was First Friday in Downtown Greensboro.  I've been meaning to post pictures of my booth with the lights on but this was the first time I remembered to take a picture!


This past Friday I unveiled my newest creation, silhouette portraits on plates.  The kids all loved the pink one because it looked like Barbie.  Of course then there was the one lady that started talking about how our kids are brainwashed because they thought the plate looked like Barbie.  I have to say that  although I made the portrait up from my head I had her silhouette in mind when I did it.