A fascination with psychology and the process of learning...have been driving forces in my life and in my art. I've been a teacher for much of my life and always a painter. For me, the creative process is similar in both endeavors. As a teacher, I loved discovering how to successfully reach a particular child -- by building up knowledge…
Have you ever thought about the idea that a loom is a lot like a piano? Both create patterns and percussive sounds. If you play the piano well, you read a musical score -- the notation of notes on the treble or bass cleft -- to produce a sound that presents itself as melody and chords. With a woven presentation,…
The work of Louise Francke is to be published in the Best of Worldwide Wildlife Artists (Kennedy Publishing in VA.) Here's what she has to say about one particular painting in this series: It is rare that I choose to keep one particular oil painting. This is my favorite! Carlos as Rembrandt's Oriental was the first painting in this series of 30+ works…
Judith Ernst and Alan Dehmer will be speaking about their work at the Frank gallery, in downtown Chapel hill on Thursday, Feb. 17 at 6:00 pm. Here's an excerpt from Judith's bio on the OCAG website: "My ceramic work features forms and patterns from the natural world and provides a three-dimensional canvas... The vessel form allows for the possibility of working…
“Enameling is a dying art”. I refused to believe it! I just came back from Austria, where I expected to see and maybe buy some pieces of the most beautiful enamel work, as I remember they had many years ago. I was greatly disappointed when I could not find one piece of traditional or modern enamel anywhere in Vienna or…
Drawing is a form of meditation for me. It helps me concentrate on the details and thus see the whole in a totally different perspective than just through the mind’s memory which lacks the same attentiveness to detail. My life’s works are a sequence of narratives. They quite often relate to my personal experiences... I have drawn and painted pictures…
Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Hebrews 13:1-2 The first inspiration for my novel Wild Things walked into my life on all fours. I wish I could say that I took one look at that filthy, hungry, strikingly handsome creature and saw immediately the muse he was, knew instantly that he…
At the time the cat came, I was learning to write and illustrate picture books for children. My then-husband, Sam, and I called our house the Love Bungalow, because whatever it lacked in comfort, it was full of that good feeling. It didn't have insulation or reliable plumbing. It barely had heat. A big kerosene furnace took up most of…
In time, and it took a long time, that wild black-and-white cat came to trust me, and only me, the way the fictional cat in Wild Things comes to trust my main character Zoë, who has huge trust issues of her own. I, like Zoë, was patient, and, as in the book, one day that cat just decided about me…
Once, a friend of mine who was an emerging artist at age fifty-one expressed that she always had a sense of terror when she faced a blank sheet of watercolor paper. The weight of all the years she had desired to paint, but had put off trying, came in full force to haunt her. In a flippant reply I said,…