Life at the edge of our field is always interesting and inspires my painting practice. Many of you who live in a more rural part of the Piedmont know what I’m talking about, and even if you have a small backyard you may see some of this wonder as well! Every day is a new visual experience depending on the…
As luck would have it after retiring from my day job I moved from my home of 45 years in Chicago to the small town of Carrboro known as "The Paris of the Piedmont." I love this small town and the people who are enthusiastic in supporting the Arts. Here I have continued to pursue my two loves — garden…
“Kookaburra sits on an old gum tree...” goes a song from my childhood. Gum is a large family of Australian trees which are locally known as “Mallee.” Burls from Mallee trees are especially beautiful and, when you find them available in the US, are expensive. Because of the expense, I was unwilling to turn Australian burls for several years after…
As an artist I am never at loss for painting ideas. Most of all I love animals. These ideas often come to me as I paint instead of setting out to depict a certain scene. As I paint the colors and images all come together and I change this or that until I can say in my heart I am…
This past summer I’ve focused on making wholecloth painted art quilts. These are not quilts for beds, but textile art to display on the wall. Each piece starts with plain white fabric, which I paint with acrylic textile paint. I then layer the piece with batting and a backing fabric before free-motion machine quilting it. I love both the process…
Covid has been a very challenging yet interesting time for me. Since I typically work alone in my studio each day, the isolation has not been as difficult and it has given me the time and permission to paint again! I love to paint, and it comes easy to me after working with the metals and stones of my jewelry.…
The first art book I ever bought was Betty Edward’s Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. The book’s premise was that any beginner could learn to draw, and I was a beginner. Although I had zero formal training as an artist, I had a very big urge to create something. I had studied creative writing and had a…
During this time of quarantine, we are most lucky as artists to be able to continue the work of making. It may be that if we are forced to stay with our work, and are less distracted by things beckoning us from the outside world, we might find that we can go deeper than we expected.This may take a variety…
Since I began teaching abstract painting and collage a few years ago (through a joint appointment with the Durham Arts Council and OLLI program at Duke) I have looked for ways to both stretch myself and give my students some new ways of starting their paintings. Last year, dealing with the trauma of a flooded and destroyed art studio, I…
One of the ways that I like to paint is to simply allow my hand to create colorful shapes in a seemingly random pattern, until a coherent painting forms and begins to look ‘finished’. This can be done using any 2D or 3D medium. I often listen to music that matches whatever mood I’m in when I start to paint.…