How do you unearth YOUR narrative? Many individuals really don’t give the development of their creative identity much thought. The default position is that an artist simply sits in front of something and to the best of their ability – they faithfully copy it – whether still life, landscape, portrait, or figure. You can be assured… Read More
Have you ever seen a charm bracelet? Maybe you had one as a kid, as I did. It had miniature representations of all the various things that interested or represented me & my youthful life. Maybe instead – you had a set of baseball cards representing all your various baseball heroes. The entities that were present… Read More
The new year is beginning. It is a perfect time to try something new in your art practice. Are there some new things you would like to explore? If that is too broad of a question, ask yourself what assumptions you are making that might not be true? Could you work in a different way by… Read More
I posted a new artwork on my Facebook today that could cause discomfort for some viewers. Recently a male dancer posed in a glorious backward swoop of a pose, legs splayed open, arm circling around for hand to clutch foot…it was pure poetry! When I saw the beauty of the pose he had constructed, my impulse… Read More
Chiaroscuro (light-dark)) is an oil painting technique, developed during the Renaissance, that uses strong tonal contrasts between light and dark to model three-dimensional forms, often to dramatic effect. As an artist I am drawn to contrast. To portray a full rendition of life, I must understand, visualize, and utilize the full complement – both light and dark,… Read More
Every summer for the last 45 years, our family has gone to spend time at a remote cabin in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. While my art practice has primarily focused on the human form as my subject, in the summer I turn my attention to what is available in this remote setting. On Grand Mesa,… Read More
The germ of the idea for my Mother Earth: Hanging by a Thread series was presented to me while I was running a figure workshop at the Western Colorado Center for the Arts. A new model asked if she could bring in an exercise ball to work with on some of her poses. She said the… Read More
If you have any hope of creating profoundly true figure artworks, you must bring your heart to the task. When an artist works from a nude model, our subject is made vulnerable by the act of disrobing. At that point, it is an “uneven transaction” between two humans. The observer remains protected while the observed individual… Read More
