I want to paint like a person...yin:yang

Grande Dame   oil/canvas   30 x 40 x 1.5

For more years than I can count, the voice inside me declared that I wanted to paint like a man.  Why?  Because I loved the certainty, the broad loose brushstrokes and the bravado that seemed to ooze from the work that I admired so very much.... all painted by men.  My inspirations came from such painters as:  H. Craig Hanna, Alex Kanevsky and Randall Tiedman. I must add that there are many local, regional and national artists whose work I enjoy, but inspiration goes a step further into enticement, excitement and stomach flutters.  Time has passed.  There are now so many women artists whose work is inspiring to me:  Stanka Kordic; Rimi Yang; Jeannie McGuire; Jenny Saville and Carla O'Connor.  These female artists are, for me, grandes dames.  For the first time ever, for me, I can honestly say that gender-bias has been removed from the equation.  I want to paint like a person.

"Grande Dame" was first painted from a reality....everything in its place using local color.  Boring, boring, boring.  After a year of living with it, I attacked it with my own sense of aesthetics.  I am relieved.  I am purged.  I am totally happy with this work.

Grande Dame has been included in the 36th Annual Art Exhibition sponsored by The Fairmount Center for the Arts.

  June 3 - June 14

8400 Fairmount Road   Novelty, Ohio

Accommodation

An Accommodating Curve   watercolor/gouache   27 x 14

I am happy with my role as an artist. I am also happy to be woman. One of the qualities associated with yin is the notion of flexibility. That opposes rigidity, to be sure. Because a woman's life is composed of so much rigidity with so many details to tend to and so much nurturing to provide, I think that women who release themselves in creative endeavors are able to relinquish control and discover a complete freedom. Those artists who I admire (many of them men) have been able to marry the yin with the yang....the freedom with the control....and the traditional with the modern. These are the artists who continually question and search. (as opposed to rigid artists who seem to know all of the answers). Right now, I visualize sea grasses bending in the wind....flexible and strong.