Around the World Blogging

This is my part in the Around the World blogging project, which I explained over here, so if you arrived safely, I invite you to scroll as long as you want to and enjoy my art in many media.  There were suggested questions which I studied and well, no use giving instructions to an artist...so I've adapted to my own thoughts.

I firmly believe that all the arts are one, and in the visual world, you express yourself in whatever medium suits your current purpose, so that I would never follow a single method or material.  Not for me the notion of being a watercolorist, or an oil painter, or even a sculptor, though I've done all these approaches and had a wonderful time doing it. 

I do think it's vital to develop skills in all kinds of media so that you can call on them at will.  So what I learned in painting I apply in designing stitched artworks, and what I learned in miniature making I apply in created tiny stumpworked insects and small animals, and what I learned in spinning I apply to working in goldwork, and what I learned in drawing I applied in photography.  

And what I learned in writing and publishing and being one of the earliest artists to use the computer as a medium, has borne fruit in blogging, and what I learned in playing several musical instruments, solo and in groups and orchestra, taught me a great deal about timing and white space and color and shapes and sharing.  

I also learned a lot from teaching many artforms to people ranging from 18 months to over 80, many from other cultures and little English, but art is universal.  And what I learned in those many workshops over nearly 40 years, in writing as well as art, prepared me for the sharing I experience on the internet.

It's all about talking with the materials and letting them take part in the decision making.  It's really true that when you are asked how long a given artwork took to create, it has taken all your life!  because without all those experiences, both of life and art, you couldn't have created it anyway, regardless of the hours this literally took in your hands. It's been in your head and your core all your life!  and your life, what happens to you and what you do with it, is a huge part of how you make art.  It gets in there no matter what you think you're working about.

As to why I do it and how, well, there's really no choice.  An artist is seized by the work, not the other way around.  Can't remember a time when I wasn't building or making or drawing or writing or dreaming, about artworks in my future.

Just want to finish with a reference to Betye Saar, and if you don't know her work, check her out, to the effect that an artist trusts to instinct, and the more you trust it, the stronger your instinct becomes.

Thanks for reading this far, and please be my guest and just take a look around in here, and ask whatever crosses your mind to ask!  and let me thank you for supporting this artist.  And thank you, Mary Anne, for inviting me into the project.