• Artist Statement: My Journey


    My artistic journey began in early childhood. My mother provided a stimulative environment for her children, encouraged our creative play, and enabled us to develop and pursue our interests.

    In our shady yard, I had a wonderful playhouse, which was the perfect place to imagine and  pretend. There, on lazy summer days, I made mud pies and garnished them with flower petals. Upstairs, in our house, my brothers and I had an infinite quantity of blocks for building, and in my art cabinet there were bountiful art supplies - pens, pencils, paints, brushes, glue, sharp scissors and reams of big Manila drawing paper. I was always doing a fun, messy, creative project.

    When older, I attended art classes at The Atlanta School of Art. The wonderful, tangy, aroma of oil paint and turpentine greeted me as I entered the dynamic atmosphere of the studio. Sometimes we went to the top of the building, set up our easels, and painted Atlanta as it posed for us far below, a panorama of color, the streets and buildings spreading out forever.

    In high school I was selected for the Governor's Honors Program in art, based on a portfolio of my work which I presented to a board of judges. Immersed in art for many hours a day, I was exposed to new possibilities and was challenged by the professional staff. One assignment was to make a life size human form. I sculpted a woman from old pieces of metal, chicken wire and plaster. As I finished her she seemed to acquire a personality and almost become a person. When the program ended and my parents came for me, I sat the sculpture on the back seat of the car, got in beside her, and the four of us drove home to Conyers.

    After high school, as my art journey continued, the road led me to a significant landmark - The University of Georgia. In the art department more adventures were waiting. In metal working class, I learned to weld brass and flange copper tubing as I made a miniature locomotive, my response to an assignment to create a toy. In pinhole photography, I made a light tight box from balsa wood that took photos using photographic paper I developed in the dark room. And in watercolor class, an important juncture for my art, I found a quick bond with the medium. Through the weeks of the course,my personal expression emerged, evolved, and found its way, culminating in the work featured in my one person show sponsored by Professor Vessely.

    After college graduation, I lived in Carmel, California, where I was a substitute teacher, and then in Chicago, where I worked for the federal government (yet continuing to paint) before returning to Atlanta. My parents were living in the same house in Conyers where I had grown up and the place where my journey began. I walked around my familiar yard full of great memories, and my playhouse, still there, welcomed me home.