Artist Statement

I finally finished my artist's statement. I want to thank Brad Lovoi for editing my it and pushing me further inward than I would have gone by myself.

Artist Statement:
My natural ability to create tells me that my mission in life is to produce art. I enjoy crafting pieces that are different from anything that anyone has ever seen before. I like to combine different materials to achieve a variety of textures. When I was a kid, I mixed dirt into my oil paints to give the ground I was painting a more authentic texture. Today I use fine netting, transparent papers, and acetate to demonstrate even more textures. A few weeks ago a fellow artist asked me how I achieved the texture over one of my collages and I told her that I applied a very fine netting over it. Just this week I saw her using the netting on her collage. It satisfied me to be able to influence her work and see her replicate my technique on her own.

I have two main styles of art that I use to create my work. With the first style I use colorful felt-tipped markers on paper to create primitive designs. I work in shades of blue, turquoise, purple and green, because those cool colors invoke a calm feeling for me. After I fill a sheet of paper with my designs, I cut half of the paper into strips and glue them to the borders of a frame, or I weave them through solid-color paper to make greeting cards.

With my second style of art, I use mixed media to create two- and three-dimensional pieces of art. I create collaged or drawn artist trading cards, which are small original pieces of artwork the size of baseball cards, that I swap with other trading-card artists. In addition, I create small aquariums by painting or decoupaging the wooden borders of a glass box with mottled strokes of blues, greens, purple, and gold and then I create wire and beaded fish which I suspend from the inside top of the box.

My artwork tells me stories about my self because it is an expression of what is deep inside of me. These stories open a window to my soul and allow me to learn more about my authentic self, the one that is free from the judgments of my day-to-day world.