DOLLS AND WALLS AT WEST

Artist Statement Dolls & Walls

Artist Statement Dolls & Walls

I think dolls are scary. The doll image is probably about me...or my mother….or sisters……or friends. I scare myself, sometimes. My mom was scary. My sisters, for sure, are scary and the best of my friends are too. Scary and wonderful. I have done over 60 paintings utilizing doll imagery.

The images of cinder blocks and walls are sort of metaphors for “family”, both as barrier and as protection. I have done about 130 works with cinder blocks (aggregate concrete masonry units - CMUs).

 Concrete is believed to have been invented by the Romans but some historians have uncovered evidence that the ancient Egyptians may have invented it, much, much earlier. With the industrial revolution, the manufacture of the CMU as an affordable substitute for stone boomed. When my parents were going through their divorce, we had a wonderful cinder block wall around our backyard. I could lie on that wall, above the fray, and watch the West Texas sky. I like having a family. They drive me crazy, too.

I want a feeling from an artwork, more than information or decoration. By stacking images in a certain way with colors, with jokes, with other shapes, I go after a sense of how peculiar Life is.

It is fun and poignant melancholy.

But I do just love to paint, to see what happens.

ROSES IN THE YARD

"ART is a discipline of courage" I have heard it said. Oh MY! Today I did a plein aire painting, a little painting from Life, the roses in the yard. The sun would NOT hold still! I have photographed them but my photos just don't do them justice. So this year I painted them. This is better.

FREE WEST CATALOGS AT THE LIBRARY!

I LOVE the Austin Public Library. Their hours are peculiar, not matching mine but geez! I can check out DVDs for 2 weeks instead of overnight-for-a-fee at Red Box or Netflix!

This is a grackle on a cinderblock, oil pastel and charcoal on paper. Grackles really are interesting animals.

  This is COP, GRACKLE AND ETRUSCAN GODDESS. The wall is a metaphor for family - protection/barrier. I don't know what the Etruscan Goddess is doing there. The cop is after the grackle. An even fight?

SELLING ART - BRICOLEUR OR MANUFACTURED

Preparing for the WEST studio tour, I constructed a display rack from odds and ends in my house and garage. Claude Levi Strauss described the "artist" as "bricoleur".Someone who makes things from what is at hand.

The rack I bought is smaller but more stable. Which or both?

WEST tour POSTCARDS ARE HERE!

Herb Long did a great job on designing the HYDE PARK 6 postcard. Above is the front.

On the back is the map, date, names, all so neatly done. I think the postcard is too big but there are Six of us.

#180 WEST

I will be #180 on the West Austin Studio Tour. I'm part of the HYDE PARK SIX with Debbie Buie, Denise Fulton, Herbert Long, Connie Miller-Knife and Aaron Bir at 4108 Avenue H.

 Tibetan Art will be at #176 at the Tibetan Temple on 45th.