Blog Post 1 (about me)
I thought this may be a good way for me to explain why I decided to make people the center of my art. I have always been drawn to people. I love to look them up and down, study their manerisms, body type, personal style, imagine their heritage, family life, and even communicate with others. I love their many differences and similarities. New Yorker’s are always taught to “walk swiftly, with a purpose, and never stare!” Keep your eyes to the horizon or on the ground infront of you! Don’t speak to strangers, always assess your surroundings for danger and keep a confident dimeanor. When I moved to Florida as a teen, all of that was out of the window.
The South however, had a new set of rules, filed with smiles, ubrupt conversations with strangers in a grocery store parking lot, pharmacy or doctor’s office. Everyone wanted to know “how y’all doing today?”continuing with the most mondane BS questions they could think of. If you were cute, they would talk to you for 20 minutes, asking you all kinds of personal questions, until you decided to be rude. I cautiously began to smile at others, looking them straight in the eye, up and down, and sometimes even made a connection. That was when decided that people, and a connection with them, could be trusted afterall. They moved into my heart and later in my art.
After immigrating to Milan Italy, I was forced back into city life, no greetings, no eye contact and no small talk. The language was different, everyone looked similiar, there were no longer busses filled with every ethnicity under the sun. I felt a little anzy, being stared at quite a bit myself. I wasn’t sure whether it was to be encouraged, or I should “jack some one up for looking too hard”! :D Italy’s history, fashion and art soon fed my internal zest for beauty and I painted everyone I met, first with my eyes….and then on the canvas. My apartment was filled with painted canvases, sketches, brushes and globs of oil paint in plastic plates. After 20 years, my art studio is not much different…but that is another story.
I am here to share the characters in my paintings. Some stories are based on truth and others, on fantasy. But only you can determine if they evoke emotion…and that is where the fun begins!