I am a visual artist and therapist. I graduated from Mass College of Art in 1973 with a BFA. I was an Artist in Residence with the West Virginia Arts and Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Arts for five years serving two communities through an open painting studio, workshops, lectures, exhibitions and special cultural events in two counties in the state. My experiences working with a broad age range of young and developing students of painting led me to an appreciation of my capacity to teach and communicate not only technique but to listen and inspire students emotionally. Making art with people revealed the healing and revealing capacity of art for others and myself. In 1978 I chose to enter the Expressive Therapies field and I majored in Art Therapy at Lesley University. For the next 41 years I raised a family of four children, worked with: inner city youth in psycho-educational alternative school settings utilizing art, incarcerated inner city youth building furniture, alternative psycho educational alternative school, and completed the last 28 years of my career working in a middle school where I used art, video, drumming, adventure education and various artistic play therapy techniques to assist emotionally and mentally challenged adolescents. All the while I painted and made my own art in the little spare time that I had. My art production was moved to the side to enable to me to feed, house, and support my family. They became my art pieces. Like my actual paintings, they became the walking, talking, multi dimensional art I was most involved in. Like my two dimensional canvases they were my living children and provided me a profound reflection of myself, and an opportunity to look deeper. Learning to address my familial inheritance and take charge of my choices. Art, for me, meant self exploration whether it was from behind the canvas or in front of it, I was “painting” in the real world learning and growing through the challenges brought to me by living and staying aware.
Learning as I go, and making mistakes which can change my preconceived course, My artwork, whether it is painting, drawing, or sculpture, starts where I am and ends in an unpredictable place. A final image, that I could not imagine or even sketch out beforehand. I start by making a line without the permission of my “left brain”. I am free in that moment and those to follow, of the tyranny exacted upon me by countless years of indoctrination by figurative images projected by screens and print media. My logical left brain is taught to decipher them literally and they imprint on me as they do on all of us visual concepts of how things “should” look and be. I am drawn to allowing my unconscious mind to decide the choices I make in my artwork. I don’t hesitate to challenge my preconceptions, I require it. It feels right, and can, as well, often feel wrong which creates a tension which I must resolve. An unexpected line, a mistake leads the way for innovation and renovation of preconceptions. I must constantly battle with the limitations of my own visual programming and those of the mediums that I work with.
