PROFILE |
|
Drawing and Painting fascinated me since early childhood. My great-great aunt, Ellen Wetherald Ahrens, was a gifted artist and a student of Howard Pyle and Thomas Eakins. I like to think I might have some genetic claim to my talent. I was introduced to great art at an early age and was more comfortable expressing myself with paint and crayons than talking. My formal education in art began the summer of 1959, the year I graduated from Germantown Friends School, in Philadelphia, the city of my birth. That summer I began to study with Robert Brackman, world renowned portrait and figure painter, who lived in Noank, Connecticut, a tiny fishing village near Mystic where my parents had a summer cottage. Mr. Brackman has been a significant influence on my work and his teachings have inspired me continuously for more than 40 years. I studied with Brackman at his schools in Noank, and later in Madison, Connecticut during the summers, while I attended Elmira College in the winter. After graduation with a bachelor’s degree in English I went off to New York to study at the Art Students’ League. Selling paintings was difficult and economics forced me to find a way to make money, so I found myself gravitating into the printing and publishing world, where I could stay creative, designing logos and letterheads, while providing myself with a second career. At various times through the last 3 decades I have owned a silk-screen business, typesetting business (utilizing the newest invention – IBM computers!) and a needlework company producing kits and plans of my designs. During the middle seventies, I was fortunate to be the Staff Graphic Artist at Mystic Seaport, which allowed me to be very creative with my graphic arts experience, as well as my English degree. I designed the first Mystic Seaport Poster (still a big seller) and designed many publications and books. During this period I resumed my interest in painting and converted the living room into a studio and painted nights and weekends. I exhibited frequently in Southeastern Connecticut and had a solo show in Mystic. Without realizing it, I was being lured into a new adventure. On April fools day, 1979, in the midst of a roaring northeast gale, my fiancé, George Cranston (who is now my husband) and I moved aboard our 31-foot Camper & Nicolson sloop that was to be our home for the next 6 years. We cruised north and south in the Inland Waterway to Florida for the winter and the Chesapeake Bay for the summer and fall. Painting aboard a tiny boat was difficult. My efforts at that time to use watercolors were disappointing and every time I set up to do a painting we would find ourselves aground, or having to move the boat because of an approaching storm, or we would be harbored with a thousand motorboats roaring around. After moving ashore in 1985 I “forced” myself to become versatile in watercolors. I wish I knew then what I know today! Feeling somewhat out of touch with my work and the art world, I decided to return to school. First at the National Academy of Design, in New York, taking painting classes with Mary Beth McKenzie and drawing with James Childs. Later that year I continued studying at Lyme Academy of Fine Arts in Old Lyme, Connecticut studying drawing and anatomy with Dean Keller. I was fortunate to be able to take several workshops with Aaron Shikler during those years. During the late eighties I “discovered” sculpture and studied again at Lyme Academy with Laci deGerenday. Learning sculpture has changed the way I look at things. In the early nineties I was introduced to Monotype printmaking and felt that my graphic arts background had become interlaced with my painting when I experimented with this technique and fell in love it. I joined the Monotype Guild of New England and served on the Board of Directors of that organization. I designed and maintained their website until 2004 and I am proud to have been voted an honorary member in 2002. Also around this time I moved my studio to Westerly, Rhode Island, where I became active in the fledgling Artists’ Cooperative Gallery and the bare beginnings of the Westerly Arts Community, participating in the Arts Network, designing the card used to advertise the Art Night stroll, and eventually having my own Gallery which I shared with an artist/friend. In the winter of 1999 we increased our space to include a classroom where we both taught painting. In the summer of 2001 I relocated my business to our home in Zephyrhills, Florida. I call myself a realist painter, interested in traditional methods and materials, while drawing inspiration from many periods and styles in art. I enjoy the mechanics of drawing and I am in love with color. I enjoy membership in art organizations including the Egg Tempera Society, the American Impressionist Society, The Society of Exhibiting Artists, TESA (secretary of the board of directors) Monotype Guild of New England (honorary member), North Tampa Arts League, Florida Plein Air Society, Tampa Realist Artists, The Florida Committee for National Museum for Women in the Arts, the5 and ArtPros. My agent is Caroline York.
|
|
MIDI Sequence by Pierre R. Schwob © fromThe Classical Archives www.classicalarchives.com Jean Philippe Rameau Gavotte (used with permission) |
|
PROFILE | CLASSES | HOME | CONTACT ME | BRACKMAN | LINKS | EVENTS Portraits • Landscapes • Symbolic Still Life • Still Life • Monotype • Watercolor • Egg Tempera • Feeling Series • Student’s Gallery • Drawing • Giclee Prints • Digital Reproduction • Purchase Paintings |
|
PROFILE | CLASSES | HOME | CONTACT ME | BRACKMAN | LINKS | EVENTS Portraits • Landscapes • Symbolic Still Life • Still Life • Monotype • Watercolor • Egg Tempera • Feeling Series • Student’s Gallery • Drawing • Giclee Prints • Digital Reproduction • Purchase Paintings |