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My Painting Style
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| My style all started with a pair of gloves that I had purchased
in Istanbul in 1975. I was living in Greece at the time, teaching
art and art history at The Hellenic International School and La
Verne College in Athens. Frequent travels to the islands and neighboring
countries fueled my interest in the folk art from these parts of
the world. I loved the Greek costumes and the Byzantine icons. Their
decorative and symbolic nature appealed to my eye. I was attracted
to the gloves for the same reason. Also, they were inexpensive and
easy to carry. |
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It wasn't until I returned to the U.S. in 1980 that I did my
first painting of the gloves. I was teaching a class in watercolors
at the time and wanted to show my students how to work in the
medium of gouache, an opaque watercolor. This medium gave me the
control I needed to do each individual "knit" stroke.
This woven look hinted at other possibilities for my work. At
first, I used the style for border designs around my paintings.
Gradually, the "knitting" took over more and more of
my work's surface area. The more I explored this style, the more
possibilities it seemed to contain. It could connect with the
whole world as every culture has some form of knitting. In addition,
the style could go in many other directions: It could be decorative
and flat or painterly and three-dimensional; it could be humorous
and childlike or realistic and sophisticated. It also offered
me a lot of room for experimentation.
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My first
glove painting |
I had been looking for a
style of my own since graduating from The Maryland Institute of
art in 1972. I wanted to find my own voice and this seemed to be
it. I have enjoyed doing the little knit stitch over and over in
paint, letting the style slowly unfold. One of my goals now, is
to travel more and let my style grow as it encounters new people
and places firsthand. Also, I would like to teach the style to someone
or a group of people, perhaps in a place that needs a "seed"
project, to begin to weave together their own stories and culture
in paint. I'm simply curious as to where this all may lead.
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