I'm the featured artist for May at the Hilyard Street Beanery, here in Eugene, and this is my latest collection of creative work, Art Fills The Void.
I've been enchanted by the new Cosmos series lately, and it was part of the inspiration for these watercolor and acrylic paintings. Here's my artist's statement for the show:
Do you remember being little and making a wish on a dandelion gone to seed? Did you watch the tiny white puffs fly away and disappear on the wind? When you were a kid, did you ever look up at the stars scattered across the night sky like dandelion wishes, and wonder if someone was looking back across the unfathomable distances at the tiny speck of light that is our sun?
This collection of watercolor paintings is about the intersection of the terrestrial and the celestial: the tiny, ordinary bits of beauty that surround us every single day, from feathers to ferns to dandelions on the wind, juxtaposed the incredible sweep of the night sky. It’s about mystery and fleeting life and ancient light. It’s about wishes.
A couple of months ago, I came across
this tutorial for painting galaxies and eventually decided to give it a try. I love watercolor. The early results were really happy-making, but I wasn't sure about the next step. Then, one morning in our backyard, I saw a single dandelion seed dangling from a spiderweb.
There are things that catch my attention over and over and over again, for all my life. The sweep of the night sky and the arch of the Milky Way. The moments when I can shift my perspective and look across the miles at the stars, rather than up at them - islands in the void. Feathers and seeds blown on the wind. A tiny green vine reaching for and finding purchase to twine upward. And I found a way to visually join the vast and eternal with the tiny and ephemeral.
Oh, and I still hate writing artist's statements.
I love this artwork. I love the sense of motion I see in it, from the swiftness of the wind to the infinitesimal pace of the growth of a flower or a vine. I love the softness, the luminous quality of the paint. These are things I reach for.
When my other half saw the first painting, he said that I should make more. He said that I should do a whole series. And since I'm always saying, usually cheerfully sarcastically, that "art fills the void", Mr. B said that should be the basis of a show - art filling the void.
My muse, my love, this one is for you.
