ARTWORK • Artist's Statement
THE VISUAL ARTS AND MUSIC have always been my mainstay, they've kept me on the planet so to speak. The last eight years have been years of reevaluation and much testing of the preservation instinct. I wobble and teeter but in the words of Steven Sondhiem "I'm still here." It's difficult to say that any single discipline is my absolute favorite but drawing comes the closest to filling the bill. I like the immediacy of it and though I choose basic pencil and graphite for starters I'm willing and known to experiment.
An appreciation for history and practically everything historic has pursued me throughout my days on the planet. Music slipped right into my childhood as early as 5 or six when I was playing recordings that had belonged to my father's family and spanned the years of Teddy Roosevelt to Dwight D. Eisenhower. Musical names from Arthur Pryor and Ernestine Schumann-Heink to Frank Sinatra and Rosemary Clooney tugged at me to think backward and look ahead and I've been moving back and forth ever since. My grandmother, a retired first grade school teacher, taught me to read and write before I got to Roswell Elementary school. My sense of adulthood was witnessed in a kindergarten class taught by Mrs. Rushin who heard me say "skol" as I was sharing my orange juice with a playmate. In a small Southern town and even though the Rushins were certainly a sophisticated family, the word "skol" crossing the lips of a five year old was unexpected if not worthy of a backward glance and a whisper or two.
My grandmother, who those of us grandchildren called "Bamie" for a reason I'm not sure I ever knew the why of, was the adult that introduced me to the production of artwork. There were a number of musicians and artists in my father's family and three of us graduated from the Atlanta College of Art - my aunt Bette when it was Called the High Museum School of Art, in the 1940's, my older cousin Bette, from The Atlanta School of Art in 1958, and finally me in 1970 - from The Atlanta College of Art. It was a fabulous school with a brilliant and dedicated faculty and I even taught there for three or four years. In it's final years it would be fiscally abused and neglected by it's parent organization until driven to close it's doors in the less than jubilant anniversary of it's 100th year. I'll leave it there.
My life has been buoyed, especially in it's most turbulent times, by the love for what I do, my ability to do it and the fact that it was a reason to stick around, so to speak. Although there were times as a youngster that my studying piano seemed to point me in the direction of a performance career, I also focused on architecture and art. Attending the second Georgia Governor's Honors Program in the Visual Arts opened a whole new world that put me on the right path. The music and architecture are still with me and the visual arts wrap it all up into a life. The pages that follow will show a little of what I do and where I am in life.
An appreciation for history and practically everything historic has pursued me throughout my days on the planet. Music slipped right into my childhood as early as 5 or six when I was playing recordings that had belonged to my father's family and spanned the years of Teddy Roosevelt to Dwight D. Eisenhower. Musical names from Arthur Pryor and Ernestine Schumann-Heink to Frank Sinatra and Rosemary Clooney tugged at me to think backward and look ahead and I've been moving back and forth ever since. My grandmother, a retired first grade school teacher, taught me to read and write before I got to Roswell Elementary school. My sense of adulthood was witnessed in a kindergarten class taught by Mrs. Rushin who heard me say "skol" as I was sharing my orange juice with a playmate. In a small Southern town and even though the Rushins were certainly a sophisticated family, the word "skol" crossing the lips of a five year old was unexpected if not worthy of a backward glance and a whisper or two.
My grandmother, who those of us grandchildren called "Bamie" for a reason I'm not sure I ever knew the why of, was the adult that introduced me to the production of artwork. There were a number of musicians and artists in my father's family and three of us graduated from the Atlanta College of Art - my aunt Bette when it was Called the High Museum School of Art, in the 1940's, my older cousin Bette, from The Atlanta School of Art in 1958, and finally me in 1970 - from The Atlanta College of Art. It was a fabulous school with a brilliant and dedicated faculty and I even taught there for three or four years. In it's final years it would be fiscally abused and neglected by it's parent organization until driven to close it's doors in the less than jubilant anniversary of it's 100th year. I'll leave it there.
My life has been buoyed, especially in it's most turbulent times, by the love for what I do, my ability to do it and the fact that it was a reason to stick around, so to speak. Although there were times as a youngster that my studying piano seemed to point me in the direction of a performance career, I also focused on architecture and art. Attending the second Georgia Governor's Honors Program in the Visual Arts opened a whole new world that put me on the right path. The music and architecture are still with me and the visual arts wrap it all up into a life. The pages that follow will show a little of what I do and where I am in life.
PHOTOGRAPHS
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PAINTINGS
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DRAWINGS
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ILLUSTRATIONS
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LAMPOONING
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