the summer the young dreamer re-emerged
Summer is breezing through quickly and my hope is yours offers you time to dream and feel joyful!
For me, the last few years have been a time to remember and embrace the dreams of a much younger me. The one I thought I had left behind. Reminding myself of who I was when I was just thrilled learning f-stops and apertures, printing on fiber based papers smelling of sulphur and darkroom chemicals. There was a pure joy of making art in new ways, added to pencils, paints, hand applied art making I have always loved
Remembering the girl who thought everything was possible and could not fully decide who to become because there was so many wonderful things I wanted to be part of. Who I was at the beginning of ‘real life,’ of making a living, motherhood, trying to do what was right and adult responsibilities. Loved the path found for decades photographing with families and people yet this part was still there waiting for the right time to reappear. To blend with all I learned as a portrait artist with camera with fine art making.
Of course, still a family portrait photographer just taking limited commissions, enjoying working with wonderful people on the sand along the surf. There are just a few dates available, if you would like to schedule your beach or pool photo shoot.
Then backyard pools are open now and the perfect place for underwater commissions beneath the surface - just amazing!
Done two art shows this summer, this has been so fun and it’s been wonderful to share my work… love seeing my works enhancing homes. So much of life is embracing who we are and sharing it with others. Labor day week end my work will is available at Canterbury Art Show, St. Georges by the Sea, Rumson. This is a Juried show and sale. Beginninging September 15, gracie and shea, part of Ethereal People, will be exhibited with The Healing of Healing Show in the Englewood Hospital.
Cannot think of a time (other than falling in love with my babies) that life is so peaceful and content, my wish is this you.
come - Hamptons Fine Art Show - this Thursday to Sunday
Been a professional photographer since I was eighteen years old. In high school my favorite classes were art and gym. Love making things - fine art, applied art and graphic arts. In college this study continued. Over the years it continued, still continues.
One of the ways I learned portrait photography was visiting museums and studying the masters. This was so exhilarating. Dragged my children through museums in Venice and Rome to see works I had seen in art history books and in slide shows during classes (maybe someday they will think it was amazing like I did).
Over the years I visited lots of museums and large art fairs including Art Basel. The Hamptons Fine Art Show is a big deal. I am so excited. As a teenager, took myself to cities, on subways and places never been to. Sometimes it was scary just getting there, a bit uncomfortable, but I wanted to see these gorgeous works of art I was learning about. Growing up in Colts Neck, my first trip into Brooklyn meant trains and subways by myself - things that I had never been on. Yet I needed to see Claude Monet’s exhibition - it was so beautiful, moving really. Loved going on museum travels alone - never a need to hurry and worry that someone else was bored.
The last decade, my desire to broaden as an artist grew. Loved, still love, my work with families.This is the side of me (the one I may have been afraid to be) that thought portraiture was being the practical artist, a way to combine my life as a mother with my need to create art. So last year I turned sixty… it is amazing how fast that happened. This is the beginning of the next part of the dream.
in Bay Head - art in the park next Sunday
So it’s a time to get ready… to show what I am been working on, preparing, getting ready to share. So next Sunday, Art In the Park… I will be showing beach scapes, a few florals and maybe some underwater art.
the war of art to Hamptons Fine Art Fair, July 14-17, Southampton, NY
work driven by heart, with the images I need to share. These images are underwater. These are image that have to be created, art that has to be made, with a desire stronger than any obstacles. It is a little scary, as new ventures are full of risks and leaps yet I am ready to share them.
In 1980, I read Steven Pressfields, The War of Art. for an intro to Art class at Rutgers. Nineteen years old, both afraid and strong willed, yet mostly unsure of who I was. A product of my childhood; fearful that I would fail. So immature as I was viewing and judging my parents not knowing then flaws are human that life offers a series of ebbs and flow of successes with failures. As an artist, no one around me reflected this was a path towards success and something I could do. To be truthful, no one reflected that I could be anything but not good enough. I did not know then, people sometimes view criticism as caring.
Yet I needed to create, always have. As a girl learning needlepoints, crewel, sewing, putting craft kits together, moving, making, doing things. In school, could not stay still until art clas and gym as I grew older applied art, graphics, and fine arts. As a college freshman I found the camera - that felt like home.
A spring 6 week 101 photography class (after coming home from a freshman year in Kansas City where the idea of communications, art journalism and physical therapy careers all swirled in my head) at Brookdale Community College with Stewart Thomas, thrilled me and encouraged me in a way one never forgets. I immediately got a photo jourmalist job at a local bi weekly for little pay. The following fall, transfered to Rutgers with classes all over New Brunchwich, NJ; I hated it and most of my classes even the photography and art classes. It was a Cook campus course (loved the professor, wish I could remember his name), part darkroom and english writing course entitled the history of photography which studied the beginning of photography and darkroom techniques. Hating everything almost everything at Rutgers, went back to community college in the search of how to make money as a photographer. I found portrait work, studied and grew.
Always photographing printing, to become better, to find the best processes and techniques to be a better photographer artist has been the path.
The truth is, people always who told me I wasn’t enough whether good enough, making enough have always been there. Eventually the lack of support and believe caused me to run from them. It took along time to realize I was looking in the wrong direction. It was me who needed to believe in myself. It has just taken four decades for me to understand, the art comes from me, not from others. So The War of Art.
Someone who cares for me once was trying to make me understand - “all the time you spend doing photography and my portrait business is too much, what you make is just a enough to be called a hobby as you do not make enough money, it pennies” then told me you could open a pizza restaurant anything would bring you more than this for all the effort I put in. You would be very successful with anything else, buy a Jersey Mike’s sub business.”
My response, “what you do not understand If I was not photographing and printing, building and rebuilding, working and making it better, I would just be making art in another way, it is what I do, it is who I am. If you do not understand this you do not love me.”
This confrontation stayed with me. I have understand the belief comes from me.
Portrait photography has been way to combine my need to create with other needs… to make a desired product and to take care of my family. As an artist, this allowed the focus on family in life and work. Yet more importantly, the desire to be the best artist photographer I can has continued as my work keep me in photography, to print, to create, to learn, to become better, to product.
Superstorm Sandy happened when my youngest child was a senior in high school, my oldest was expecting and my life was changing. Water has always moved me, the storm did not frighten me, it awed me and pushed me to change. It was then I became to see, envision images of beauty under the surface.
The grace and power of water to cause change.
This last decade, I have allowed myself to be the artist, with work driven by heart, with the images I need to share. These images are underwater. These are image that have to be created, art that has to be made, with a desire stronger than any obstacles. It is a little scary, as new ventures are full of risks and leaps yet I am ready to share them. Come see my my works at Hamptons Fine Art Fair, July 14-17, Southampton, NY
