30 MARCH, 2023         We, as a species, are addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories.                          ~ Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human   Does Every Picture Tell a Story? First of all, of course, this is a rhetorical question. Secondly, I apologize for the Rod Stewart reference. It just kept popping into my head, though I’m not really a fan. I have, in the past, written pos ..read more

Garden of Dreams, monotype with mixed media, 21 x 15 in 24 FEBRUARY, 2023         Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.                     ~ Samuel Beckett   Lather, Rinse, Re-commit Lately, with regard to my art, I’ve been feeling like I’m in a holding pattern. After my Ordinary Goddesses collage series, there was no real direction in my work. Nor, as a matter of fact, was there any focus or forward movement in my career in general. Following my best year eve ..read more

Me at my solo show at Chaddock-Morrow Gallery, Athens’ Ohio  17 JANUARY, 2023 “Success is when I touch someone’s heart with what I do.”    ~ Edina Picco   “I would earn enough from my artwork to continue to paint what inspires me and is meaningful to me.”  ~ Anonymous artist What is Success in Art? This question has been nagging at me for some time now. Partly, it’s because I’m often reminded that my art career doesn’t quite line up with most people’s idea of success. I’ll try to explain.     Do you ever get questions or comments like ..read more

Transformation 57, monotype collage with mixed media, 7 x 7 in 9 OCTOBER, 2022 “It is almost banal to say so yet it needs to be stressed continually: all is creation, all is change, all is flux, all is metamorphosis.”   ~Henry Miller   The Nature of Change I’ve written about the Transformations series several times, including the explanation of how this nature inspired art series got started. So, I’m not going to repeat any of that in this post. If you’re curious, just follow the links. The two paragraphs below (with a few minor changes), are exerpted from one of ..read more

Angel of the Crossroads, hand-cut collage with mixed media, 14 x 14 in 9 AUGUST, 2022 “He that has a choice has trouble.”    *Dutch Proverb   “It is difficult to make the right choice if you fear choosing wrongly.” – Roy T. Bennett. Decisions, Decisions As an artist, I feel like I’m always at a crossroads. Each piece I make sparks new ideas, which then spark more new ideas, and so on… My question is, how do I decide which road to follow? Clearly, there isn’t time to follow up on every idea. So, I have to decide which ones are most likely to pan out, to lead me ..read more

14 JULY, 2022 “Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees.”                     ~  Marcel Proust Transformation 55, monotype collage, 7 x 7 in More Monotype Collages I can hardly believe that I’ve now completed 60 pieces in this series. I think I have about 10 -12 that aren’t sold; most of these are new Transformations. Three are in a corporate loan-to-buy program in Louisville, four are at Rubber City Prints in Akron, and two are at the Kentucky Guild of Artists and Craftsmen Gallery ..read more

Butterfly Effect 3 is a hand-cut collage with mixed media, 15 x 12 inches in size. The substrate is a vintage atlas cover, and I used a world map for the bottom layer for the collage. Other materials include vintage map and book pages, an old engineering school blueprint, a luna moth wing I made from a map along with one I painted, and hand stitching. You may or may not know that the term “butterfly effect” refers to the delicately interconnected balance of everything in the universe. You can read more about that on this previous post. 23 JUNE, 2022 “Art has always been the raft on ..read more

Ordinary Goddess 4, hand cut collage on vintage book cover, 13.5 x 9 in 24 MARCH, 2022 “No other creative field is as closed to those who are not white and male as is the visual arts.”  ~ Faith Ringgold “Of the top 100 most successful contemporary artists from 2000 to 2019, only seven are women….The art world gender gap is visible throughout the sector: women are under-represented in galleries, in permanent museum collections and in temporary exhibitions. This all leads to less media coverage and lower market demand which results in significantly lower auction prices comp ..read more

Fibonacci Buddha With Sacred Geometry, hand cut collage on multi-media board, 7 x 7 in 9 NOVEMBER, 2021 “Relax, no one is in control.”   This seems to be the lesson life is teaching me right now, and it’s a good one. A very Buddhist perspective, and all the harder to learn despite its apparent simplicity. I had hoped to write this post much sooner, but sometimes life intervenes.  I had hoped to do lots of other things as well. Like: apply for exhibits, photograph artwork, and put new work up for sale on my website, among others. Such is the life of an artist, a.k.a ..read more

Reverie, hand-cut collage, 8.5 x 7.5 inches 01 SEPTEMBER, 2021 “Collage is more than just an art style. Collage is all about bringing different elements together. Once you form a sensibility about connection, how different elements relate to each other, you deepen your understanding of yourself and others.” ~ Bryan Collier   More Collage Artists This is the third in a series of posts about some of the most well known and respected collage artists, both historical and contemporary.  In “The Art of Collage, part 1”, I introduced some early pioneers in the genre who ..read more