Artist Statement

Drawing helps me enjoy my life…celebrate its mundaneness, log its poignant events, untangle the tricky paths. Life gives motivation for drawing…an endless supply of subjects, a quarry full of difficulties, and a constant stream of thoughts. Without drawing, life would lack its lustre. Without life, there would be no need to draw. Life as wife and mother of 3 offers many occasions to feel overwhelmed with domesticity and nose-to-the-grind living. I draw to find the beauty in the mundane. Pens, charcoal, and splashes of watercolor bring a sense of celebration. Art enlarges my life and infuses even the most menial of tasks with joy. As I experience life–the people in my life, the events that take place– I’m inspired to draw them, to get them on paper, to “freeze-frame” the beauty I see in them or in the world around me. Drawings do not have to be “realistic” to be expressive of the thing I’m after. Sometimes it is merely the process of swiping charcoal on paper, oozling watercolors, or dancing lines around the page that is enough to untangle the jumble in my head.

Yarn is yet another medium with which I draw and paint. The lines of the yarn looping in and around needles and hooks, colors moving through my hands, the textures of the fibers, and the shapes and forms they take on are every bit as artistic as the two-dimensional mediums I love so much. And then teaching…I love to teach…when I teach others, to knit, to crochet, to draw, to paint…I feel as if I’m giving them a present. A present that they will begin to open in my class and will continue opening for the rest of their lives, or as long as they continue to explore that gift.

As I dance in the fields of creativity, I’m compelled to ask others to come with me, to show them some steps, and then to teach myself out of a job–to see them dancing on their own. When I draw, paint, knit, or crochet, I hear Robert Frost’s words…”I’ve gone to clear the pasture spring…You come too.”