Studio Notes - Grown and Growing


In the journey of my art, I have approached and awaited all the trials and developments that were promised from my days as a student. 

But one promise has so far failed to result. The erosion of ideas. 

Older masters often spoke of how idealistic they were in their youth, how time and experience gradually broke down those ideas, and made them empty and hollow pipe dreams. That is, reality became a hardened truth, so too had their artistic vision. They had fewer dreams, a more narrow focus, a more jaded view. 

While I may be able to say that some of that has occurred for me in every day life - though not by much, I think of myself as far more optimistic now that I have survived so many tragedies, and lived to tell the tale; artistically I am quite possibly 10 times more idealistic than I was in my youth. Experience, success, kudos and patronage have all affirmed my life as an artist; if anything, I am a far greater romantic in art now – and that development continues. I think as age takes from me the opportunities and loves of life, the more it translates into vision. I can look at the work of my younger self, and I admire her tenacity, her willingness to stumble blindly into a mythology of her own, rather than play and experiment – it was as if that universe already existed, and all that was left was for her to learn how to tell the story.

That universe is unfolding still – age and experience have not robbed me of ideals and fantastic vision; if anything, I see how much wilder and more fanciful I have become.