Influence
I started thinking about where my desire to create artwork came from, and realized a few things. One of my earliest childhood memories is of my dad teaching me how to carve wood. Anyone who knows him, knows that he used to spend hours whittling and carving wood. When our church renovated our building, he salvaged the church benches we sat on every Sunday and made hope chests for my three sisters. We had a wooden clock in our living room in the shape of a starburst that he carved. He always helped my brother and me carve our pine wood derby cars for the Boy Scouts. I particularly loved the one he helped me make in the shape of a shark, even though it turned out looking more like a whale. He had a special talent for taking one block of wood and carving intricate designs with movable pieces inside. He certainly passed these skills on to me, and I credit him with my creative streak. Thanks Dad
Early Grammar School Artwork
I was recently looking through my baby book that my mother compiled years ago, and was surprised to come across the top two images that I did with crayons when I was 8 years old. I didn’t remember doing these, and I was immediately struck by the underlying concept of using abstract color blocks, like what I’m doing with art now. I never knew that this idea has been with me for so long, and couldn’t believe how similar in concept this early artwork was to what I do now! I have to wonder, if I had access to a personal computer back then, would I have created similar work to what I do now? Was it just finding the right medium for me?
The bottom one is a collage I did at age 9. It is similar to some of the Rorschach styled artwork that I did a while ago (it’s a mirror image of my first name written vertically). It seems some of the concepts and themes of my artwork have been with me for longer than I was aware of.
Matisse
I am heavily influenced by Matisse, specifically by his Jazz collage series. His use of abstract, bold color blocking in this series really engaged me. I remember the first time I saw Icarus in particular. I loved the bold blue background, the shapes and color of the yellow stars and the stark black figure falling. I loved the detail of the small red dot symbolizing his heart. All so simple yet so striking. I also love the myth of Icarus and what it represents. I never want to be too complacent nor too cocky. I even got a tattoo of the black figure and red heart from this piece on my right hip when I was in my early twenties. Shortly after, my dad carved the same figure for me out of jade.
Icons
I mentioned on my Particulars page that I have some OCD tendencies. They come out when I find something I’m interested in and then put my all into it. I learn everything I can about something, then I start to create and organize and become very detail oriented. I have a very large collection of recipes, where I’ve created my own organizational system, along with a spreadsheet, that others consider somewhat overwhelming. But it works for me.
It occurred to me one day that it might be nice to have icons of elements from photographs on my computer desktop. I downloaded an icon creating program and then got to work on making icons of my dog, my cat, and other things. I love how personal my desktop is now.
Handwriting Font
After completing some icons for my computer, it then occurred to me that it would be nice to have my own handwriting as a usable font on my computer. I downloaded a font creating program, wrote out a number of handwriting samples, scanned them, and then set to work on creating each letter and symbol into a file. This included making sure that each character was sized correctly and placed correctly in relation to the previous and subsequent characters. This project came out so nicely, I decided to do another font of my handwriting, one that slants differently when I tend to write faster. I use this font on both my home and work computer and love seeing my handwriting on the screen. I also used it for the font on my business cards.