SOME OF US CHANGE

Watercolor gets me in its clutches sometimes, rattles me around, turns me upside down, and fills me with doubts. I recently looked at a painting I did when I first came back to practicing watercolors. I thought to myself: this looks better than what I am doing now. Once I let go of that drop-into-a-big-hole thought, I went through my portfolio and picked out pieces that I still like -- no matter when I created them.

I built my art skills on a Bauhaus foundation with its simplicity, use of clean lines, bold graphic design, and interesting use of positive and negative space. I designed this poster as a tribute to an Olympian a long time ago.

I have also experimented with an all-over design with one part highlighted to tell the story of the piece. Even with all the busy-ness of the flowers, your eye is drawn to the face in the red square.

I've played with abstract forms, changes in value, and thick and thin lines. I discovered that a circle helps to pull a design together. I use circles often in my work.

I've kept the idea of simplicity as a dominant expression in my art, but I've also experimented with lots of texture as I did in the painting of the boat.

I still think of what I do as practice. I have a lot of different techniques and materials that I can employ.  Arlo Gutherie, who wrote the song Alice's Restaurant during the Vietnam War, continues to sing that tune to appreciative audiences. He says he enjoys singing it because the audience responds so well to the memory of it. I think of the outside world and how it isn't always easy to move forward in your life, to work to change, and continue to grow. I put my brush in my paint and try again.