Art Life Flow

I have been sharing my art professionally for over 20 years. I began my art career in 2003 while living in Chicago. I was in my mid-thirties and working odd jobs; when a momentous event occurred letting me know it was time. I was searching for some kind of creative energy to connect to that was beyond my skill or design; something that came from a spiritual place. I was looking for something that couldn’t be touched but could be felt. It was at this time in my life that a creative vision came to me in a great flash. It lit up an internal universe that for a moment, I could see into the expanse and hear the universe breathing. As the grand vision faded like fireworks in the sky, it left an ember, a drawing idea, that floated down into my hands, like a gift. I knew that it was time to share this gift of art and I have been doing so ever since.

I immediately resigned from my part time job and opened a storefront studio. I began working with large format fine art papers creating beautiful fluid line and circle graphite drawings. I also continued my fascination with typewriters as a medium for art and poetry. This was the start of discovering the language of energy. At the time I didn’t quite realize my study of energy and its communication would turn out to be my life long exploration in art. I was fascinated with energy of how big, vast, far and deep it existed right inside of the present now and that it connected all things. I was sharing my art of what I learned in exploring energy through graphite drawings, typewriter art, and other interdisciplinary materials and processes as art form.

For the next two years in Chicago, I began exhibiting my work in creative venues and promoting the development of art in the community by organizing art walks, open studio tours and storefront showings. I then returned to my native state of Texas to be close to family, landing in the Austin area where I continued promoting the value of art in the community. Situated in Smithville and later Bastrop, I contributed a profound influence in my Bastrop art community. For the next six years I was a member of the Bastrop Fine Arts Guild and served on their board. Chaired the Featured Artist Venue, which I transformed by establishing a First Friday Reception Program to the downtown area. I was also a founding member of a downtown gallery that inspired a concentrated area of galleries and studios to pop up. By invitation, I served on the Bastrop Art in Public Places Task Force. My attention to bringing art to the public and my involvement in public art steered my art in that direction. During this time, I expanded my discipline to include a sculptural branch. I built a 20-foot tower in my backyard to create hanging sculptures for public art. I also became interested in concrete as a medium for art. Some days I worked with delicate papers for drawing, some with the rigid and moving parts of a typewriter machine and others with balancing hanging clanging metal parts and others mixing water and cement. I enjoyed the diversity of working with different mediums and seeing how energy manifested with a variety of materials.

In 2011 my art direction took a turn with the changing season of life. I felt a calling to redirect focus from community and public art to reconnecting with my personal work. The motivation was to delve deeper into my study and expression of energy, to saturate myself into a singular zone of it but to do this, I needed a reset, a recharge and the best way I knew how to do that was to walk straight into nature. Nature is an important base in my art. It is inspiring, healing and as long as I can remember, I have been drawn to it. So I embarked on a 6-month hike across 14 states on the Appalachian Trail where I lived out of a tent and walked for miles every day. I was submerged in nature. Every day’s main focus was to survive and that slowly transitioned into becoming aware of the oneness and ease of everything. On the hike I was transformed. The only art I created that year was one plein air drawing of the mountains. It was the year nature created the art in me.

At the end of the walk I did not return home to where I left off. Instead, I relocated to another country, The Netherlands and furthered the idea of a restart. Living in a situation where I was challenged to communicate, to find supplies and materials, work space, expressive outlet and community encouraged me to search my expressive perspective. Ideas and actions were directly related to intention. It was a great fun finding my art voice again. At the end of two years, I returned to Texas again, to Corsicana, to be with family where I stayed close to the land working it by day, growing my own food, and making art in the evenings. In these four years I had the smallest studio space which surprisingly motivated me to push the limitations of a small paper size by creating art on the typewriter in the largest paper formats I could accomplish – to date. By 2018 Austin had called me back as artist in residence at a writing retreat. I continued with my typewriter art and in the next few years I also rekindled an interest in watercolor. I had been introduced to it in high school and suddenly the fluidity of color in water became a dialect of energy language. I embraced the exploration of it.

It was during this time that I wanted to really understand what it meant to express energy in my art. The world had changed so much and I found information was so available in any format. I began to buy the books, listen to podcasts and watch YouTube for hours each day. Studies began to take a big leap. Early on in my career it seemed that no one was talking about energy then it was awakened in the mainstream in the last few years; it seemed like it was everywhere. Highly educated professionals were talking, teaching and referencing about energy and I heard them all saying the resounding “Everything is Energy.” In my search for information, I discovered how much was documented about energy prior to my existence even. The availability of information was exciting. I found Albert Einstein quoted as saying, “Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it.” Hearing perspectives of energy from many different specialized fields has had a profound expansion on my curiosity to make art about energy. Doing a deep dive on the inspiration of my art has been enlightening.

Making art about energy is a journey of endless potential possibilities. It is multidimensional through the process of combining creative intention of subject, medium and method. I find the different mediums that I use to express the beauty of how energy is a communication making up all existence, is unified in the ideas and methods of creating. Organic lines and forms, movements of body and machines, suspension and balance; working with the fluidity of water all have a similar theme of definition that is in constant change. All parts that make up an art piece contribute unique attributes and consequences to the final work. There is no beginning or end to a work about energy, only a cycle. And there is no final finished piece because a work that is seen is alive and changing as it continues on through the viewer. My inspiration is energy and how it flows through and connects all things as it is all things.

How did I get here before the turn of 2003? Art development for me began in my twenties. Prior to that, as a young girl in the 70’s, I had already become self-aware of existing in a creative dimension. Creative energy was without distinction or separation from self and creating art was its language. There was no art development, I simply existed as one within the creative energy. As I grew older the purity of that oneness became convoluted and confusing as it did not fit into society that I knew. I believed I needed to fit to survive so the knowing was discarded and forgotten for years. After high school I dedicated what turned out to be more than a decade to learning skills not related to creating art that would help me share it. My primary strategy was to study through self-interning employments. I submerged myself in worlds of business, marketing and social interactions through deliberately chosen jobs. I worked as a personal assistant for a CEO, scrutinizing his decisions and practices, I felt like a business school spy. I worked as a marketing director, learning the value of knowing the market is equal to creating the market. As a retail commerce manager I learned you don’t get days off and the balance between employee personalities and upper management would forever be the teetering task. The fast pace and heavy deadlines of a magazine publishing atmosphere taught me stress management and that there is no option but to fulfill a deadline, no sleep needed, snacks allowed. I moonlighted numerous other odd jobs but was always careful that involvement would not stray far from my art path. I learned many lessons that have been instrumental in fostering my art career. And from here, this brings the story back to my mid-thirties when the day came that I stepped into my purpose of creating and sharing art.  

To current day, where I am living and working in central Texas in my cozy home studio in Temple. Creating art is a beautiful thing and I am grateful to be able to share the expression of my art with individuals and the world. I consider myself in service to that part in each of us that responds to the language of art. It is my mission to create art that resonates in that space of visual frequency that inspires us to raise our vibration and feel the goodness of the beauty of life. Everything is Energy.