My Journey in the Visual Arts: Part 9 of 10

This is a series of short posts that will piece together how I ended up in the visual arts. I don’t recall an Ah-Ha situation where I knew from a particular moment that I wanted to be an artist. It just sort of crept up on me. It has now been over 35 years since I pursued art as, at first, a serious avocation then a profession. Along the way I have been very fortunate having experienced many facets of the visual art world. During that time I have also made attempts to leave that world only to be pulled back in somehow. You can read the first post in this series here.

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I continued to take studio classes in college and my drawing instructor, Michelle, was very liberal with her definition of the word “drawing”, so I decided to start making drawings from cut paper. The first piece I did was a busy cityscape with odd shaped buildings and cars and the palette was limited to white, black, a gray and a blue/gray. I remember she liked the drawing and I also remember a friend of mine saying that she would find it more pleasing if there was a dot of red somewhere. That sort of stuck in my mind and was useful at a later point, but for now, I was limiting my palette.

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I had a goal to get into the Rittenhouse Square show. This was the show that I met the pen and ink artist at a few years before. One of the artists who had been in the show for many years told me to make sure the body of work I presented to the jury was consistent. I needed at least 10 pieces. I decided I would do a series of cut paper collages and the imagery would be things that were completely from my imagination. The paper I used was Canson Mi-Teintes paper. My daughter at this time was around three and I was still in school. I worked all hours of the night and whatever time I could steel during the day. Below is some of my work from that time as well as my display from my first year in the show, which was 1989.

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