NARROWING THE FOCUS

I am very busy lately so in order to figure out how to do all the things I want to do and do them to a decent degree of competence, I have had to pair down on some of the extraneous activities! I was fairly forced into this narrowing of focus thing. The story is, I have two young daughters and I have decided to stay home and mother them. Doing this means I have to be in their vicinity much of the time. Initially this caused some frustration as I was not able to be in my studio painting. Therefore, I took my painting to them.

First, I figured out I love fashion. For starters, I don't like to walk around in sweats all the time so I have to make some kind of decision about what to wear. When looking for items to wear I have become very conscious of their construction and fabrics. Making clothes is such a creative endeavor and fascinating to me. I enjoy sewing and you cant keep me out of the fabric/notions stores.

I began to think I would like to incorporate the things I love into my art in some way. I also have an appreciation for old photos. I think it started from inheriting a bunch of old family photos. They really engage ones imagination. Once again, I found myself interested in the clothing they wear in these images. Then I began to think about how these two things could be brought together with the portraits I already enjoyed creating. My work is now very multi-media with emphasis on fabric....which is portable and can be worked on around my children!

In this way, I took most of the things I spent time doing; shopping, looking at old images on the internet, reading fictional history, sewing and lumped them all into one body of work. As my work progresses I can image I will synthesize even more of my life and into these 'paintings'.