Artist Statement
In my mid-30s, while living in the Northwest, I slowly discovered my artist self. The two dimensional surface fascinated me. Using watercolors and a variety of collage techniques, I developed a language of image-making that has stayed with me since. Squares, circles and other shapes in repetition and patterning came to represent the cycles and rhythms of nature. These more geometric shapes in opposition to natural forms became a matrix for development of my art since that time. For me it is the language of balance.
When I moved to the mountains of northern New Mexico in 2007, my world and my artwork opened up in ways I never imagined. It is a land of high mountain air, abundant sun, striking visual landscape and strong cultural influences. Immediately, with the help of acrylic paints, my colors became bold. Under a brilliant sky, surrounded by untold natural beauty, and through observing the dance of the plant/animal inter-relationships, I added to the visual language of my earlier years and my life-long interest in natural life cycles. My paintings gradually took on the quality of storytelling.
During that New Mexico sojourn I was, from late 2011 until early 2017, involved in a formative and transformative project with 3 other NM women artists called Creation/Migration, which expressed our shared interests in spiritual and familial stories including DNA lineage. History of the project is documented in the blog, creationmigrationstories.blogpost.com, and beautifully summarized there in the Dec. 2012 Alibi article post.
In 2019 I returned to the Pacific NW, to the beauty of Vashon Island. The stories told by my new paintings are just beginning to percolate. As always, they will be tales of balance in the world, the world as it should be, not as it is fast becoming. Please come with me on the journey.
Donna’s Studio, Earth/Sky Studio is stop #34 on the 2022 VIVA Holiday Art Studio Tour, Dec 3-4 & 10-11, Saturdays and Sundays, from 10 am – 4 pm. For more information on the free, self-guided tour and an interactive map, click here.
