Apartment Portraits

A Series of Portraits I did in colored pencil for my Apartment
of my Apartment Mates.

Into the Woods

Photos Courtesy of Christine Alger

Set of Into the Woods at Gordon College
I was a scenic artist on this one.
My largest project was painting the floor.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

A Yellow Brick Road I painted for a Community
Theater Production of The Wizard of OZ

Becky's Room

Just an old charcoal drawing from 2 years ago. I rediscovered it after going through my portfolio. Enjoy!

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Old Photo

I was looking through my old photography negatives from High School and rediscovered this picture that I don't think I liked at the time, but I am loving right now.

playdoh

Playing with play doh. No that is not me in the backround, its my play doh hand model Paige.

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Studio

I set up a studio in my bedroom this summer for painting. I'm starting tonight so keep an eye out for updates!

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Character Concepts

Figure Drawing

Doodly Doo

Painting Final: Grace

This painting was my final project in my figure painting class. It's a lifesize portrait of my friend Grace. Proportions on the left arm are too wide, but it was an educational exercise, so I'm moving on for now. Oil on Canvas.

Figure Painting

These are the paintings from my figure painting class this past semester. They go from oldest to newest, shortest to longest, and smallest to largest from Top to Bottom respectfully. All are oil on board, canvas, or linen.

Tempra Painting

These pieces are from a class on Tempera Painting that I took in Italy. The process we learned was the same one practiced by icon painters of the late middle ages: mixing raw pigment with egg yolk. We made our own grounds by covering wood boards with linen soaked in rabbit skin glue. Once that dried, we gesso-ed them with a mixture of chalk and glue. It was so interesting to work with such natural materials, especially since our previous class was with toxic, toxic oil paints.

Our professor was an ex-nun who made foot pilgrimages from Switzerland to Jerusalem. She spoke only a little bit of English, but so much of the class was showing us the technique of making and using the medium that it hardly mattered. The topic for a lot of our work was meditation on Genesis and the creation of the world. But our first two projects (one of which is shown above) was copying work, or composing copied images, as was done with icon painting. Our last project (top image) was to portray our "garden of Eden" or where we meet with God. It was quite interesting to work in a class that was worship based instead of serving whatever our personal agendas are for our art.

More Design Class

Paintings focusing on Color Study from
my Design class in '09

Design Class

Pieces from my design class in the Spring of 'o9.
Multimedia and Gouache on Bristol Board

Doodly Doo

Part of the reason I started a sketch blog was to have a place to display not only the stuff I was producing in class, but also for fun. Like this:

Big, Marie Antoinette hair, I love it. More please. I don't draw cartoons enough anymore, that needs to change!

Mary, Mary

This piece is Oil on Board. Inspired by Signorelli's Last Judgement Frescos. Final Project for my painting class in Italy.

Inspiriational Art: Roz McQuillan

I am researching for a project for my figure painting class and found this artist. I am loving her nudes. I really like her linear approach to painting and the way she uses large color shapes to accent the neutral skin tones of the figures. Beautiful.

Here is a link to her Red Bubble account where you can see lots more where this piece above came from.

Self Portrait

I don't love this or think it's particularly well done, but it's okay for something I hadn't done before and was definitely a learning experience. I think my favorite parts are everything except the face, haha. Done in Oil on Wood in Italy.

Anne Bogart

Photograph: Joan Marcus
Mary-Lousie Parker in Dead Man's Cell Phone Directed By Anne Bogart

I'm reading a book by Anne Bogart for my Directing class called A Director Prepares: Seven Essays on Art and Theatre. I haven't gotten very far in yet, but a little bit of the introduction articulated an idea that I hold true in my own work. I just wanted to share.

To succeed in this fast-changing world requires action, speed, decisiveness, and hard work. To survive, to keep up, to feed a family, to ensure a roof over our heads, it is necessary to act from a very particular personal impulse: the survival instinct. And there is always the danger that this survival mode will dominate the artistic process. Most of the choices that we make in the survival mode issue from a need for security and advancement. But the instinct for security gives access only to a small part of our creative abilities. If we limit our impulses to the survival instinct, our scope and range of artistic work will be limited. Lewis Hyde in his book entitled: The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property suggests that humans always take action and make decisions from two possible sources: the survival instinct or the gift-giving impulse. The gift giving impulse, like the survival instinct, also demands action and decisiveness, but the results differ because the intention that provokes the action has nothing to do with security. The action originates in the impulse to give someone a girft and the urge to create a journey for others outside of their daily experience. This instinct requires generosity, interest in others, and empathy... We create journeys for others to be received in the spirit of a gift.

To approach the theatre as an art form, we must be able to act in thie empathetic spirit. Each of us is a producer and an artist in one and we must take care that one does not overwhelm the other. The producer in us must protect the gift giver and know when and how to give it space and freedom. The gift giver must step aside for the surival instinct in the right moments.

Theatre and movies are often critisised as narcissistic, but this responce defines the difference for me. Is the actor in it for the fame or for the story being told? Are the production staff looking to make money or make good? I don't think it has to be only one, but it does have to be a balance of both if one wants to function within society, but history does tell us that some of the best artists that do it despite their hardships in life. So my advice would be it is better to give than to recieve, but to keep a toe in the recieving end for there can be no giving if there is no one to graciously accept the gift.