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prints available from  Heron Dance gallery :  Heron Stillness,  Adirondack Sunrise

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.. .. Those first paintings [of mine] were really primitive. But what I realized was that I'm not going to paint like everybody else.  And that's great! If I paint like me, then I have my own style, and things that are rare are valuable, right?  If you're naturally different, you're going to have trouble with teachers, 'cause teachers have problems with things that are different.  But when you get out into the art world, there are people that are going to appreciate work that is fresh.

So, you have to be crazy enough to start trusting the value of your unique take on things.  The minute you stop trying to make your stuff accessible to everybody else, that's when you start being an artist. And whether or not it's accepted, what's the point in doing what everybody else does anyway?   /// The more times that you say that you're an artist, the more you start to believe it, and when you believe it, why should other people disbelieve you? ...  Think about how many really great artists there were who sold hardly anything in their lifetimes, but they knew they were artists.  It's up to you to define it, really. There are always going to be people who don't like your work, so you can't depend on what other people think. Writer/Artist Linda Armstrong -  in Living the Creative Life newsletter issue 63, 01 Feb 2004 Linda Armstrong site : All At Once - A Guide  to Practically Instant Creativity photo from fineartscamp.org

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paintings by Sharon Ellis <  Midday FourSeasons  >

For William Blake, the imagination is sacred. It guides the artist to create a truer and more intense world than that of mere appearances. There is nothing vague or deliberately mystifying in his world. It's this clarity of vision expressed through his amazing composition and line that continues to startle.  When I saw Blake when I was young, there was something startling about him, and there still is. That's amazing. That's what you want in art. Another thing about Blake is that he reminds you that the compositional structure of visual things is everything. Sometimes I think I make my work the way I do simply because it allows me to play with all of those classic things in art: space, composition, color, line. The attitude of Modernism is to somehow go beyond those things, because they're old, conventional problems. I enjoy playing with them. Blake is a great example of how people use the word "representation" as if it's the opposite of "abstraction." He's a good reminder of how that's a ridiculous distinction. Representation in art doesn't mean a specific thing, it doesn't mean depicting appearances. I guess Blake would say that God's forms are a certain way, and that our world is a bad reproduction of God's world, that the forms of this world come from the ideal forms of God. What is it that we're getting when we're also confused by him? I think it has to do with how clear his vision is. When people talk about art being mystical, they expect a certain vagueness in the form itself, to signify the vagueness of the vision. It's very phony. It's an unformed adolescent attitude about what mystical things are. Being a mystic is seeing clearly. Sharon Ellis .. [LA Times Jan 19 2003]   //   images from gallery site ****William Blake by Robin Hamlyn et al

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To my surprise, I said I was thinking of taking up painting. I don't know why I said this. I've hardly ever thought about painting my entire life. ... A very close friend of mine saw my first creation and said, "They're never as good as the first." ... I took the comment as a compliment.  Why this first may actually be the best is worth some thought. I was fully present for the event, I didn't judge it while I painted, and I didn't mindlessly follow rules -- I couldn't, I didn't know any. ... I painted all summer, loving every minute. Ellen J. Langer - Professor of Psychology at Harvard[Psychology Today, Oct. 2001] *book:**The Power of Mindful Learning by Ellen Langer

details of paintings by Ellen Langer:  "Greetings" [right] and "The Three Nancy's" [far right] [courtesy of the artist]

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The "Los Cielos" 1996-2000 Series seeks to integrate my understanding and experience of ceremony, personal love of nature, and healing through nature. ... Often, in sharing these paintings with others, I am told deeply personal stories of personal catharsis and healing.  One of my goals as a painter has been to touch collective unconscious and I believe that "Los Cielos" has been successful in reaching a place deep within the viewer. It is my hope that these works bring peace, healing and balance to the viewer. ...  My good teacher, Twyla Nische, a Seneca Oneida elder, taught me that we can know and understand our "natural selves through nature," and have held this truth as a guiding point in my life and creativity. I search for this natural environment, even while surrounded by the ever-present and immense urban sprawl.

Linda Vallejo - photo and quotes from Artist Statement on her site lindavallejo.com **related books: Latin American Women Artists of the United States: The Works of 33 Twentieth-Century Women by Robert Henkes Strong Hearts, Inspired Minds: 21 Artists Who Are Mothers Tell Their Stories by Anne Mavor

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Cypress Tree, 1975, Lundy Siegriest (1925-1985)

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Northern California Landscape, c1980, Terry St. John (1934-)

To state it simply, I found that the aspects of painting style that had the clearest psychological referent
were tempo and deliberateness. In one painter, an even painting tempo, with clear purpose and no
changes of mind, with one painting finished per session, was related to a deliberate everyday speech
and a hesitant, controlled, and unemotional responsiveness to the Rorschach blots.

In the other painter, an impulsive tempo -- fast at times but subject to major revisions and even a refusal
to finish -- was connected to a greater volubility in speech and to a quick, imprecise, libidinal, sensitive,
yet well-integrated responsiveness to the blots. There were other, more subtle connections which I discuss
[later in the book]. ...

The first painter was [Lundy] Siegriest, and the purpose of his style was, above all, presentation; the second
was [Terry] St. John, for whom style seemed more a matter of embodiment.

Pavel Machotka- from book: Style and Psyche : The Art of Lundy Siegriest and Terry St. John
 

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I never knew what people meant when they said they had a passion for something until I took up botanical art.  A real love that envelops you. ... You're sitting before nature. You enter a meditative state.  It's very calming, and you have to do things slowly. There's no 'quick and dirty' in botanical art. It's the tai chi of art. Sally Jacobs

from article: "A Meticulous Art  Drawn From Nature" by Emily Green, LA Times Nov. 1, 2001 Jacobs teaches botanical art  at the LA County Arboretum book: A Passion for Plants : Contemporary Botanical Masterworks by Shirley Sherwood

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I mean by a picture, a beautiful romantic dream of something that never was, never will be - in a better light than any light that ever shone - in a land that no-one can define or remember, only desire - and the forms divinely beautiful. Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones   (1833-1898) painting by Burne-Jones :  Evening Star, 1870   |  quote from site   book: Edward Burne-Jone : The Flower Book

 

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painting by elephant artist Seng Wong  from site: The Asian Elephant Art & Conservation  Project - a non-profit dedicated to saving the  diminishing number of Asian elephants related book: When Elephants Paint: The Quest of  Two Russian Artists to Save the Elephants of Thailand

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