My Bohemian Upbringing

People often ask me how I came about my painting method. And it’s just not one easy answer. First I feel a need to explain; I didn’t want to be an artist when I was a kid growing up. My parents were both artists, when I was a young child they curated an art gallery and would have openings. People would come up to me and ask-do you want to be an artist when you grow up? I didn’t know. In 1969 my family went to Europe for a year, it was something a lot of people did at that time did; the American dollar had a high value there. According to my dad, when we lived in Malaga, Spain, I would sit in front of paintings on the floor of museums and draw, people would watch. I don’t remember this, I was 5 years old. One thing I DO remember about Europe was lying on the benches of the Louvre bored, as my young artist parents looked at Monet paintings from every angle, step back, move forward, and squint. My biggest disappointment that year was that the “Piccadilly Circus” was not a circus, but a square in London! My grandmother had come over when we were in Italy, and journeyed with us to London, where we caught a giant sea going ship back to the states. She kept saying all the way through the Netherlands we were going to Piccadilly Circus. I thought it was a real circus. My mom spent her inheritance, living, traveling, and doing art; then she went back to college in the 70s. Just like Donna’s mom, from the 70s show, she set out to “find herself.” My parents got divorced when we came back from Europe.

Growing up I did art all the time, collages, drawing, drawing on my desk in Math class. But I didn’t feel particularly inspired. Also, it seemed to me, we would have more money if my parents weren’t artists. I got my first job in a restaurant at 16 years old; it seemed practical- free food AND money! I’m going to be honest with all the traveling there wasn’t a lot food around my mom’s house. I felt the best artistic pursuits also should fulfill a need, a function. I was always good at sewing, I had a Barbie sewing machine at 6 years old and made a stuffed cat, it was set up in my mom’s studio. In the 7th grade I excelled at “Home Economics”. I couldn’t believe that was a class I could take, I did extra credit , made clothes for myself and a stuffed animal for my sister. Being a hippie kid I knew how to embroider, I was taught by one of the ladies that lived in a commune my mom and I lived at in the Santa Cruz Mountains in the 70s. Home Ec. Seemed like an easy class, learning how to rotate food and purchase groceries in the least expensive way. My mom got a Bachelors degree in Art from San Jose state and moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico when I was in high school, I soon would follow. Later she went on to get a Masters in counseling and worked with special needs folks doing art therapy. She worked in the Albuquerque school system and also at “Challenge New Mexico” in Santa Fe, a full service company for people with special needs.

In 1982, at 17 years old I started working in a hat shop, sewing the leathers (or sweat bands) in “Mas Fina” Panama hats in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The kind of hat Al Capone wore…the man I worked for is sort of like a family member to me. I eventually moved here, to Austin, Texas and continued to work in restaurant and restore vintage clothing. My boyfriend was in a band, I guess you could say I was the “seamstress for the band.”

Because my parents were artists, and I didn’t think I wanted to be an artist I never took an art class, not in school anyway. But my mom taught art at a school I went to, and she taught art at a neighborhood center when I was a little kid and I went with her. She was an abstract artist, so I felt a little inferior about my drawings of princess’, castles and ballet dancers. My father is a natural teacher person, he is multimedia. He made sculptures out of “found objects” in the 70s, such as metal tire rims for bikes, sheet metal he cut with his torch. While he never went to college he taught Welding at the Junior college in Monterey, California where he still lives. He also was a jeweler and carried a sketch book with him wherever we went, especially traveling in other countries such as Spain, France, and Greece. Oddly, my son also carries around the same book, black with blank pages, and doesn’t even know my dad, my son and I live in Texas; in our family it appears art is a genetic trait. My dad tried to teach me perspective, but I confess I’ve never been very good at it. He did successfully teach me how to sketch. He really enjoys all aspects of creativity, when I lived with him in middle school we did many projects, one of his favorite things to do was make snowflakes and all kinds of cut out artwork similar to that they do in Mexico. He really likes Matisse and showed me who he was and his cut out work, paper crafting. I’m getting at how I came to be doing my artwork the way I do, and perhaps why I have so many Fiskars scissors!

All of a sudden, in the last few years, I have decided to make the ideas; I have had in my head, into paintings. I am not completely sure why, I hate to say, but I suspect it might have to do with my mom passing away in 2013. Somehow I never felt like I measured up to the level of dedication she had to artwork. She truly was abstract, she had a line of artsy thick card stock postcards of New Mexico; she was also a photographer, a talent handed down from her father, who took amazing pictures of the Santa Clara Valley in the 30s, 40s and 50s. I never had enough money for cameras and dark rooms, but today with computers it’s kind of amazing the things you can do, she never got to the point where she understood all that…she would have enjoyed it. So somehow in the last few years as I have gotten older, I have more time and have come out from her shadow. But the purpose of my story is to explain my method. And I don’t think people believe me when I tell them. I am terrible at perspective. I have learned about “folk art” and “outside” art in the last decade, probably because of the internet, so I felt like perhaps I could fit into that unschooled class of art, not being classically trained.

What I do is this-

I draw on a thick Strathmore multimedia paper with pencils, regular pencils and Prismacolor pencils, maybe flowers or people, and then I cut them out with a wide variety of Fiskars scissors I own. It turns out sewing and art go together quite well in my world. I sketch a background on paper, then I move my subjects around until it looks right to me. I paint the people and the flowers with acrylic and acrylic gouache, and then I glue them to my painted or drawn background.

I was truly inspired to enter this contest because; when I worked again at the hat shop in Santa Fe, New Mexico (in 1997) I acquired a pair of Fiskars scissors called “Micro Puntas”...or “Micro points.” They were great for cutting the stray straw off hats, but I also just liked the name of them, I’ve held onto them all this time, through many moves. Pictured above, I’m with a painting I did recently (2019) of my grandmother. It’s from photo my grandfather took of her, in circa 1930, when they were first married. My grandfather grew flowers and the dahlias he grew won prizes and there is even one named after my grandmother, “The Harriet.” I don’t think I could have cut the flowers out with such detail if I hadn’t held onto those “Micro punta” scissors.

With the invention of the internet and with help from my “Millennial” son there are more ways to make money being creative. For the last 12 years I have been selling things on Etsy, I share on Facebook to my many friends, and sell things to them. As I said, I used to sew clothing for musicians or restore vintage clothing, because of that I have many eclectic friends that appreciate interesting clothing and art. During the first months of the pandemic I wasn’t able to work in food service as I always have, so I made masks…I made about a hundred masks, I used the Fiskars rotary cutter to cut them out, made all the difference in my speed. To say I’ve relied on my scissors to make ends meet would be an understatement. Thank you for this opportunity to tell my story.