the work behind you

I received the most delightful feedback viva email today. I would like to publish it- anonymously of course, with my answer.

"Dear Wen,

      I have become familiar with your work through the Mt. Sunapee League fair, and the open house held at the mills every year.  I have only recently discovered your website and blog, and realized that there is a whole world of work behind you that I have yet to see.  Your wonderful trees.  I love your blog website, with all of its interesting links, and information, forming the textural world that shapes, and defines your work, in addition to the quilting world which I have researched, and worked with a little in the past, but its nice to know that whatever i came to know as "the quilting arts" doesn't really ever end in one defined approach, however different each piece is.  I gave up on the quilting aspect because I found that I couldn't achieve the softness?,, or less bulky? feel that I wanted.  I wanted the piece to look more cohesive , rather than many separate pieces. 

See, this is what I really enjoy about your work, you have achieved that cohesiveness, even with seperate pieces within one art piece, that reminds one of fabric, and at the same time, painting. 

I don't know that I have found yet what your educational experience has been.  I would be interested in knowing how you finally arrived( if there is such a thing in art), upon your wonderful collages-artwork as it is today?" 

Alone in the Forest

Thank you for your wonderful email.

     My education continued after collage when I graduated with a BA in Home Economics, emphasis on Child Development and Interior Design. I am largely self taught and but have taken many workshops from my shero's such as Joan Schultz, Mary Taylor, Fran Skiles, Dorothy Caldwell, Susan Hammond West, and Nancy Crow among others. I find taking workshops from artists stimulating to my art, my inner sense of what is possible. 

     I try not to copy but let their teaching gestate and come though my art in my own voice. This, for me, defines a true artist. One who continues to grow within their field. Sure there will be side trips down medium roads, maybe parallel roads, but continuing to explore, to try new things, to turn things upside-down.

     I encourage the same from others, when I teach. That, to me, is the highest goal, to stimulate my student's own voice, their own courage in art making. to explore their inner reaches. 

I become a tool, a guide, hopefully, a muse.

Education is not all though. Take time to take time. To go outside. Breathe. Clear space to learn what excites you. To see inside. Then create!