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A while ago, my friend Chris LaRussell challenged me to post one art piece a day for 5 days. (She is a delightful contemporary artist -- check out her artwork here and follow her there.) The work can be something new or old, but I had to tell the story behind it. Yesterday was Day One of said challenge, and I posted the new piece in my Music series I just recently completed.
Today, I thought we'd go back in time, to the late 90s/early 2000s, arly on in my explorations of abstract art (even before college/grad school and that whole path down the healthcare rabbit hole).
Growing up in close proximity to NYC -- yep, you can call me a "bridge-and-tunnel-girl" -- I used to go on independent jaunts into the city. Where did I go? Museums, of course. I would get lost for hours inside exhibits, sometimes sketching, other times writing. During this period was when I first became obsessed with van Gogh, de Kooning, and Pollock -- a love affair that arguably never ended, but instead evolved and deepened. My eyes were wide open to all things and everything, from aborigine weavings to welded sculpture, mixed media collage and watercolor landscapes. I remember I saw a watercolor of a dragon in an Asian art exhibit and was so taken by its ferocity & motion in flight. I went home and wondered if I could somehow capture that dragon in flight and constrain him on the page, but show the chaos & freedom as well.
And thus Blue Dragon was born. I didn't frame this piece until many years later, and then it sat in my parents' home in NJ for some years after that. It's been with me now for the past several years, and now hangs near the fireplace mantle. I'm gazing at it now as I type, and it brings me this quiet joy that more than a decade after I painted this, I am going down a different path -- but one no less healing than my previous endeavor.
