A Girl's Primer

I have been working on this trio of drawings for 9 months and I'm finally ready to march these ghosts out of my studio. My triptych, A Girl's Primer, will be in a group show at Aucocisco Gallery in Portland for the month of December. I'm thrilled to be invited to show at Aucocisco with four other artists: Michele Caron, Rachael Eastman, Tanya Fletcher, and Judy O'Donnell. I'm just about finished, still doing a bit of fine tuning, and I need to make the hanging mechanisms. They will hang unframed, and I'm planning to string wire to three boards and attach each drawing to its respective board with velcro. They will then simply hang on picture hangers. Theyre not heavy, but they're big, at 4' x 8' each.

Here is my working artist statement which still needs a tweak or two. I don't want to say too much - just a sort of lead in...

My mother’s loss of memory due to the ravages of Alzheimer’s and her recent death prompted me to create this series of drawings, a triptych populated by three major spirits: my mother, my father, and my maternal grandmother. A Girl’s Primer speaks of love, loss, dreams, desire, memory and experience, and the early forces that shaped me.

The Devil's in The Details

My most recent progress on the Primaries triptych - I think that's what I will title it. Primaries.

A Day's Work

I worked all day in my kitchen on this portrait from a photograph of my cousin Keith as a young man. I have never met him - he is my second cousin and lives in New Jersey. We have corresponded through Facebook.

I set up my laptop with the digital photo of Keith to look at and work from.

I was listening to a mix of music and Radiohead's Lucky came on with the line, pull me out of the plane crash, pull me out of the lake. I had to write some of it.

Keith was in a bad car accident in 2001 and is now paralyzed from the chest down. He is in his late 40's and is wheelchair bound. This picture of him as a beautiful young art student at Cooper Union in the 80's is so moving. It just slays me.

I want to do a full length portrait. I thought I'd see how it feels to work from a photograph and decided to just do a study of the head as a warm up.

I must admit that I cried alot while working on this...

Keith's story reminds me of my daughter's. Life can change so drastically, so fast.

Stupendous Students

Janet LeDoux

Hannah McInness

l-r: Lesley Corbett, Jenna Simmons, Jo Goiran, Laura Bicherl, Kate Henderson, Elizabeth Chapman, Hannah McInnes

Jo Goiran

Jenna Simmons

Laura Bicherl

Lesley Corbett

Elizabeth Chapman

Kate Henderson

A few images from Monday's final crit for my Mixed Media Self-Portrait class at MECA. Some remarkable, potent work emerged from the group over the past twelve weeks, as many of the students used this space to tell their personal stories and to process difficult emotions and trauma. I feel so honored to have been a witness to their process! It was a powerfully moving and rewarding teaching experience.