We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Gail Bokor. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Gail below.

Gail, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

Although I have been a.visual artist/painter for over forty years, one of the most meaningful paintings I have done was “Never Again”, which illustrated the Holocaust, as well as Slavery, and Segregation, the message being visually delivered by an Elephant, which sadly has dealt with it’s own persecutions. If able I will forward an image of the painting. However, the project which has personally been very meaningful to me is creating a class which I teach at the Art League of Daytona Beach in Florida. It is called Art as Therapy, and was born out of my own circumstances, leading to stress, anxiety and depression, my form of SAD. In December of 2022, I took my dog Zoe out for a walk. This is a sixty pound bundle of energy, kindness and love. Unfortunately she also loves squirrels, and on a short potty break on our front lawn, she took off after a squirrel that I had not seen, and I went down on a sprinkler head, shattering my hip and my femur. Zoe returned, but I had surgery a few days later.. Slow motion became my life after physical therapy, and not being able to stand and work on my large paintings, started the spiral downward of anxiety and depression. , I took to sitting at my drawing board and started working small with watercolor, alcohol ink, and pen lines. I found this gave me instant gratification that I had created a small work of art. I developed a program to possibly help other artists who were dealing with some mental issues. This became my therapy and the class became a reality that I could share. I did it in four week sessions and so far the two classes that I taught filled up with a waiting list. The next four week series is in January of 2024. I felt that I was really making a difference in the groups that I taught in Art as Therapy..

Gail, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I have been a working artist for over forty years, having received my formal education at College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan. I had my first solo show “Elephants on Parade” at Horton Gallery of Fine Arts in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in the early 1980’s. After doing the circuit of the many outdoor art fairs in Michigan and being represented by several Michigan galleries, in 2004 I moved back to Daytona Beach, Florida, which had been my childhood home., and now live in Port Orange, Florida. I have been represented by the Hub on Canal and Jane’s Art Center, both galleries in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. I am a member of the Art League of Daytona Beach, Beaux Arts, an Invitational art organization, as well as an Art Coordinator at Conklin-Davis Center for the Visually Impaired. The latter is a volunteer project where I and a group of ten resident artists,, create visually textured art for the blind, which graces their walls, and is meant to be touched. This group of resident artists were former students, who jointly created an exhibit for the blind and visually impaired and was held at The Rose Room of the Peabody Auditorium in 2017.. It was titled “A Touch of Art” and contained sixty-four paintings, to not just be seen by the public but touched as well by the many blind and visually impaired who attended. I have been a member of the Art League of Daytona Beach for over ten years and have taught a variety of art classes there for nine years. These include Watercolor, Experimental Mixed Media, Art as Therapy, as well as a number of workshops, I am most proud that I have lived my dream of becoming an artist, and now at my stage in my life , that I am able to share with others what my creative journey has taught me.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

It was always a dream of mine to become an artist. I started out as a young child drawing whenever I could, and when I was given a Jon Nagy drawing/painting kit one birthday, I knew this was my calling.j Drawing was my first love, and painting was not as enjoyable to me. Even when I attended art classes, it was not until I was introduced to watercolor, that I fell in love with painting. I loved the unpredictable quality of it, and later on when I was teaching, I called it the wild child of all the painting mediums. I was fortunate that, except for a short time when I was earning a living as a working artist, I was married to someone who supported my choices in following a creative life. To this day, I am so grateful when someone purchases a work of art that I have created. To me, painting is about communicating, and when another person responds enough that they wish to purchase my art, it makes me joyful. It has never been about the money, as I remember a little girl that was at an art fair with her big brother, and she wanted to buy one of my smaller elephant paintings for her mother who loved elephants.The price was of course too high for her, so I asked her how much she had to spend which was about twenty-five dollars, so off it went with the happy little girl. However, that too, made me happy.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Shortly after my first solo show, I happened to be shopping with a friend who was a weaver. We went t a weaving shop in Rockford, Michigan, and I loved some of the beads in the shop and purchased them. When I got home, I started stringing them and made myself a necklace. What fun. So I ran to an art supply store and bought some supplies to get started. Bernice Mancewicz was the Art Critic for the Grand Rapids Press and had done some stories on me as a painter for the paper. She happened to visit me at my studio one day when I was working on some jewelry pieces. She did a story with a photo in the GR Press, and all of a sudden I started getting orders from shops, galleries and boutiques. Long story short, my painting took a break while I became a jewelry designrt working manly in copper, brass and silver along with gemstones. I sold to many shops including the upscale department store Jacobsens where I had a very successful run until they closed their doors many years later. Although I still painted, it was not with the enthusiasm that I had prior to embracing jewelry making. I ultrimately returned to painting, but definitely more abstracted and experimental. My experience with the shapes of the metal pieces I created along with the beautiful bead shapes, definitely helped in my next chapter back as visual painter..

Contact Info:

• Facebook: Gail Bokor Fine Arts
• Youtube: Gail Bokor Artist
• Other: Search Google