We began the project in 2019 with interviews and photo sessions (for reference photos) with selected subjects. In March of 2020, everything stopped because of COVID, but with the availability of vaccines, we picked up the project again in February 2021. By this time, a number of recently unsheltered people had the opportunity to live at Casa de Esperanza, a facility made available by the City of Fort Worth through the CARES Act. I was able to complete the interviews and photo shoots, and by April I had begun painting. In addition, based on the interviews, I wrote each person’s story to accompany each portrait. The questions were not intended to highlight how they became homeless. Instead, they were designed to draw out their humanity, and to show their individuality.

The portrait subjects were invited to attend the opening reception of Our Community, Our Neighbors, on Feb. 17, 2022. All subjects who attended were given a high quality framed print of their portraits. Sales of the originals benefited the organization. The exhibit remained open to the public through May 4.

It is part of my studio practice to find ways that connect my art with my community. I could not have chosen a better way of doing that than this project. Although I had only spent 20-30 minutes with each person almost a year earlier, my subjects greeted me like an old friend with hugs and well wishes. Some of them told one of their social workers that seeing their portraits gave them a sense of worth, a sense of being seen. I felt their warmth and their joy. Some people attending the exhibit responded with tears. One person said she would never see a homeless person the same way again. Art can–and does–make a difference.

ORIGINS
My first 17 years were spent on a farm in rural Central Texas where art education of any kind was a rare if non-existent commodity. I always created art somehow, and as most kids do, I drew. At age 16, I responded to a “Draw Me Talent Test,” an advertisement placed in a farm magazine by Art Instruction Schools in Minneapolis. I drew the simple image in the ad and mailed it to the school. Of course, this was how the school found prospects for their correspondence course in graphic design, so a salesman paid a visit.

I remembered, “To my surprise, my parents signed me up, an out-of-character decision for very practical and frugal farmers.” I stuck with it about a year, but struggled to advance without a hands-on teacher and without any community role models to mentor me. I went on to Tarleton State University to major in English, abandoning my first love—or so I thought.

During my freshman year, everyone in the dormitory was decorating their doors for Christmas. I created a silhouetted manger scene, and was astounded when I won first prize, a huge tin of popcorn. That and an art history elective were my only art endeavors during college. By the time I earned my degree, got married, and had my first child, I had spent about nine years not nurturing the artist within me. I had taught middle-school English, written scripts for a multi-media company, and had some poetry published, but I hadn’t attended to the part of me that loved image-making.

The urge to create returned as my little son passed out of the baby stage and entered toddlerhood, giving me a little more time on my hands. I bought a stitchery kit, embroidered my first piece during baby nap time, and was quickly bored with copying the picture on the package. I started embroidering my own designs, selling them at craft fairs in the San Antonio area where I lived with my young family.

A workshop in banner-making, led by San Antonio fiber artist and author Becky Patterson, propelled me to a several-year career in textiles. My hangings made of weathered blue jeans, found objects, old crocheted lace and appliqued fabrics found their way into galleries in Fredericksburg, TX, and Jackson Hole, WY.

THE CAREER BEFORE THE CAREER
After moving to the Houston area, family needs required a steady paycheck, so I became a production assistant in a printing shop, seeing this as a way to learn graphic design on the job. This step eventually launched a 30-plus year career in graphic design, writing, and marketing consulting, a fortuitous blend of my skills, interests and education.

After a move to nearby La Porte, TX, and the birth of my second son, I took life drawing classes by the acclaimed Houston artist, Jose Perez. The only way to get into the class was to know someone in it who would alert you to an opening. A friend who was taking the class did just that. I signed up—and became totally smitten with drawing the figure!

I even enrolled in classes at University of Houston at Clear Lake with the intent of getting an MFA. Although a move to Fort Worth cut those plans short, I had made time for a pastel portrait class as well. Continuing to develop my skills, I entered the commercial world through my cut paper illustrations, and greeting card art, working for ad agencies and two different greeting card companies. Eventually the award-winning graphic design and marketing business I had started left little time for my own art. No regrets. It was a fit for me. And it’s ironic that graphic design was the career that correspondence course was intended to teach me as a teenager.”

THEN CHANGE
After my beloved husband passed away in 2013, I faced the necessity of reinventing my world. I left my marketing and design career behind and immersed myself into my own art. Thankfully, I had spent over 30 years in the commercial world honing design and business skills that would serve me well as a fine artist.

Watercolor was my first choice. Working small, I expressed my grief and my changed reality on paper. Stamping and collage elements became a part of my developing style. I enrolled in life drawing and watercolor classes, taught by respected Texas artist Carol Ivey, to refresh my skills and my spirit. As I became more confident,my work grew larger, and began to reflect my positive, hopeful worldview.

As I defined my artistic vision, I began to focus on abstraction, with a growing desire to work larger than watercolor on paper would practically allow. Acrylics on canvas became my new medium of choice, often with the addition of other media. It was a choice that opened up new avenues for art-making.

I continued to broaden my artistic vocabulary. When I cleaned out my late husband’s woodworking shop in the summer of 2017, not only did the blank slate of space present itself, so did a treasure trove of non-traditional art supplies. I began using the renovated space to produce 3-D found object assemblages that expanded my visual expression.

Since the beginning of 2019, I have focused on contemporary figurative painting, which melds my love of abstraction and my fascination with humanity. After several years of creating non-objective abstract work, I responded to the insistent tug at the sleeve to create a new body of work, one that would have at its core the human figure and the universal stories it could tell. They tell of my attempts to understand and explore human relationships and emotion, social issues and empathy. But I didn’t leave abstraction completely behind. It still appears in the ambiguous but vaguely familiar backgrounds that provide my archetypal figures a home. I continue to explore relationships between painterliness and content, between materials and subject matter.

PROCESS
Most of my work begins with a photographic image. It may be a grainy, dusty vintage photo of some long forgotten kin that captures my attention as I rummage through the family ‘archives.’ At other times I ask friends and relatives to pose for me. And I’m not above some gentle stalking when I’m out in public where I may capture a clandestine photo of a stranger in an iconic gesture.

I take the image into photo editing software, emphasizing contrast and simplifying shapes. The result becomes my reference at the easel—or in the case of digital work, at the iPad.

Cradled wood panels are my favorite surfaces for easel painting. “I like the way they feel, the way they take the paint, and their sense of “object-ness.” After applying gesso, my first step is to cover the surface with color—red, orange, turquoise, or whatever feels right for the subject. Even if entirely covered, the first layer influences the overall presence of the painting, peeking through gaps and adding energy and interest to the work.

With my portraits and figures, I aim for the emotional, the iconic, the archetypal. I achieve a certain universality through simplification of shapes. The addition of a dark outline flattens the figure and facilitates the shift from individuality to symbolism. I’m not interested in capturing a perfect likeness, but rather a relatable mood or emotion.