“Oak Bluffs Cottage”
This is my second year participating in Somerville Open Studios. Every year, when you sign up, the organizers request an artist’s statement. Here’s mine–a modified version of my first statement, updated to include recent themes/work.
SOMERVILLE OPEN STUDIOS, 2024
Artist’s Statement
Imaginative realism: fantastical images in watercolor and ink.
These are the things I love: the mystery of the natural world, draftsmanship, storytelling, and imagination. In recent years, I have been working on a small scale, viewing the world through a tight lens, seeking to capture and create gleeful imagery that suggests the wondrous nature of the world.
My series, “Home Camp,” plays with the idea of “home outside the walls,” with images of the porches, gardens, and roofs that make up the extended character of the home hearth. Central is a collection from my summer ’23 visit to the historic Oak Bluffs Campgrounds on Martha’s Vineyard.
These cheerful fantasies in pen, ink, and watercolor will likely be the centerpiece of the work I show this spring.
In my decades working as an artist, I find myself returning in a loose cycle to inspirations from nature, myth, and archetype–and, of course, the other artists I see working around me.
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