Crazy Art Scene in L. A.

Art, color pencils on illustration board

Dear Friends,

I hope you are enjoying your summer.  This summer I had the opportunity to exhibit my artwork in Los Angeles at the Chocolate & Art Show.  It has been a long time since I have shown my art in an L. A. gallery.  I forgot how different and fun Los Angeles art receptions could be.   There were about 700 people attending the show and the art was a wide range of subjects and mediums.  
While in Los Angeles I attended the first gallery I showed my artwork back in 1985, at Barnesdall Park.  I remember the excitement of having my first work of art on display.  I was tempted to participate in their next art show.

I received the news that my artwork "Collage" was chosen by Poet Mary L. Quigley for her poem "Life's Portals" and it will be published along with her poem in the publication "Summation IV".  Very exciting for me :)

Until the next blog entry...

Love,
Glad

Sign up for my newsletter

Gladsart.com

School is Over for Now

Dark Night, 40"x60" Mix Media on Canvas

Dear Friends,

School is over now. I loved taking art classes and feel grateful to have been able to meet art professors, art students, and other people in the field of art.  I got to create amazing art projects and will miss the art assignments. My first drawing 2 project done in pencil, Yosemite, was on exhibit at the Escondido Municipal Art Gallery last month.

I did my very first oil abstract painting this month. It's huge, the biggest size I've used this far.  It's 48" x 60". I was not sure how the piece would look like when I started. I started using colors I liked, trying to implement some of the color theory concepts I learned but in the end I was not happy with it, so covered it all up and painted as I did before, from my own intuition, regardless if it conformed to any color theory concept or not, and I was happy with the result.  This artwork is now available for sale at my website. 

I attended Tom Tiedeman's annual BBQ last month. I took a few watercolor lessons from him years back but really couldn't get into that medium...what can I say...I'm in love with oils.  It was nice to see him again, his lovely wife, Marty, and gather among other creative minds.  I see artist like him with great success and smile, knowing that I will someday be there as an artist.

Art is so revealing. As an artist I pour all of me into my work and display it for all others to see and critique it. I am learning much about me as I paint. I say this because I also finished my acrylic "Dark Night" painting last month. I didn't realized how much anger I had during that time, but happy to see it express itself though art.  I put that painting next to my "Bliss" painting and realized that in life, it's all one....the sad and happy, the up and down, just one side of the same, like a nickle that has heads and tails.  Why do we insist on having a one sided nickle? I am learning to embrace both sides equally and with thanksgiving.

I hope all is well with you.

Love,
Glad

Sign up for my newsletter

Gladsart.com

Creating Art Again

Our House, Crayons and color pencils on paper

Hello Friends,

For as long as I can remember, I have always loved creating and painting.  As a child I would use crayons or pencil, as a teen I explored with different mediums available to me.  Although I had several art classes in high school, I'm basically a self-taught artist. 

Above is a drawing I did at age five that my grandmother kept.

I didn't realized how important art was for me until I took a trip to Europe in the summer of 1985.  I was in heaven exploring the Louvre in Paris and their countless galleries.  I couldn't get enough of the Uffizi in Florence or the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. I was living and breathing art for weeks.  I took literally hundreds of photographs during that trip, some were actually published.  But what I couldn't wait to do was paint some of those places I found so beautiful on my trip.  And that I did. I bought oil paints for the first time, canvases, brushes and painted during my free time for 4 years.

Then when I became a mother, my children became my priority. I did paint here and there but not consistently.  It wasn't until my daughter went to college in 2009 that I started to paint again. I took a watercolor class from Tom Tiedeman in San Diego and one mix media art class from Clara Berta in Los Angeles. I wanted to explore as many art tools as I could, as I was so thirsty to develop my own style of painting. 

Now that my son is going to college this coming August too, I will have more time to paint.  I am looking for ways to transition from art as a hobby, to a full time artist.  There is nothing else I would rather do than paint and create all day long.  For me, when I paint it's more than unleashing my creativity, it's connecting with my Creator, as art is being born. In this blog I'll write about the journey I'm taking to become a full time artist.

With love,
Glad 

Sign up for my newsletter

Gladsart.com