Interview

Who am I as an artist? What am I about? What do I want to express to the world? What my influences have been and how they have translated into my paintings?

• To have a connection to people so they can view my work and see what I’m doing in Cape Cod, New York, and Maryland, Europe and/or abroad.
• Information about me. My story.
• Sell art.
• Transfer the Flower Girl Designs connection I have had with the public designing and styling to painting.

Why do I paint and what do you see in my paintings because of that?

Spiritual fulfilment of doing what I love and sharing it with the world.

It’s a journey, a life long journey.

To capture a moment in time, it/s beautiful and the emotions I attach to it whether it’s a face or a moment or a view, it’s an instinct I can’t control, I have to express it, it’s difficult to negate that part of myself.

I’m a people person. Part of me wants to communicate with them, and part of me wants to paint them and tell them the story from my perspective.

After studying color related to Henri Henche’s (which is an impressionist palette), I could no longer simply look at a shadow and say it was black – it became purple and orange or green. My perception of paintings and colours changed. It’s difficult to go back to a tonal palette especially in the summer on the Cape. Although during the winter one is forced to work in the studio, the colour tends to look tonal although it really isn’t, there are many ways to paint black.

Portraiture, landscape, dream work.

I have this kind of desire to paint people partially because someone told me I have a gift to capture people’s emotions when they watched me do a portrait and I found my purpose right there so now the challenge has been for me to combine this God given gift to capture someone’s mood, and environment, their psyche, to capture some of their essence, to mirror the world (and them, what I see).

Meeting Cedric and Jonette Egeli changed my life. I was introduced to them by the director of the Walforth Gallery. After seeing them paint (à la Hawthorne style) on the beach in Provincetown, I realized that this is what I had been looking for. I dropped everything to paint:

• my boyfriend
• the New York scene
• my apartment
• my charitable work (helping artists in need and people who were dying by donating any money we made from art to people struggling)

I then I realized I was one of the artists in need and in some way some part of me was dying and I had to strike out as an individual artist to be able to survive spiritually and emotionally and to offer the world what I have within me and through the paintbrush, through the portrait, through the landscape.

I want to be their mirror, to show them their beauty, or there inner angst, to acknowledge who they are, to let them be really seen and perhaps show some of their own essence. I don’t want to give myself too much credit here but it’s what I seek to do, where my talent lies.

It’s all these studies of anatomy and portraiture that is part of the quest. I have dedicated myself to trying to develop, to master technique, to combine truth and beauty.

Why not!

Because they love them.

To see and experience something of themselves in the portrait.

I would hope that they would look at it and at that moment it would take them to their journey. Maybe a beautiful place, maybe to see their own sadness, and pain and how they have transcended it. And of course the wonderful colors that delight. They are talisman.

• John Singer Sargent
• Degas
• Keiffer
• Cedric Egeli
• John Clayton
• Paul Rezka

Painting is like I’m trying to find the words to describe it…it’s the feeling of transferring part of your soul onto the canvass, to capture the fleeting, rare moment, like the butterfly we just saved out in the garden from the cat. It’s about capturing the moment, the beauty the angst, the exquisite. I feel like I’m a sunset.

• The struggle to make the brushstroke representative.
• The color to be accurate and expressive and relate/interact to what you are painting. To have a relationship.
• To tell a story, to dramatize something.

What kind of paint do you use?

Oil paint. A lot of time lately I love to paint on canvas, with palette, knives and brushes. I love to mix my own pigments. I love the smell and experience of it. Sometimes watercolor and pastels.

For doing children’s portraits pastels are more suitable. It’s like drawing with color directly, vibrantly.

When I first came out of Art School it was more about tones, but since I’ve found the impressionist palette or the Hensche palette.

We don’t really see black shadows, it’s more purple with touches of orange. It’s so much juicier than using blacks. It captures more than a photograph, more than we see even.

I think some of my work was influenced by the illustrations I saw as a child in the Soviet Union. The color was always very rich and they were well drawn. The illustrations were mostly children’s books. And Soviet era realism. And whimsy.

The children’s portraits are… they seem like an expression of the innocence of life or maybe a part of life that I’ve lost somewhere.

To see their beauty and show it to them and to their parents, or to paint them together as a family.

To capture… they are so pure and full of joy and it’s a delightful kind of time to capture and paint, treasure and cherish. Jonette Egeli, of course, has influenced my work and now it’s developing into something very personal. Children have very strong character even though they are children and it’s wonderful to mirror that to them, to show them some of who they are, to show the world. To show the world beauty, honour their uniqueness and forever appreciate the texture of paint.

For example, while sitting for a portrait commission on the beach the model expressed her love of butterflies; I painted one flying through the air and she and her mother were thrilled. And it was the most satisfying thing because children really show their joy… whatever they are feeling.

I do it mostly with a palette knife. I tend to make bolder colors. I enjoy the texture of paint. It’s so sensual. I can’t express why I love it but I love the texture, how it’s layered.

Veridian, Ochre, Cadmiums. They come mostly from the earth. I buy the pigments and grind them down and mix them with oil and they last and last.

Some things I was working on there and decided to dedicate myself to this search for beauty and truth.

My approach to painting is also sculptural. I enjoy describing things with planes and masses of color.

What are your subject matters?

• Landscapes
• Street scenes
• Houses
• Primarily people – portraits
• Flowers

I am a romantic.

Gold and Bold!

But there are times I have used driftwood or no frame at all.

It has to go with the painting and what it is trying to express. That matters to me.

I love painting outdoors. I love nature.. It’s my flower girl instinct. Even in the city I can feel nature.

How much do you sell your paintings for?

From a 100 dollars to thousands.

Yes. Somebody just commissioned me to do an innovative copy of a Rubens.

Portraits, of course! Posters for theatres in New York. One for a Dick Tracy show! Record covers for Cruise Control. Ruth Gerson.

I want my own gallery and show like-minded artists.

Portrait commissions. People. People as they actually are, what I see in them, not always formal or stiff portraits.

• Children.
• People who are passionate and expressive – even if they are lost in some kind of debauchery.
• Young or old.
• In their natural setting.
• A street kid or a homeless man.
• Paint a couple of series of your favorite people in their places of work.
• I want to reach deeper than the pretty picture.
• I want to have a shared experience with someone.
• I want to paint them where THEY ARE.