Playing Favorites: Chapter 4

Welcome to the 5th edition of The Pulse -- The State of the Art -- a survey in words and pictures of the online artist community. The Pulse is a collaborative project that aims to introduce you to new artists, help you get to know familiar faces even more, and allow you access into the creative hearts and minds of a very talented crew of individuals. More than 130 artists have answered a series of questions which make up The Pulse. Their responses will be presented in a series of online posts which will run every Sunday.

Style File, Techniques & Tools, Master Class, and It's Still Life were the first four projects posted and links to all these posts can be found on the sidebar of my blog. The fifth project, Playing Favorites, continues now...

Participants were asked to: share a picture of a favorite piece of art that you have created and explain its meaning to you...
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Angela Cartwright

"I picked this piece called Soul Searching because I was deep into exploring the use of different materials, I was writing my first book about art In This House, and I was completely immersed in who I was, why I was, what I wanted and where I was going. This art was in my exhibit Soul Dwellings and it was a turning point in the discovery of myself. I look at these pieces now and smile while I contemplate how much I have grown."

Amy Duncan

"Keep Going was one of the first multi-media collage pieces I created and it remains one of my most popular images. Everything about its composition just fell into place. The phrase of Keep Going can mean different things to different people so its interpretation is open...which keeps the dialogue going...which is what I strive for."

Bleubeard and Elizabeth

"I'm not sure if Her Colorful Ways is a favorite but it exemplifies how far I have come from a composition standpoint. It also shows how much I enjoy adding sewing to my mixed media pieces."

William J. Charlebois

"I created this multi-media painting while taking an online class from Mystele Kirkeeng called Gut Art. I was finally able to totally let go and create physical art and enjoy the process while doing it."

JoAnnA Pierotti

"This is a painting I did back in 2004. I painted this for a friend's birthday because he owned this truck. I think it was around the year 2001 that a friend asked me to paint something on a trunk for her baby son. I didn't know what to paint for a boy, since most of my work was on the feminine side. Her husband challenged me and I painted an old truck. This was the second truck I painted using acrylic."

Lani Gerity

"Here's an image that I concocted with an old photo, coloring it and then adding it to this background, adding the house and the sheep as well. Then I added a 'Through the Viewfinder' layer for texture and depth. I also used some 'Flypaper Textures' (really super). When I look at this picture, for some reason I feel quite happy and hopeful, like we are encouraging each other to do more, create more, be more, take more risks... We are encouraging each other to be awake and alive. I love that!"

Diana Trout

Dreaming (1999), a triptych, is a deeply personal piece that my daughter inspired and it will go to her someday. For me, it is about everything that is possible if you dream. It's about the earth as well, how we feel about it - almost as if we humans are sneaking up on our unsuspecting planet and doing harm."

Marsha Jorgensen

"Small Me is a favorite because it is a deeply personal acknowledgement of something that happened long ago and the acceptance of how it will always be with me. It takes guts to acknowledge some things in our lives and facing it is a victory of sorts."

Sarah Fishburn

"These are art journal pages finished in the fall of 2001for the original True Colors project. 'I count myself among the blessed for evening squandered drunk with sunset' is my personal prayer for gratitude for life, with all of its curses and blessings. I used a combo of techniques - image transfers, metallic paint, rubber stamps, transparencies, and attached a stitched booklet of a few stanzas by other poets, including the following lines of Emma Lazarus from her poem The New Colossus:

Here at our sea-washed,
sunset gates shall stand
A mighty women with a torch,
whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightening,
and her name
Mother of Exiles"

Stephanie Hilvitz

"Sanctuary, this was quite a departure from what I had been doing, but also came directly from journal explorations. It is a photograph of my daughter's beautiful hands and was done for a show that I ended up being rejected from but took such inspiration from the prospectus which had to do with creating sanctuary that it sparked many other works.
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Next "Playing Favorites" will be posted on Sunday, September 16th.