Playing Favorites: Chapter 9

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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Theresa Wells Stifel

"She is a new favorite as I enjoy the tension between awkward and beautiful"

Marit Barentsen

"If it be your will. The label 'scrapbooker' never fit me well, and it took me some time to discover why. I found the answer when I found 'art journaling.' That was what I was doing all the time, but in an inhibited way. I somehow knew that what I did wasn't the traditional 'scrapbooking' but I had no clue which way my 'art' should go. After my discovery, I started my first art journal, using songs of Leonard Cohen as my inspiration. This page is from that journal, and it was an eye-opener to new ways of creating."

Katherine Labbe AKA Miz Katie

"Be Still, Child. This comes from a vivid memory I have of my mom, and how she would tell me to stand outside in the snow with a tiny piece of bread on my hand. She said if I was quiet and still enough, a bird would land on me, and I would get to feed him. Aw! Of course I wanted to do that! But I was a hyper little thing and I could never make myself stand still long enough...so I had to create a painting. There! Be still and let the bird land in your hand, child."

Pam Carriker

"I was feeling the DaVinci muse calling and love the feeling this simple sketch has. I've scanned and reused the rough sketch of this face in many other pieces of art and even had it made into a stamp. I love that I've been able to paint it, use it in my journal, stamp it, and create many pieces of art all from one sketch."

Sharmon Davidson

"Dimensional Shift is about intense change, and probably came out of an effort on my party to make sense of the chaos that was my life at the time. The map on the left is the physical world, which gives way to the cosmos and then spiritual realm, symbolized by the sri yantra (configuration of triangles) in the background. The gold figure, though torn apart, is spiritually intact - the chakras are not broken, and the wings indicate the ability to transform and move freely between realities. The darker figure emerging from it is simply the self in another dimension."

Lottie Anderson

"I have finally broken away from painting or mark making to create what the figure looks like but how the figure s feel to me. I am starting to let go, to do less thinking about the work and instead responding to what is happening on the support."

Jacki Long

"She was four. Not a beauty, yet not all the way plain. Tiny, not tall. Brown hair and browner eyes. Probably not unlike any four year old, except for her quiet intensity. A seriousness uncommon to those so young.

A single child, long by handsome parents. But they had their own problems, both individually and together which left the girls with lots of alone time. Time for thoughts and dreams. Maybe, in some ways, she was older than either her parents,but she seemed to accept that as a given.

She could sit alone in her parents closet occupied by her thoughts, oblivious to the shouting coming from the kitchen. She wasn't there as punishment, rather by choice.  She had visions of places far away, exotic people and locals, where she had been or would be..."

Natasha White

"This was a painting that was entered into my first juried art exhibition to celebrate Matariki, the Maori New Year. It is titles Coming Home Bravely and it is about new beginnings and finding our way. Charging forth bravely on stormy seas and having faith that there is a guide bigger than us directing the seas that surround us, bringing us home to ourselves. This come out very differently to how I had originally seen it in my head, but I am glad I followed my intuition and let it come out this way."

Lelainia N. Lloyd

"West Coast. This self portrait was taken on Mother's Day with my then brand new Canon Rebel and it was the first time I'd used a DSLR camera. I surprised myself by capturing something that is so quintessentially me and speaks so clearly to my life here on the West Coast of Canada. To me it's a piece of visual poetry. What made me even more proud of this image was that I did nothing to it - what you see is what I shot."

dorit Elisha

"This collage represents me, my personality and my artistic style. It is done on a vintage map, and although it is very large, it serves as a journal page that demonstrates the busy life of a women artist who is also a mother, a wife, a professional worker etc. Life indeed for me is a five ring circus, which is also the name of my blog."

Kelly Kilmer

"I work in journal form so my work tends to be very persona;. I have built up a visual vocabulary of symbols and images that speak fro me. I am always searching for peace (both in myself and the world around me). This pages visualizes one of those fragile moments where I am searching, yet as I search, I am attaining a small moment of peace as I work quietly in my journal."

Lynn Cohen

"I am Descended from. It's the black and white with photos of the women in my family who came before me and my grand daughter. They are my two grand mothers, maternal and paternal aunts, and mother. The words around the small art quilt say 'I am descended from women who sewed and knit drew painted and photographed...I pass on the you in me to my grandchildren with love...Thank you grandmothers mothers and aunts'."

Liz Hampton-Derivan

"A Night in June was created for a Day of the Dead show at Central School Project Art Gallery, Bisbee, Arizona, in 2009. It is a tribute to my mother who dies of cancer in 2005. The piece is a mixed media/encaustic installation incorporating photographs of my mother, her poetry, and things he loved, such as chocolate, champagne, and white roses. It was a meaningful way for me to express my love/feelings for my mother."

Erin Perry

"I mounted a solo show last year called The Pity of War, featuring mixed media collages of WWI and WWII. These all brought up poignant feelings, but one piece in particular - What Price Safety, What Price Love - grabs my heart every time I look at it. Three young children waiting at King's Cross Station London in 1940, to be taken to the country, away from the horrors of bombing and away from the only home they've ever known. At the show, evacuees, now in their 70s and 80s stood before this piece with tears in their eyes."

Anne M. Huskey-Lockard

"Art, science, medicine and life used to be intertwined. From the days of the Staff of Asclepius to the present, humanity continues to seek healing on many levels but ultimately we are finite creatures. Art is healing."

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Next "Playing Favorites" will be posted on Sunday, October 21st.