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Latest | For the Seventh Generation
Exhibition at the
Lincoln City Cultural Center
from July 13 - July 17, 2022!
“When we started 7th Generation, that was spectacular. Documenting what the environment looks like is more important now than it has ever been, in 50 years the coast could look drastically different because of rising tides and erosion. For me, it feels really historical in trying to replicate my environment.”
“I love doing watercolors, and that’s what I would gravitate toward. In fact, when we first started thinking about this project, I was thinking in terms of watercolor. And then I thought, ‘You know, this is a great opportunity to relearn a medium, and for her to do a new medium we’ve been wanting to do,’ so we decided to take a leap there.”
“Sometimes I think, ‘I like what’s there, but it’s not enough,’ and I will look through my sketchbooks and find an image that seems to mesh with it. And I use pastels and do a drawing on top of the mono-print.”
“I think that’s what it’s all about, really. You were saying earlier, ‘It’s hard to change peoples’ minds,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, it is!’ But it’s less hard to change peoples’ hearts. When we use art — whether it’s dance, music, or visual art — we can bypass some of our brains’ stuckness and have a new experience. It can help to open us up to emotions that really can change us.”
Artists | For the Seventh Generation
“When we started 7th Generation, that was spectacular. Documenting what the environment looks like is more important now than it has ever been, in 50 years the coast could look drastically different because of rising tides and erosion. For me, it feels really historical in trying to replicate my environment.”
“I like simplified shapes. They speak to me. I like finding relationships of simple shapes and making them evocative, because the spaces between things are as important as the objects themselves: they lead an eye in a direction, they take you from one place to another, they suggest things, they look like other things and yet they’re not. All they are, are simplified shapes.”
“I have a connection to the thing I am looking at. It’s coming into my eyes, through my hands and onto the paper. But then it’s bouncing off the paper and going into your eyes, mind, and heart and you get to interpret it. As an artist, you can be conscious of all of that, this loop. It’s kind of heavy and it blows my mind...”
“When I use my acrylic more in water color mode, canvas is useful because things happen that I don’t expect. When painting on wood, it doesn’t provide me that sort of serendipity. For canvas, I want it to absorb a little unevenly, let it puddle interestingly, and then work from that.”
“The art of Scientific Illustration translates information into visual images so that we can better understand the world around us. I am attempting by my artwork to help others better understand the flora and fauna that surrounds us, ranging from the macro understanding of the skin of a frog to the vistas that form an ecosystem.”
“Sometimes I do a fairly literal rendition of what I’ve photographed. But other times I will make a hybrid. Recently, I did one where I took three different photographs, from three different days and I combined them into one painting of the same place. It’s kind of something that you would never see in reality, and yet it works.”
“I think you have to have an education, culture, and community instilled within you before you can do art as activism. Which is why the Coastal Watchers and ‘For the Seventh Generation’ is so cool: it has intergenerational community engagement.”
“I tend to want to be very clean and very purposeful about the use of color. I avoid trying to blend and be squishy, I want to be clean and sharp-edged, as blended elements don’t communicate well.”
“I do not want to over-explain my work. My work is a personal mythology. My first thoughts are a little overwhelming because I have this intense imagination and all of these ideas of what I would think would make a brazen and powerful work. I have this complete arsenal and the hardest part about making a painting is pinpointing that exact thing it is going to be. I can capture those raw emotions.”
“The long-term systemic changes almost always come from art: books, movies, tv, paintings, anything along those lines. That’s what changes peoples’ thoughts over the long-term. I’m trying to find ways to incorporate my art into causes that concern me.”
“I’m intensely influenced by light, and I think that’s because I grew up right on the water. The light here bounces from the clouds into the air, it’s a bit more bouncy than other places where it's absorbed into the ground. Because the water is all around us.”
“When I paint landscapes, it’s because I have a question about its inhabitants. Usually, humans’ relationships with things in their environments — often things that feel out of place or feel like they aren’t defined by the typical nature-culture binary that we’re taught.”
“At the base of all the artwork I create is drawing. This is where I start / and this is how I end a piece-no matter what the medium. To / paint in ink and oil is to study color, texture, impression, poetry all in one. / It is immediate and fresh to work with. Other art can follow.”
“When looking at the subject matter, whether that’s a landscape or a portrait, you’ve got a margin of time to figure out what’s going on there, when, and how. Years ago, someone told me it takes 100 starts. You just gotta keep starting paintings.”
“The interesting thing about my research was that I have 23 colors in my palette, and I use the same palette for my oils or my watercolors. 11 are opaque, 12 are transparent, and 11 are primary based or biased, with 8 of them being warm and 3 being cool. Now that just sounds like a lot of thinking, but all I did was create my own color charts!”
“These are large paintings, two by four feet, and my paintings in plein air are small. They are tiny. Sometimes as small as 5” x 7” — I call them baby paintings. I can capture, very quickly, all the conditions of the environment in an hour, hour and a half. I try to go a little faster so I can capture the moment for the larger panel.”
“I’m always taking photographs. Even just going out for a walk. I’ve probably taken pictures of the same subject matter, in the same area of my neighborhood, dozens of times. I’m getting close to tens of dozens of times. It’s always looking different: when it’s raining, when it’s sunny, or when you have golden light.”
“Color is intuitive. I’m interested in color theory, but it always just comes back to what feels right. I do better when I don’t think too much, I just go for, ‘Okay, this needs to be red.’ When I overthink the color, that’s when it gets muddy and complicated.”
“That journey is what makes it beautiful. I’m usually thinking of a story associated with the drawing, even if it’s abstract, even if it’s a digital piece or something a little beyond the traditional canvas. There is a story behind it and it might be a personal experience, like a memory that I’m making.”
“The area where we live is something that we need to preserve, it is something we need to protect for future generations. We do that not only by making sure that we don’t litter and erode the landscape, but also by learning about the history of it, and making sure that we pass on the history to our future generations.”
“I love doing watercolors, and that’s what I would gravitate toward. In fact, when we first started thinking about this project, I was thinking in terms of watercolor. And then I thought, ‘You know, this is a great opportunity to relearn a medium, and for her to do a new medium we’ve been wanting to do,’ so we decided to take a leap there.”
“With Depoe Bay, I have such an intimate connection with that place. Especially hanging over the bridge and looking at whales up close. I think the Depoe Bay painting — the painting I did for this project — was the first one I’ve done where I put a human-made element as a major part of the composition.”
“I explore the frontier, the edge of intimacy or conflict. I go on pilgrimages where I’m the plein-air painter, the prophet or the fool in the midst of some devotion. I collaborate with the public and with other artists from lands afar. I explore art-making as an embodied spiritual practice and as a means of democratic participation.”
“I think a lot about composition. It drives me nuts when I see a really nice painting with an object dead center and all you look at is that thing. I want your eye to wander around the painting. I want you to think about the thirds, color, contrast, objects, things like that, so you’re always finding new things in the painting.”
“Sometimes I think, ‘I like what’s there, but it’s not enough,’ and I will look through my sketchbooks and find an image that seems to mesh with it. And I use pastels and do a drawing on top of the mono-print.”
“Once again, there is that push and pull. There are people who want to work towards peaceful resolution to these issues, but they also carry with them the trauma of all the things that happened, all the violence that’s been done. It’s challenging. But I felt like when I worked with artists, it felt like there was a greater connection. It seemed to work as both a release valve, and a unifying force.”
“For instance, in landscape: I like hills that roll and winds that howl. So I exaggerate things, because I don’t want to have a picture of a place, I want a feeling of a place. Part of that is made up and part of that you construct the background of it, so I put the whole picture together in a matter of days but it takes me a matter of months to finish it. I add to it, and I move it until I get the feeling I want out of it."
“It is often my goal, to try to capture the energy of what I am experiencing. Like the light is constantly changing and you just have to kind of let your experience take over, and sometimes let the happy accidents happen.”
“I paint with a painting knife usually rather than a brush. My calligraphy has gotten looser in the past couple of years and I’m going with that. It allows me to get into the rhythm and movement of the waves or the wind and the grasses.”
“When you’re putting that color down, you just gotta get it out there. So the brush marks happen. You know, when you’re out there in the elements, there could be dirt, and sticks, and insects, and the more the better. It’s just whatever happens. The line and composition is important though. You know, I want the yellow to be at the top so we’re feeling optimistic with the sunshine.”
“I think that’s what it’s all about, really. You were saying earlier, ‘It’s hard to change peoples’ minds,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, it is!’ But it’s less hard to change peoples’ hearts. When we use art — whether it’s dance, music, or visual art — we can bypass some of our brains’ stuckness and have a new experience. It can help to open us up to emotions that really can change us.”
Home
International Mural by Mail
For the Seventh Generation
Artists
Artist Application
For the Seventh Generation 2022 | Recap
Coastal Virtual Photo Exhibition
This Week in the Supreme Court
Festival of Migrating Crows
Tree Emergency Response Team
Call for Artists
Contact