The upper horse will be painted like the one I had when I was a baby, the lower one will be painted like the first one I did when I was an adult ant the background will represent all of the things I've painted along my journey between the two.
The large horse belongs to my parents and is just visiting me for a while until I've finished working with it. The blank horse itself was given to me by the guy who used to build a lot of the furniture that I used to paint and it pushed me along on the journey that began to put it all together for me.
When I was young I always used to color horses red and never quite knew why until I found a baby picture of me playing with a dala horse. I knew that one of my grandpa's had come from Sweden but my family never talked about it much so I guess it was floating around in the back of my mind somewhere.
A wildly painted chair that I did back in the 1990's had a couple of red horses between the slats of the back that I'd painted red and added some dots and brushstrokes to but I still hadn't quite figured it out. That chair appeared in the VSA Gallery Calendar in Washington D.C. and the article that I'd written about the comments my neighbors made as I painted it out on my front porch led to the "world chair" that I designed and painted for Woman's Day Magazine.
Appearing in that magazine changed my life, and nearly ruined it. The Galleries said "Oh, she does crafts" and the craft magazines that had been publishing me said "she's too artistic" so I "fell between the cracks" and didn't belong anywhere for a long time.
Thank goodness for a changing world and the internet that recognizes me as a Folk Artist with her own place in the world. I'm true to myself, paint the things I've always loved and thanks to the blog and my stores I can even make a little money at it from time to time.
I can't "make a living" but I have made a life that I can be proud of...whether anyone "gets it" or not.
...and I can surround myself with designs on all sorts of useful products which makes me happier than I've ever been.
When people used to ask "what do you want to be when you grow up?" I always used to say "a dixie cup" they used to think that odd because it's just a brand of paper cups/glasses that everyone used to have. What I meant was that I wanted to be the cute design on them that cheers people up when they're not feeling well. I never cared whether my art would be in galleries or not. I just wanted to brighten up my corner of the world a bit. No wonder everyone always thinks I'm weird. I am-thank goodness!
No comments:
Post a Comment