From My Roots to My Leaves

I created this piece for the 2016 Art Teacher Exhibition at the Center for Visual Arts gallery in Denver, Colorado. The show was called Wayfinding to Sustainability and was meant to investigate what things help to sustain us as teachers and artists. When I began brainstorming this concepts I began to visualize my supports as a living breathing growing thing, such as a tree. I get the most amount of my support, inspiration, and energy from people. From there I began to think about who were the people at my roots, who gave me the most grounding and support. These people I knew would always be there for me. Each root is a different section of my family, my mother and step-father, my husband, and my father. Then I imagined my trunk growing up to the sky and who would bring my trunk comfort and strength, those are my two cats. Finally in my leaves were the people that fed my leaves, the lights that touched me and helped me nourish. Shining onto my leaves are portraits of friends, co-workers, and my yoga community.
I wanted to use oil paint  to create this piece because it was the media that first ignited my passion in painting. I grew to love oil paint and the impressionist style of textured brush strokes in my time studying at the Marchutz School of painting & Drawing in Aix-en-Provence, France. For the portraits I wanted to use stencils I created of my figures to spray paint onto the canvas. At that point in my artist journey I did not feel very confident that I could accurately create a portrait of them so used these technique instead. 

Creating stencils of the different people in my support system.

Experimenting with spray painting the portraits onto collaged leaves in black.

Experimenting with spray painting the portraits onto collaged leaves in black & gold. Inevitably I decided that the black and gold was stronger visuals and message, but the collaged surface was too distracting, so I spray painted to portraits directly onto the painted canvas instead.

My wonderful support people with me at the show opening.