Elevating the Spirit - Finding Heart Painting

+Australian qualified visual artist and (un-attached) secondary teacher. Currently self-employed in a small retail art & framing business. + Grew up on a country farm, near Hall's Gap in the Grampians of Victoria, Australia. + Between formal qualifications have worked and traveled interstate gaining life experiences. + Settled in Innisfail, Far North Qld in 1985 to teach in a Secondary school and to raise a family with Far North Qld indigenous husband. + Have served voluntarily in the community in many art roles/positions i.e. as an administrator, steward, judge, organizer + Coordinator for many professional development workshops, local exhibitions + Served in curatorial roles + Flying Arts - Innisfail regional representative. + Noted as an exemplary art role model in the local community, Dr. Irene Amos OAM, once described me as "a missionary for the visual arts" in the rural isolated region where I reside. + Parallel to a long art teaching career, is a continual commitment to developing my professional art practice in several directions. +Have numerous drawing, painting, fibre and sculpture awards and regional exhibition achievements behind me. + Currently self employed > founder, co-owner art director/manager of Artropica Innisfail Studio Gallery, a retail art and framing business, which has successfully run and operated since 1997. + >>> 'Cairns Post' reviewer, Karen van Harskamp, says about my exhibition work: "In seeking and making meaning people draw on patterns - of form, action and feeling - to define the indescribable and seemingly random nature of life into recognizable, manageable truths. 'Elevating the Spirit' seeks to transform this process into a tangible presence.The media chosen by the artist is often as fascinating as the end result - 'Tokens, 3 x 7 = 21' is a collage work of acrylic, linen thread, rice paper and cotton fabric patterns from favourite old clothing, fused on to a grid pattern across canvas. An exploration of how fragments can constitute the whole but the whole transcends the fragments, this is the art of association. Madsen-Pietsch's primary derived palette is evocative but subtly manifested, enhanced by the primal humanity of her execution...The mark of the artist imbues the works with unique appeal, a quality attractive to many in a mass-produced age.