Rowing Through The Memories Painting

My art is inspired by music, nature, dreams and random shapes on the wall. I am a professional actress and self-taught visual artist. My mom studied art and when I was 4 years old and living in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, NY, I found a box of her oil pastels and outlined the various shapes within the plaster on the walls through out the apartment. Although my mother appreciated my choice in colors and creativity, she did not appreciate this exploration on the apartment walls and thus my career as a muralist ended. My adult art journey began with digital pastels and digital blending stumps on an iPad. I began to incorporate a few drawing techniques I had learned as an undergraduate student and began creating art digitally, once again meditating on shapes, and color. It was a purchase of oil pastels, however, that began my real journey. The tactile sensation of the creaminess of an oil pastel, the sound of a brush being dipped in water or watching wax transform cannot be replaced digitally. The combination of tactile sensation, shapes and sound, whisk me away on a mental vacation. Visual art is a form of expression that I have found incredibly healing. My process is purely experimental and spontaneous. I begin each piece often moving my brush, oil stick, or whatever medium I am working with at the time, in reaction to the rhythm of a song or scenery outside. My work has been described as evocative and whimsical.