Celebrating Female Artists

This week, I hosted an evening for all my students, where we celebrated woman and creativity and watched the movie "Who Does She Think She Is".

It got me thinking, again, about all the amazing female artists out there, past and present; and how we have to encourage and celebrate them. The fact that so many of my students related to this film and felt that they were discouraged from creating art in life or didn’t have time to do it until later on in life, shows just how important this film is.  If you haven’t seen this movie already, I highly suggest you do. And if you are a creative person and have that spark and longing in your soul to create - then PLEASE do! Don’t wait! Don’t let life, society, spouses or children get in the way of you expressing yourself. Draw, dance, paint, doodle, write, sketch…just do it!! Do it for you.

In light of these thoughts and that evening,  I would like to share  with you  an artist whose work I was privileged to have seen  at the MOMA this past summer- Elizabeth Catlett. While at the museum, I took a picture of her sculpture because I was so moved by it.  I wanted to learn more about her.  When I looked her up I was blown away by her and her work. When I showed my mom the picture she said that if I was a sculptor, that is how she imagines my art would look!

Here are the pictures that I took at the museum

And here is the link to the picture online at the MOMA- 

http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?

MOMA Collection- Mother and Child

Personally, I like my picture more!

Elizabeth Catlett was an American born, Mexican sculptor and printmaker. Her art celebrated the heroic strength and endurance of African American and Mexican working class women. This sculptor "Mother and Child" was completed during the year she returned to sculpting after the birth of her third son. This does remind me a bit of myself! What is it about that third child? My paintings and style also really developed after the birth of my third child- my daughter. That’s when I started to paint more regularly again, and to develop my style.  The emotion in this sculpture reminds me of my work in the fact that it captures that beautiful fleeting moment between mother and child. I guess that's why I fell so in love with this work of art!

Here is another link to the sculpture online-

http://www.jonathanboos.com/artworks/artworks.php?id=38

The last sentence in the above link to her work is so insightful and meaningful and I love it:

“This tender and protective embrace suggests the vulnerability of a mother but does not diminish her strength"!!!

 Here are some more images of her work that I found online and fell in love with.Enjoy!

New Painting

Looking Up…

I just finished another oil painting in my Tree Series. I am very happy with the process which I went through painting this. These paintings have helped me deal with my life the past 3 years; and as I have grown, I feel my paintings, my technique and my style has also grown. I painted this tree in spirals, as usual, but notice the spirals start small at the top, and grow larger toward the bottom of the painting. I wanted to give the feeling of looking up and through the tree; up to the light in the sky. The sun was coming through the branches and shining on me. I wanted to capture that feeling.

Next week is my 40^th birthday and as I look back on my life and where I am today, I feel very blessed and lucky.  I just read in "The Element" by Ken Robinson, that lucky people often make their luck because of attitudes. We all create and shape the realities of our own lives to an extraordinary extent. If you just wait for good things to happen, then you will be lucky to encounter them. He says that our ability to look at situations in a different way and take advantage of situations that come along is what makes the difference. This is why I say that I am both lucky and blessed. I have done lot of soul searching these past years and have tried to work on myself. One of the things that I try to do is to see the world differently; to be open to people, to connect, not to close myself off or be afraid of the world. When you make a conscious decision to be open and to connect, it is amazing the things that will happen to you and the people you will meet. So I guess that is the lucky part. The part I have brought to my world by opening my heart and eyes to things and people I didn’t before. But, I am also blessed. Blessed, because I do believe that even if our own actions bring the blessings into our lives, we are blessed because of our actions. I believe in a higher energy that looks over me. That is what brings these events together through our actions. It is not random. I am blessed with so many things from the people in my life to the way my life is unfolding. So I would like to start this New Year with a blessing to everyone-

May your actions bring you luck and may you be blessed!

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