One of my most popular pieces from my “Unlimited” series has always been October: She Is Full Of Curiosity, and it sold the first time it was exhibited outside of the 12 part Art Prize installation. I have always been an avid reader myself, and via a book club suggestion earlier this year I read the book “The Woman They Could Not Silence” cover to cover within about a week. This book tells the story of Elizabeth Packard, the woman who in the 1860s changed the laws around involuntary institutionalization after she was unjustly committed for years for having religious differences from her clergyman husband (Interestingly enough, the way she looked at religion, faith, and a personal relationship with God is very similar to how we look at it today – Sometimes a belief being seen as “right” or “wrong” has much more to do with historical context and the current social conventions rather than actual morality. He also refused to openly condemn slavery which understandably, his devout wife had a huge problem with.). Amongst her list of accusations for why she was not sane such as a disdain for her husband and “monomania” was also excessive reading. This was apparently a common proof of a woman’s insanity in the 19th century, so honestly the Disney adaption of Beauty and the Beast wasn’t that far off when they had a whole song devoted to everyone in the village thinking Belle was weird because she was literate.

As a bibliophile myself since early childhood, I decided the perfect series of “smalls” would be a series of women with books. I have always loved working smaller, creating intimate pieces that people have to walk right up to. Recently, I have been giving myself more room to work with and enlarged my scale for art I am creating for exhibit, but I miss the satisfaction of being able to finish a piece in a couple of days. So, I figured why not work on some smaller pieces at the same time as my larger projects to break up the energy! Each ‘book title’ will inform what is going on around the figure. All figures will be drawn with colored pencil, with mixed media integrated into their clothing and environment like fabric, interesting illustrations from art books, metallic papers, and pieces of junk jewelry.

For this first piece, ‘Fish Out Of Water’, I wanted to play with the funny idiom of feeling out of place and out of one’s comfort zone, while depicting a woman who nevertheless appeared completely confident and dare I say a bit defiant. Is it she who is out of place in the environment, or the environment that is out of step with her?

This has been a theme I also visited in an earlier mixed media drawing, Titled “Actually, It Is This World That Is Too Small” featuring a claustrophobic giant figure sitting crouched at the top of a stairwell. Fun fact, this piece got removed from a show I did at a local restaurant back in the day because it apparently creeped people out! Oh well, subjectivity and all that. 10 years later, through practice I’m able to use collage around my drawings in a way that the depth is still not lost so I don’t end up with a flattened image.

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Lastly, if you have any book recommendations send them my way!