On another front, abstract artist, Maxine Masterfield, who's work has inspired me from the beginning, celebrated 6 decades of creating art and will celebrate her 80th birthday this year. Now that's a legacy worth leaving. Not only do I love her work, I love her attitude and spirit. From her book "Painting the Spirit of Nature"
"I've never felt that any artist could improve on nature, but I've always felt compelled to interpret visually how nature has inspired and fascinated me with its beauty. Creating art that reflects the beauty of nature and the feelings it generates within you, is possible without years of study. My method of painting is for those who are not interested in drawing detailed pictures of what they see and can photograph. And my tools are whatever will create the image of a feeling or experience...
"I always felt resistant to the instructions that preached a strict adherence to traditional methods I did not feel comfortable with...It is only by being inventive and trying unusual tools that I survived as an artist."
And this quote allied me to her spirit more than anything else :-) She was on a panel with a famous traditional artist and as she listened to him critique various works...
"But after a while I found myself defending the very works he voiced the strongest objections to. He was fighting to preserve the tight subjectivity that artist were taught for eons all over the world, while I was encouraging a free, intuitive approach to art that exceeded these conservative perimeters to reach out for a more sensuous and exciting reality."
Seeing as I got such a late start in beginning to paint, this is my fourth year, I am hoping that I will be painting when I'm 80 as Maxine is, what a woman, what an artist!
