I was very much interested
and influenced by what came to be known as abstract expressionism.
What happened when I left New York and married my late husband, what that
I found myself an provincial town.
Here I went from the Lower East Side filled with pushcarts and
loads a subject material for popular culture that I work from, and
I came into it provincial backwater.
I fell tremendously isolated,
I didn't have any friends here.
I think that, looking back I did three
Pallas Athena paintings in that period.
I think I chose Athena
for myself because she was
full-blown from the head of Zeus. She'd had no
nurturing, and she was an intellectual Goddess.
I was fighting my way
to find an abstract expressionism, my own voice.
This painting
is completely abstract. The painting is the image,
every part is just as important as every other part.
The painting projects
from the surface rather than receeding as it did with
perspective.
I'm a process artist.
You start off with an idea, and then ideas keep coming
as you're creating, and eventually the painting tells you what it wants.
Every artist has a
certain gift that is natural to them.
I'm a natural colorist but I had to teach myself how to draw.
That's the kind of thing that
every artist keeps secret. That you work with your gift
to try to strengthen the things that aren't your natural gift.
I got onto a period working from,
from the master. I have also worked from
coloring books and papered dolls.
I deicded i'd paint two brides, one American
and one African. Bridal theme is something that is sort of
one of my empty ritual ideas. It just seems
ludicrous to me to go through all of that
fuss.
I paint things that I'm against,
to try to make them wonderful, very often.
To give them the magic that they don't have.
I was never conscious of
being a female artist, and I resent being called a woman artist.
I'm an artist.
Actually, I don't like being called an artist anymore.
I'm a painter.