The Artist’s Way 12.03

Starting a new project is scary for me – what if nobody gets it? What if it doesn’t say something that’s worth anything? Then, as serendipity has it, this was yesterday’s excerpt from Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way, Everyday: A Year of Creative Living. Hooray, I feel connected again! Whew, back in the nest with the rest of you birds 🙂

“We are like songbirds. When one of us gives voice to our true
nature, it is contagious and others soon give tongue as
well. There is an infallibility to the law that as we each
seek to express what we are longing to say, there is always
someone or something that is longing to hear precisely
what we have expressed. We do not live or create in isolation.”

Grid of Nests – Richard Barnes, 2000/Artstor

Artist’s Statement

Artist’s Statement: Lyn Belisle
The Arrow and the Song – 2111
My work is a synthesis of images across time presented in a contemporary context using pages and scans from old art books and museum catalogs in combination with my own digital photographs. As an undergraduate art major, my influences were Jasper Johns, Larry Rivers, Cy Twombly and other abstract expressionists whose collage-like paintings intrigued by hinting at snippets of untold stories and myths.
I found that by combining fine prints of paintings by the old Masters with my archetypal photos of fruit, eggs, and other symbolic objects, I could create a rather mysterious story that transcends time. The expressions on the faces of the Renaissance men and women who modeled for paintings are rich and complex and, when chosen out of their original context, lend a humanity that speaks to the contemporary viewer.
I combine state-of-the-art digital photographic manipulation with traditional materials such as gold leaf and walnut ink to bring the images together visually and thematically. The titles of the works hint at the story as I see it, but each piece invites the viewer’s own interpretation.