December 2021 Issue 1

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                                    Inspiration Is All Around Us

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                                                                          by Jackie Bush-Turner

 

Inspiration for my artwork comes from the natural landscape all around us.
Subjects for my featured show at Collective Visions Gallery in December include fish, sky, and wetlands.
 

The nuances of light and shadow, tidal changes, seasonal transitions, and life cycles all provide an unending source of impressions for me to translate onto paper, wood, linoleum, and canvas. 
My subjects remain the same, while my mediums and techniques evolve.
 

In the past, I found pastels to be the perfect medium.  The Pandemic (2020) brought a change to my artwork.  I decided I needed a new way of expressing concepts of life and death that were highlighted in my thoughts.  I utilized the salmon and their life cycle as a means of expressing these concepts by tracing their journey of life.  I found printmaking to be a good medium for this change. 
I have completed several woodcuts and linocuts. 
 

I continue to work in pastels, but with a new twist.  I began these new pastel paintings with an extensive underpainting of watercolor.  I used a variety of pastel papers to see how the surface changed the overall look of the painting.  I repeated nearly the same view of the wetlands. 
I emphasized different aspects such as, time of day, the season, and the tide in each one.
 

The newest medium I am exploring is acrylic paint on canvas.  I returned to my wetland themes. 
I found working on a 24” x 30” canvas pushed me to convey a more timeless monumental feeling.  Working in the acrylics was quite different than the pastels.  With the pastels I select a color from a wide variety of choices, then apply and basically finger paint.  The acrylics needed to be mixed and then applied with a brush or instrument.  Mixing was fun, but I found that acrylic paint dries really fast.   
 

This show represents to me a summation of my past and present artwork.  Along with the new work I have completed for this show, I am including several older freestanding sculptures.  As always, my subjects are based on memories and my feelings about them.