Jacqueline Madsen Art
  • Home
  • About
  • 2015 Work
  • Gallery - Figures
  • Gallery - Fin & Feathers
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • 2016 New Work

​

Passion to Create

3/22/2016

0 Comments

 
The most enjoyable thing for me about working as a full time artist is that I can create my own schedule, and no matter what I am doing, it is answering my creative drive.  If I go out to the beach with my dogs, I always bring something home with me: wood for carving, rocks, bones, beach glass, sand in my pant cuffs. 

This winter, I have been exploring the book "The Organic Artist" and finding it so inspiring! I have gathered some mountain ash and alder twigs for charcoal - still seeking some willow and black birch.  I have made some drawing pens with bamboo and some of my own paint brushes already.  I am eager to make some pigments for ink and to add to beeswax for crayons.  There is something so inspiring and rewarding about making ones own tools. My friend Coral and I share that enthusiasm. I have made my own bone awl (after she showed me the one she made for basket making) - it works great!  I made another basketry tool with a rib bone and piece of spruce root. I have transferred all of my hemp twine to wooden spools made from driftwood roots and branches.  Excited by the traditional willow basketry, I gathered alder and salmonberry to try my hand at this type of basket making.  My first attempt did not work out - with the alders. They are much larger than willow. I think the salmonberry canes will work better!  

Even though these tasks are seen as "craft" - working with my hands and making my own tools or making baskets, gathering the materials - those tasks get my mind into creative mode, and it is a meditative and part of the thought process of making art.  I don't get the same pleasure from many other activities - other than cooking.  
 
Daylight hours are rapidly growing.  This time of year - spring - with the birds returning, buds ready to open, crocus blooming - it brings the sap of life into me as well.  My brain cells are alive with it!  Happy Spring!

Picture
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Author

    I was born and raised in Kodiak, Alaska - a large island about 250 air miles southwest of Anchorage, in the Gulf of Alaska.  I left my job and a 30-year career in June, 2015 to work full time as an artist. So far, I am loving it!

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015

Home

About

Services

Menu

Contact

Copyright © 2015