“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” – Pablo Picasso “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” – Scott Adams
ARTIST’S STATEMENT: As for how I work, let me put it this way. I had an idea to make pen and ink drawings of seashells, which I love, which I haphazardly collect without knowing their names, which I keep in Ball jars to remind me of my visits to the ocean. I was making ink drawings of shells in my mind while driving to the grocery store and overshot the turnoff by two miles. I might as well have been in another universe and I think that’s the universe of the artist. Seeing the world very closely, but not quite of the world when making art or even when planning to make art. It’s relatively easy to see the world through artist-trained, imaginative eyes, but it’s hard to execute those visions. That’s technique. It’s even harder to sit down at the easel or drafting table and work. That’s procrastination, the bane of all solitary activities. It’s easy to make mistakes and hard to learn from them and keep going. It’s hard to know when to stop. It’s necessary to keep a child’s enthusiasm about colors and forms and lines and goopy paint and smudgy mediums, as Picasso notes. It’s hard to know what’s good and what to edit, keep or discard, as Scott Adams notes. It’s a totally engrossing and fulfilling activity – making art. I hope you enjoy my work as much as I enjoyed making it.
– Anne deFuria
Contact adefuria at gmail dot com
