Artist's Statement
For the fifteen years I was a jacquard fabric designer, art was my job and all action took place on my computer. The finished product was a tactile and patterned piece of cloth, but in process I only pushed pixels. The method became mechanical for me. For most of those fifteen years, I was also a working mother. After a day at work, I felt the pull to something creative, but the demands of parenting are all-embracing. Writing, flexible in both time and supplies, became an artistic outlet for me. I liked the escape because it was so different than the demands of my workday.
In August 2006 , knowing I had a literary novel, SUMMERS AT BLUE LAKE (Algonquin Books, August 2007), about to published, I took the leap and quit my job. I wanted to devote more time to the craft of writing. Still, my love of the visual persisted, and I knew I needed to find a place for it in my new life. The new way of being, honoring and nurturing my abilities, had a positive affect on my family life. I felt renewed as a mother and wife as well as a writer/artist.
Around this same time, a friend of mine, who is also a mother, decided on an opposite route. She was leaving behind six years of self-employment as a faux finish painter and returning to the work-force. I began to take canvases over to her empty studio and experiment with her surplus latex and ceramic paints that would otherwise lie in waste. I became mesmerized with the tactile nature of the materials—something that had been missing in my pixel-pushing days. Palette knives allowed me to sculpt with the paint. Dimension became all-important, especially because my palette was limited by the materials at hand. I began to paint my canvases black-- a nice contrast to the original state of white pages I experience as a writer. The resultant works have a graphic quality I find exciting.
My varied subject matter (floral, portrait, landscape) appears to be the result of a divided mind. I admit that my first goal was experimentation with my materials, but looking over the scope of what I created these last months, I see my journey of the last 15 years. Indeed, women in their motherhood years often have chaotic/split lives as they endeavor to balance a sense of self with the priorities of work and family. That these paintings originated with the life shifts of two creative working mothers is no coincidence. Interestingly, my friend Marsha and I both find that the most abstract of these works, the Rose Labyrinth paintings are the most personal. Part landscape, part still-life-- the spirals of the flowers are indicative of the journey to find our center. They are a nod to my fabric design past (I detailed many flowers over the years!), a bow to the spirit (the meditative labyrinths in large cathedrals), as well as a wink to artists Georgia O’Keefe and Judy Chicago.
In the now of things, my day begins with a few hours of writing followed by a few hours in the painting studio. When my kids come home, my work stops--and family starts. I am triple-aspect woman these days, but each aspect feeds the next. Themes I explore in my writing crop up in my paintings. My life is fodder for all of it.
"In Althouse-Wood's engaging novel, she alternates between past and present; gives BJ a fresh, honest voice; and beautifully develops the relationship between the grandmothers." Booklist Review
