art5.html
© Copyright 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 K. Weston,
all rights reserved
Index to most of my personal pages:

SGGAF Luncheon Pictures  New pages are added monthly!!!
LadyZ's Home Page   LadyZ's Art, First Page  Lady Z's Art, Second Page  LadyZ's Art, Third Page  LadyZ's Art, Fourth Page LadyZ's Art - You Can Do It  Diamond Shoes   Diamond Shoes Award   I Am A Quaker Very Special Places  Mangled Language   Artworks by Rafael Maniago Awards & Credits  Memberships  Fabulous Links & Famous Friends  Web Rings  LadyZinnia's Easter Story  
Bellflower High School Alumni Association
Mesa AZ Valentine Luncheon 2001 and Fritzie's Birthday
A Memorial and Tribute to Ezee Two

The beautiful music you may hear while enjoying this page is "Minuet in G Major" by Ludwig Von Beethoven.Click Here to Play

No, I was not painting at an early age, a brush attached to my pacifier and using strained peas, carrots and beets for pigments... I NEVER PAINTED A LICK UNTIL I WAS 50 YEARS OLD. I was always creative, but never in God's world thought that I would ever be an artist, much less paint pictures of people that actually LOOKED LIKE the people!!!

When I was nearing 50, my oldest daughter began tole painting. She was (and is) very good at it. I was dying to try it...so I did. I immediately became frustrated because I didn't want to use their colors and their little wooden thingees. So I learned the techniques and I began to study color, technique, composition, perspective, and all that stuff. I learned to tole paint pretty well and began teaching, but I still kept studying. On my own. Wore out every library in the high desert, where I lived at the time. Started what has become a major addiction for art books.

I studied and tried every medium. Bought every kind of art supply for every medium. Didn't feel like I was getting very far. Got frustrated with watercolor... my favorite medium... because it's a difficult medium, even more difficult to learn on one's own. A teacher would have made it easier and I couldn't find one.

Like many people, I watched William Alexander on T.V., even bought one of his kits. It sat, unopened, for a year. Then I decided to give it a try and my first painting was a dismal flop. And I couldn't stand the smell of the turp. But I pressed on and did a couple more... which were okay. One of them was a copy of someone else's work, the last copy I have ever done. I felt that I improved on the original, but it was still a copy and by then I was learning about copyright.

So I nearly gave up. And I owe where I have come today to a friend who suggested that I try Turpenoid©, a nearly odorless turp substitute, and then started helping, pushing, prodding, etc., because she believed in me and my talent.

So I started doing oil paintings in late 1993 and I painted along and won awards for every painting from the fourth one on and I began to think that maybe I actually had some talent..... and I kept buying and reading art books... and Joyce kept helping me. But then the traitor moved home to Arizona, just because she felt she oughta go with her husband... Golly, I don't understand... they've only been happily married for 40 years or something...what's the big deal?????

In early 1996, I was chosen as Artist of The Month at the college in my area and I finally got my name in lights and got to have a one-woman exhibition there for the entire month of May, 1996.

In June of 1996, my father died. I had offloaded my hasbeen earlier in the year (just couldn't stand his girlfriend's personality), and both of my mothers-in-law died within a short time, one just before my dad and one just after. Then I gave notice at the college, intending to leave my job, my home and all my friends and move to Bellflower (near Long Beach) California, to deal with my father's estate and make a new start in life. A week before the scheduled move, a child at my work jumped on me, fracturing two vertebra and rupturing three discs. A moving company moved my belongings but I, personally, could not move my personal body and spent the next several months just lying about at my new home, in nearly total isolation.

Because of all that stuff, I did not paint from May of 1996 until the spring of 1997. I was unable to paint. I was too crippled and sad and confused to paint. I even thought that I had lost the ability to paint. I was definitely sitting on the pity potty!  I finally remembered something that another dear friend, Susan Chord, had said to me, "Get off the cross...we need the wood..." and began to slog my way out of the mire.

In the spring of 1997, I found a wonderful local artist, Rafael Maniago, painting on a street corner... painting a landscape including an old church. I stopped to talk with him and later painted with him as often as possible. If you ever go to Disneyland on a Wednesday, he's the guy doing the best pastel portraits.....  I have added a page with a couple of his paintings (including the church) to my site... you'll run across it if you keep going or you can use the link at the top of this page.

I have changed my style - I now paint in a more impressionistic style and my colors are brighter and more lively - this is not necessarily better or worse than my previous style, it just happens to be what I'm doing right now. And I am enjoying the heck out of it because it is a fun process....

I will be posting photos of those paintings, as well as the Mexican ones painted for my exibition, as soon as I find a new photographer. Photographing paintings is a very tricky business... anyone can do it, but few can do it well..... one needs a person who is an artist, a photographer, and who has photo processing equipment. My previous photographer, Adrian Duran, had the temerity to move to a mountaintop in New Mexico, where he enjoys the view of forever and paints and paints and paints. While I languish here in Southern California, bemoaning the fact that I have no photographer (sniff).

11/01/97 Scratch that... I finally found a new photographer and he wanted too freaking much money to photo paintings... so I am about to do them myself.....

11/08/97  They're HERE!!!  I did them!  

10/17/2000 - And you already saw them because I rearranged my pages to put this page AFTER all the paintings.  I have more paintings now, just have not had time to photograph them.

Anyway, my point here was that if I can do that, you certainly can... if you're interested in doing it, start now... read books, visit galleries, study all you can, find someone to help you, discard bad teachers, paint, paint, paint.... you will be happier for it. It's waaaaaaaaayyyyyy cheaper than counseling.

Art is not about learning to paint or draw or sculpt, it is about learning to SEE, either what is really there or what is in your mind's eye or in your heart... it is about making other people feel what you feel about a certain thing, person, place, or whatever. It is not about getting a photographic reproduction of whatever the subject is... someone said that if a photographic reproduction of something is the best art, then the photographer is the best artist.

You paint what you like... don't ever paint solely for commercial purposes or you will become a hack and painting will become work...I could probably make a heck of a lot more money if I were willing to stick to one "subject" or "style" — in other words, to paint essentially the same painting over and over and over. But my soul is much more important to me, so I continue to paint the things I love and/or the things that touch my spirit, in whatever manner suits me at the moment.

Please feel free to leave messages in my guestbook - let me know what you like, what you don't, ask questions, etc. Now we'll move on to more of my site. We're through with paintings, so we can look at some writing...

Return to Home Page
LadyZinnia's Home Page
Or use your browser's "BACK" button
to return to the previous page.