We moved in October of 2020 from Maryland to Texas. Not a surprise, I knew that we would move in 2020 (my husband is a Marine and his time would be up in Maryland), but I did not expect to do so in a pandemic, or while grieving.
I am a planner. I like to know what we will do if A happens... or B... or C. I like to know all the scenarios and figure out what would be the best option. Most of my travel/moving plans fell through. If it did work, it didn’t work well. Once we arrived at our new home, loneliness set in. It washed over me in waves of grief and anger. I think 2020 was, honestly, a year of loneliness for me. So far away from others, struggling to help my little family. I was tired and burnt out... So so tired, and so so burnt out.
In our new home, we had the opposite of our old apartment. Before, we had little space and were trapped on the fourth floor. Now, we had a four bedroom house with a backyard AND (best of all in my opinion) a shed that could be used for a studio. Before, I painted in a bedroom, crammed into a corner. In this art shed though, I had space. In this studio, I began to paint daily. I began to study artists. I began to learn more and more . I taught classes and took classes. The shed became my sanctuary. It was through teaching and studying, that I began falling in love with the works of Gustav Klimt.
(Gustav Klimt - Pine Forest II, 1901 at Baltimore Museum of Art Baltimore MD)
Klimt has been an artist that I admired. The Baltimore Museum of Art, which I highly recommend visiting, has a beautiful Klit in it’s Cohen Collection. The landscape features dark trees in shadow, with light peeking through. The trees are thick in the forest. I love this piece and have visited it many times. It’s like an old friend. A friend that I was able to visit again from my little art shed in Texas.
The Universe is In Her Hair is inspired by the works of Klimt. The graphic elements of this piece draw from his portraits. The way he used shapes and lines to describe the feeling and mood of the artwork, is something I aspire to do. There are many things I admire about Klimt, and I tried to capture some of them in this piece.
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