Hi Everyone, I plan to share, from time to time, interviews with some of the Artists I know. Michele Ellison is one of my best-loved Visual Artists and this painting of lovely flowers is one of my favourites. Michele and her husband have travelled extensively throughout North America and she has so much to tell us all with these small vignettes of her interaction with nature.
These are some of the questions I asked Michele recently.
#1 What has inspired your artistic journey?
"I became an artist when I lived at a high elevation fishing lake in central British Columbia, Canada. Being immersed in nature made me want to record how beautiful nature is. The fleeting views of each day or changes in the seasons were so compelling."
#2 What are your present plans to increase your output?
"I like to look through all the photos I took while living in nature, those always take me to the hidden beauty of the planet."
#3 What is your favourite medium when doing your Visual Art?
"I like acrylics and watercolor pencils the very best. Sometimes I use them together. Collage also gets me really excited because it stimulates the designer in a pure sense. You are arranging things and can move them around on the support before they are cemented in place."
#4 Which artists inspire you? Traditional, ethnic, modern or contemporary?
"I always love Maynard Dixon and the Impressionists. Wassily Kandinsky is at the top of my list as well."
#5 When and where did you study or are you self taught, which is absolutely okay these days. Many famous artist today have learned their trade through inspiration and true, pure motivation to tell their stories.
"I am self taught. I look at a lot of art, all the time."
#6 What are your favourite topics?
"I am interested in doing portraits and so I am thinking alot about them these days. I am sketching faces in my little sketch book that I carry in my purse, I really enjoy this."
#7 Can you give my readers some of your top tips?
"Every time you execute a piece of art - remember that it should be able to leap up off the paper and pull the viewer in. I try to create with that intent. Design is really important to me. I spend quite a bit of time planning. I want to take you somewhere and make you think about it. One of my favourite paintings is called Twin-Flowers or Linnoea Borealis from the honeysuckle family. These tiny flowers grow deep in the mossy woods of the north and they creep across the forest floor. Look down or you may step on them. They are only 3 or 4 cm high and they smell so sweet. One day, I was out for a walk in the bush and noticed them for the first time. I fell in love with their colour and form."
So there you have it people, I think Michele is so interesting that I will invite her back again so we can dig deeper. I hope to think that many of you can relate to the stories that these Artists are telling us.
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