“You are the Mary Oliver of the art world!” Lynn Lubben
Just Right
In second grade my hand flew
exuberantly into the air at the teacher’s
request to receive help with the
production of the school play
“Goldilocks and the Three Bears.”
My task: create Papa, Mama and Baby Bear
With the largest brush, the largest I’d ever held in my small hand,
I applied paint to gigantic cardboard sheets
pre-cut into the shapes of the brown bear family…
MY brown bear family…
since that day my art/life has been dedicated
to countless ways to celebrate animals, nature, and color and paint …
to create my visual trail.
A few highlights:
- • Learned nature/nurture as a wee one spending summers at my grandparent’s farm
- • Art making and being in nature saved my life after violent trauma
- • Completed a rigorous, documented nine years of solitary study
- • First gallery transaction: purchase contract: 1 collector 108 of my completed paintings
- • Owned/managed a hot little gallery for emerging artists in a sizzling art district
- • My studio was located in a cavernous former high-security lock-up ward for women (1991 -1995)
- • I Studied with artists and healers in Bali, Tibet, and Nepal
- • Wrote/illustrated a book for caregivers; the result of my hospice volunteer experience
- • Served as Artist in Residence at Cuyahoga Valley National Park, and numerous schools on all levels
- • I was invited to lunch at The White House to celebrate First Lady Laura Bush’s National Park Centennial project
- • As a result a piece of my art is represented in the permanent collection at the George W. Bush Presidential Library
- Invited Visual Artist for MSU/Wharton Center-Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Summer Institute
- Solo exhibition of 30 paintings ‘Noble in Nature’ at Norfolk Botanical Garden Summer
- Founded Wren House Studio School 2017
- Artist in residence and a two-person exhibition at Norfolk Academy
- Invited to work with ASAP (Armed Service Arts Programs)
Mother Earth, Chinese brush/India ink/vellum paper, 14×11″,
one of five illustrations for
Soul Soaring by Poet Valerie Sayre