Salpointe Fine Art Classes - Mrs. Jo Valandry

Home > Educational Background > Artist's statement

Artist's statement

professional idiology
Jimmy Web.jpg
VISUAL ARTIST             

 

 

The biggest challenge of teaching art is also maintaining a healthy studio practice in order to take the experience back into the classroom.  I truly believe that students learn the most from an artist who teaches.

 

The following is an artist's statement about my personal artwork that describes a portion of my creative journey.

 

During my graduate studies I read these words from New York artist, Elizabeth Murray, and they continue to inform my own art practice,

”art is everywhere, it’s in the cracks of the sidewalks, it’s an epiphany in a coffee cup.” As an observer of people, I believe that epiphanies exist in defining moments, which awaken our consciousness and influence our humanity............

 

 

My artistic explorations describe human experience through the rendered form. Figures are freeze-framed in layers of energy, emotion, or events as though many worlds exist in a singular flash, a pivotal point of self-discovery. Our reckoning comes as a choice of growth or stagnation beyond the lesson. Prior work has reflected personal family experiences of raising adolescent sons, looked at the reproductive cycle as seen through the eyes of a three year old girl, considered the faith of Franciscan nuns whose lives are devoted to the 150 year old belief that, “God provides,” and demonstrated the otherness of being a developmentally disabled person in mainstream society. Future goals look at the notion of figured space, which is an exploration of how body imposes itself in space, and conversely, how space impacts human behavior.

 

I am gratified to know that art allows one to be in the moment but not of it, to decipher meaning parenthetically, then assimilate and judge its validity according to our individual perspectives. At best, my forms are layered with descriptive imagery that imposes ideas on the viewer. I realize that every image, mark, or whisper of color created is a silent discourse that perhaps strums a responsive chord in him or her. When the work is given a reaction my purpose has come full circle.

 

L. Jo Valandry

 

COMMISSIONED ART:

 

Throughout my artistic career I have enjoyed a passion for portraiture. Working in charcoal, pastel, or oil paints I have completed several private commissions since 1993. The largest was a twenty eight foot mural for the Sisters of ST. Frances of AssissiWis.) in 1999. It included over fifty portraits of pivotal women from the order. My latest commission was an oil painting of deceased poet, Etheridge Knight.

 

Current works focus on acrylic abstract landscapes, mixed media prints and animal portriats.

 

 

 

 

In Community series

Author: Laura Valandry
Last modified: 5/14/2014 2:54 PM (EST)