My Artist's Statement

Lift Me On Angel Wings

12" x 16"

Mixed media on board

$300

I wrote my artist's statement for my recent Open Studio. I'll write up a report of the event soon.

JO REIMER, AN ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Gathering and hanging art work that I created has been so interesting and informative, revealing just where I’ve been and hinting at the direction ahead. Seen together on the walls of my home this work from the past 4 years reflects my interests, both in the seen world and in the spiritual. There are works that tell a story of how I look at my environment as well as how I relate to God and his creation.

Artwork like the Pear series and the Flower Vases are practice pieces and yet are among my personal favorites because they are so much fun to make. It doesn’t matter if a line is right or if a shadow is off or if the color just isn’t very realistic. What matters is that I do them, that I get paint onto paper, and in this practice I grow. Like a pianist learning scales before she gets to the melody I paint my little practice pieces so that I will get to the place where I can paint whatever is waiting within me to be expressed. That’s what painting is to me… an expression of who I am and what I’m thinking about.

I started being an artist when I was four years old. My grandmother was teaching me to embroider and I insisted on making the flowers brown and the stems red… present things my own way. I grew to use embroidery to create fiberart, things that hung on the wall rather than pieces that were functional. I still remember the evening I saw embroidered art on display in a gallery setting and recognized that I knew how to make art even though I didn’t know how to use a paint brush. I studied with creative embroidery in London, England and stuck with using the threaded needle, art quilting, surface design, sewing, and pattern design until 1998 when I turned off my sewing machine, put away my embroidery hoops and leapt into fine art making, knowing that there were paintings deep within me that wanted to get out. I refined my drawing skills, took some painting classes, and practiced and practiced. I continue to work at learning by reading, watching DVDs, taking workshops and classes, and talking art with like-minded friends.

My favorite way of working is what I call collage painting. Several times each year I prepare papers to use in my work. I apply dye, ink, watercolor, thinned acrylics, to thin paper working with layers of color to create interesting collage papers that are uniquely mine. Then I collage these papers to heavy paper, canvas, or board and add paint as needed. It’s like my cooking…
I sort of follow recipes but mostly I wing it based on my past experience of what works together.

I love books, reading them and writing in them and I usually create my own sketchbook/art journals in which I make plans, journal about art and life, and often even create art on the pages. When we travel I take along a little sketchbook, paint and pens. Ask me about these journals because I love to share them.

I enjoy painting with acrylic paints. They are water-based and fairly non-toxic, unlike oil paints whose fumes I don’t much like in my home studio. Oil is fun to paint with; smearing buttery oil-based color around on canvas is so satisfying, but the cleanup isn’t as easy for me as with acrylics. I also like to use pastels, both dry and oil. Well, perhaps you’re on to me by now… I love to use anything that will help me put color on a surface, and the more color the better I like it. Many people paint with neutrals, but even when I start painting with umber, sienna, and other neutral colors it isn’t long until the piece has mysteriously turned red or orange. That’s just me. I like to paint happy.

Jo Reimer, November 21, 2008

Open Studio

Sauvies Island Pond

Oil on board

5x7" available

I'm preparing for a party, an Open Studio, a show and sale of my own work here at my home. For years I've visited other artists studios on the Portland Open Studio Tour and have considered joining them as a participating artist, but haven't, not wanting a lot of strangers treking through my home. But friends continue to show interest in my work and where I do it so I decided to throw the front door open for a weekend. Come if you can... Nov. 21 from 5-8pm or Nov. 22, between 10 and 5pm.


I wasn't prepared for the work this has been. I'm been merrily working away, having fun painting and making books and collages without doing all the archival work that a working artist keeps up with such as photographing and cataloging each piece as it's completed. I just add the work to a stack over against the wall and start on the next piece. Now it's all catching up with me and I've spent day after day photographing and scanning work, determining a fair price for each piece, cataloging it in Working Artist software, making labels with Avery. Just when I think I'm nearly finished I complete another painting and have to add that to the mix.


I've taken down my collection of other people's work from my walls and am hanging my own work, and I must confess, I think it looks really good. Even my husband is surprised at how much I've done over the past couple of years. There are a lot of different directions that are revealed when all the work is hung together, abstract, landscape, collage, work done from photographs that I've taken, and work done from my head. It's interesting, to say the least, and I guess that's good enough, to produce interesting work. After the party is over and done with I might just settle down and concentrate on just one way of working for the next few months and see what happens.

Being

Being

Collage on Paper

8x8"

It's been over a month since I've posted and this morning I decided that it's high time I wrote a bit to assure you that I have been working and that I intend to continue with this blog. I've just been being myself: housewife, gardener, friend, wife, mother & grandmother, artist, reader, traveler, worshiper... and that all takes up my precious time. And all those roles are important enough that they share pretty much equally with my role as artist and are the reason that I don't pursue a full time art career. I am content and pretty much joyful all the time.

A friend visited my studio last week and noting the piles of paintings adorning every surface in preparation for an Open Studio, commented: "you paint happy". I guess I do. I use intense color, lots of warm colors, and lots of color. I keep trying to paint with quiet neutrals but somehow the stronger colors win out every time. Even back when I was doing contemporary embroidery I turned to hot colors when I chose fabric and thread.

My husband and I spent the better part of a week on Washington's Long Beach peninsula last week while I attended a 3 day workshop with Eric Weigardt in Ocean Park. It was called "Painting Loosely". We worked with watercolor and I learned a lot. I tend to tighten up and go right for the detail whenever I work so I'm on a quest to reverse that tendency with whatever media I'm using. I'm not a watercolorist although I do use watercolors, especially in my journals, and I want to understand it better.

What I got from this workshop was an understanding of the importance of using a planned range of values in my work. Oh, I knew, intellectually, about value studies, about making little sketches of my subject using at least three distinct values, light-medium-dark. But I rarely do the value study and I didn't accept that in order to make good art I must incorporate this notion in every piece, especially if I'm drawing the landscape. Here's an example of a photo I took in France and the value study I did from the photo. I'm really slow but I know that practice will speed up and improve my skills.

Two Girls and a Ball

The two little girl images are from the first pattern I ever used to make something... a purple cotton dress for my favorite doll which I still have. I also made a purple sundress for myself... when I was 9 years old.

Two Girls and a Ball

5" x 5"

Collage on gallery wrap canvas

Romans 1

Another in the Sermon Notes series, Romans 1 features a photo I shot in Israel. It represents Paul as he composed his letter to the band of believers living in Rome in AD 57.

Since I had such an appropriate photo this Note is different from the others. The text was printed on thin paper and then glued to the painted paper. The acrylic medium I used gives the paper a translucent quality.

My plan is to do a Note for each of the chapters in Romans, 16 in all. Our pastor is teaching Romans on Sunday morning and he goes verse by verse so this project will stretch over many months; don't expect to see one a week, though I have to play catch up since we're already up to Chapter 4.

Grasshopper

Here's another collage from my traveling compost box. I like the looks of torn edges but there's just something about the way my hands and mind works that insists on straight cuts and 90 degree angles. Perhaps it's all those years of garment construction when even being a half inch off-grain can make a skirt hang crooked and certainly is the difference between a smooth collar and one you'll never wear.

I started sewing when I was 4, when I'd sit in my grandmother's lap and learn embroidery stitches. That led to my making most of my clothes in high school and college, and then for most of my adult life. I no longer make my clothes except for the times when I can't stand another shopping trip. No longer is it a lot cheaper to sew one's own clothes, although I have such a big stash of good fabrics that if I used what I have then my clothing budget would hardly be dented. Hmmm.

More Collage

Yellow Headed Amazon

7.5 x 7.5

This is another collage made from my compost box of painted and commercial papers. The parrot image is from an ancient encyclopedia... remember when we opened a book to do research, way back before wikipedia?

LITTLE JO

7.5 x 7.5

I took a box of collage compost with me to use while on vacation at the beach, not realizing how appealing making a simple collage would be to my grandchildren. I took only enough supports for my own work but of course I soon realized that it was more important that I share with these budding artists.

The first girl to have a go was my 8 year old granddaughter who created a masterpiece right off the bat. Granted I kept control of the glue spreader (I had YES! paste with me and a broad plastic palette knife) so the work was neater than she normally produces but it was amazing. See for yourself...

Sarah's House

6.5 x 5

Soon my other granddaughter joined the fun and made this

And by week's end we had a gallery lining two windowsills...

Charlie's Chasing the Green Flash.

Jill's Tree

And the rest are mine.

At the Edge of the Forest

At the Edge of the Forest

Acrylic on Paper

16"x20"

Available

Mondays are busy for me but I managed to find time for some painting this afternoon, done from a photo by my friend, Nina Bagley. I'm noticing what happens at the edges of natural things... the contrast of light and dark at the edge where meadow meets forest, the glow at the edge of a rose petal in the morning sun, the prism of colors on the shell of a soap bubble, the light edge on the tree trunks that I see out my studio window, the shadow edge on the house siding created by the sun shining on an overlapping board, the dark edge of my friend's cheek as light glows behind her. And I realize that I don't stop to look, not often enough, at this beautiful world that God created for us to enjoy. I hope you stop for awhile today just to look and wonder at the beauty around you.

Photography

I've been just thinking about all those questionaires where you're asked to list your hobbies and I realized that I never list photography which is crazy since that's one of my major activities. I'm hardly ever without a camera. My uncle and my father loved to take photos and Dad let me use his fold-up bellow camera when I was a youngster. It was way better than a Brownie although he bought me one to shut up my whining because "everyone" had a Brownie. I got my first SLR in 1966 and have progressed through lots of others. Hmmmm... I still have most of the cameras somewhere and they'd make a nice display on my fireplace mantle. My current favorite is a little Camon PowerShot SD700IS because I can stick it in my pocket or purse and have it with me wherever I go.

Yesterday we went to a friend's cabin on the Wind River just above the Columbia in Washington. We climbed down to the river through the puckerbrush and out onto these massive rocks that line the river. It's so beautiful there with the quiet interupted only by the water as it pounds the rocks and the occasional bird, including a rather lusty-sounding raven.

As I was eating lunch on my back deck I noticed some interesting leaf shadows on the umbrella.

Have I painted today? No, but I have made a bit of art with my camera, and that counts.