ARTIST STATEMENT

Starting a painting is the most fun and most terrifying activity I allow myself to do!  A blank surface is so beautiful and so sublime. Who am I to adulterate it with my haphazard marks? But I just can’t resist the fun of scribbling, finger painting, brush dabbing, collaging, scraping, and stenciling to dance with the emerging image, letting each mark inform the next one.

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This is called Intuitive Abstract Painting. I like to refer to it as Inside/Out painting because I’m actually giving my audience a glimpse into what makes me me.

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That's pretty scary!

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The painting is my playmate who thrills me and frustrates me all at the same time! It’s a true love/hate relationship all the way.

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My process involves photographing the painting at different points in the process. I use the flip tools on my cell phone camera to see the image in a different scale as well as from different directions. Sometimes I can look at an unresolved painting for a year and suddenly realize a solution. Sometimes, however, I have to destroy the whole image, scrape it down and find a new approach. There are many paintings in my studio that are in this process. Eventually one or two will emerge as complete. And so it continues for me. 

 

BIOGRAPHY

Bourgeois was born in New Orleans, Louisiana during WWII., the oldest of six children, each of whom are musicians or artists. Growing up with stifling humidity, rich cuisine, and a strong experience of family created the unique environment for nurturing creative fluency. Her spiritual upbringing planted within her a sense of the sacred and mystical and provided fertile ground for an already natural instinct for art.

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For Bourgeois there must be a relationship between form and content. She is always concerned with the composition and formal aspects of the work, balanced with subjects derived from nature and intuition. She is most at home with suggestions of gesture and strong personal mark making. Her goal is response to the subject, not so much representation.

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• B.A. Education  St. Mary’s Dominican College (now Loyola University), New Orleans, LA

• M.F.A. Painting and Drawing, LSU

• Certified Master Teacher for Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

• Since 1998 studied with many nationally recognized artists at Mississippi Art Colony

• Since 1966 a variety of teaching experiences including: Elementary, High School, Graduate School Teaching Assistantship

• Presently teaching private studio classes and regional workshops in Drawing, Painting and Mixed Media. 

• For several years Bourgeois has been on the faculty of Abbey Art Works at St Joseph Abbey in Covington, LA