A last look at Open Studios

Still life wall – graphite drawings with acrylics • © 2009 Karen Lynn Ingalls

A last look at Open Studios.... These are some more of the still life drawings and paintings I brought in.

Last year, Arts Council Napa Valley asked me to put up an exhibition at the Napa Senior Center. For it, I decided to bring in some of the still life pieces I'd been doing – the graphite drawings with acrylics above. I then added a series of small, simple still life drawings. The show, Simple Pleasures, was only supposed to be up for a couple of months, but it wound up being there for nearly a year. I'm glad they enjoyed the show so much!

A Cup of Tea (left), and Apple (right) • © 2009 Karen Lynn Ingalls

Sometimes it's good to get back to basics. I discovered how I have evolved as an artist by doing them, too. My approach to art has always been through my drawing. Although I painted, it wasn't until about thirteen years ago that I really began to think of myself as a painter, and not only as a drawer. It was then that color began to make sense to me in new ways.

An arrangement of pears, with Yvonne Henry's wonderful and punny A Jury of Your Pears on the left, and my pear drawing, Bosc Pear, and small paintings on the right

I began this series of small drawings by drawing as I often do, with lovely loose, gestural lines, which are most evident in the first one of a baby squash. I discovered that each drawing after it began to be more and more about shape and value, rather than about line, which you can see most clearly in A Cup of Tea, Apple, and Bosc Pear (above). I realize that, while I once painted like a drawer, now I draw like a painter. They are different ways of seeing. It feels like a wonderful way to grow, as both a drawer and a painter.