Drawings & Paintings

When I look at the drawings and paintings I made in the 1960s, I see more than early work. I see myself as an artist, while also trying to support myself and pay my way through the School of Visual Arts. Some of these works began in my drawing classes at SVA. I was studying the figure, learning anatomy, proportion, gesture, light, shadow, and how to really look at the person in front of me. Drawing from life taught me something that has stayed with me throughout my entire career: you have to learn to see before you can interpret what you see. I became fascinated by the human body very early, not simply by its anatomy, but by everything a gesture or expression could communicate. I made other drawings and paintings because I needed to earn money. I didn’t have the luxury of separating art school from real life. I had to pay my tuition and support myself.  I drew and painted, took commercial assignments, and learned that being an artist also meant finding a way to survive.

I was fortunate that my ability to draw opened doors. I began working professionally as an illustrator. That is what I studied at SVA. I created album covers and other commercial artwork and eventually worked for clients that included major record companies, magazines, and publications. One assignment led to another. I was working with deadlines and homework. That discipline became enormously important to me. 

Commercial illustration taught me how to tell a story through a single image. It taught me composition, color, drama, and how to direct the viewer’s eye. Drawing classes taught me observation and the structure of the human body. Painting gave me another language for emotion and atmosphere. I didn’t realize it then, but all of these things were becoming part of the foundation for the sculptures I would make later.

When I see these early works today, I don’t simply see student drawings or commercial illustrations. I see the beginning of a lifetime of looking at the human body and asking what it can tell us. I see a young woman determined to become an artist and, drawing by drawing, discovering that the thing she loved doing could also become the means by which she made her way in the world.