Bessie

BFA Alumni

Major: Metalsmithing & Jewelry

Graduation Year: 1996

Artist Statement:

https://lunablue.art/
For the past 25 years, my art has included many exciting mediums such as glass blowing, ceramics, pastels and photography but my focus has been on painting and metalsmithing. My art combines my love of nature, spirituality and dreaming, and my passion for art as expression. I was born with a fierce love of art and a binocular dysfunction. One of the facets of this vision dysfunction occurs when I look at something for a long time my right eye shuts off and I no longer see three dimensional. Oddly enough, my dysfunction has really helped me see life as one big impressionist painting. I naturally paint the way I see, breaking things down to the simple values and shapes that create space and evoke emotions. Seeing things in values and color is the easy part for me. I select places that I visit that evoke a powerful emotion or memory in me and I paint these places in attempt to communicate that emotion with others. I find most animals adorable. I love to paint their personalities. I have been a nature nut for years. I grew up in a family of nature lovers and who instilled a powerful respect and curiosity of nature and animals in me. My respect for cultures who have a meaningful relationship with nature lead me to my studies in another culture whose relationship with nature to precedence and was at the center of their society, Celtic Art. I have been studying Celtic art history and mythology for almost 20 years. I spent a semester studying and working on my thesis on Celtic Art in Scotland at Edinburgh College of Art. My metalsmithing is greatly influenced on both Celtic art and Art Nouveau. My metals work often includes acorns, dragonflies, waves and spirals. All of my work reflects my desire to communicate with the viewer.