ABOUT GINGER LAWRENCE
To be an artist. I think it takes a certain amount of bravery to call yourself an artist. I always picture wild eyed men in clothing from about 100 years ago (you know, berets, big sleeve white peasant shirts and a neckerchief) swilling cheap wine out of water glasses, arguing about the esoteric aspects of creating art. Well, that's how they show them in the movies. I've never had one of those discussions with anybody. Maybe I don't have the right clothes...or the right sex.
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I do think about art and its creation quite a bit. Mostly it's a wordless emotion that swirls up and around me when I see something I would love to translate, or when something I'm working on takes a turn and becomes something else unexpected and instantly what you meant all along. The act of creating art takes me to place I can only get to when I am working. When I come out of this place, I sometimes look at what I have created and wonder who did it. Who needs cheap wine?
Critics toss around phrases like "Art is subjective". People toss around the phrase " I just know what I like". Not all artists want to sell their work. For those of us that do, and I do, we must negotiate between what will sell and what we want to create. Maybe I'm not as brave as those wild-eyed men, maybe I'll get braver if I put on one of those shirts...I always wanted one.
I work with lithography, acrylics, and linoleum. It seems each medium lends itself to a different approach. This allows me to explore different views, possibly on the same subject. We are bombarded with images every day every hour almost every minute. After awhile we just don’t see them anymore. With my art, I try to slow it down, make a pause, to look, really look at what is presented.
Camille Pissarro had a quote I love, “Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.” I take it as my job to see. Just to see.
