Kelly Jeanette Swift

          I think this is my favorite Picasso painting. It is so intriguing. 

This is a new mixed media painting done on 18 x 24 watercolor paper. I call it Circles of Relief because of what an artist friend said after I mentioned I was painting this while in pain. The oranges in the painting are really reds and the yellows are orange. The colors are not coming out right.

Tenth on my list is the Night. I love the night. I love it's quiet stillness. The small animal sounds, the coolness. I love the stars, the moon, the light rains. I'm a night owl. I do my best work at night.

Ninth on my Love List is the Unexpected. Mainly this is about my art. I love for people to find the unexpected glint of sparkle, a glob of bright color, an interesting mark in my artwork. I want them to be absorbed in my work, to keep looking for more.

Eight on my Love List is texture. I love the feel of rough bark, of soft flower petals, of smooth stone. I love cotton sheets, rattan rugs, satin throw pillows. I love to use texture to capture the viewer on my art. To draw them in and keep them in.

Number seven on my Love List is percussion music. I love a lot of drama in music and drums. Is it any wonder my favorite composer is Beethoven. Especially the music he composed after he lost his hearing. It is said that he had to feel the music he was composing because he could not hear it. I also like many other German composer (like I admire German painters). Does that say something about me? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_van_Beethoven I also listen to hard rock while painting. I need drama music. Music that shakes the floor and rattles the house and can be measured on the Richter scale. Yeah, no wimpy love songs for me.  

Number six on my Love List is color. I love bright and bold color. In your face color. Color is what I use to catch the eyes of viewers. My main inspiration for color is Georgia O'Keefe. Her paintings are filled with bold juicy color. These are the colors I use the most with some variations. I rarely use black, but a deep Prussian Blue instead. I guess I'm a primary color person.                           My most favorite is the deep red. Red is my favorite color. I also use quite a bit of metallics. I enjoy the richness they give to my work. An extra sparkle. I notice a lot of female artists use pink. Maybe too much of it. It has never been a go to color for me. I will use it if the painting calls for it, but not in a large quality. Maybe I should do a pink painting just to see if it strikes a nerve. 

Number five on my Love List is Sparkle. Sparkle as in... fireflies under trees sunlight on water sunlight seen through leaves a gold vein in rock starlight moonlight on water a flash of a brightly colored bird mica sparks flying at a bonfire You get the drift.

Number four on my Love List is the wind. It just popped in there without a conscious thought on my part. I do love the wind. I love to stand in my yard and experience an incoming storm, the building up of the wind until I'm forced to go in. I love the wind off the ocean and it's smell. I love the wind in Autumn and the smells of dry leaves and wood smoke. The wind is what causes movement in nature, causes the leaves to swirl around in a dance, the bare branches to talk, the tall grasses to whisper. The wind is what erodes stone, smooths it down, moves sand in the deserts, causes waves.    

Number three on my Love List is Nature. I don't really need to say more. Everyone knows what nature is. I will say this though. I love the bare trees in Winter, their dark stark outlines against a pink sunrise. I love the brilliant orange of a Summer sunset. I love the colors of Autumn and Spring. I love a white shrouded morning and the crash of waves at the beach. I love nature.  

The second word on my Love List was stone. I love stone. The different textures of it-rough or smooth, the ability to carve it, the permanence of it. It is timeless, unyielding, taking centuries to smooth it down. It is what the first artists used for background, carved into deities and spirits by early civilizations, made into astounding monuments, and used to make fences to have good neighbors. And stone comes in so many colors-light browns and grays to awesome deep reds and blacks. I also love gemstones. Those can be counted as stone on my list. One of my favorite meditation objects is a nearly perfectly round river stone. It was gifted to me by a shaman. I swear sometimes I can feel a energy coming off it and it becomes warm to the touch. Another one is a heart shaped piece of rose quartz. I cannot even remember where it came from, but when I hold it I get a sense of peace.

My first love on the Love List was mysteries. Yes, I read mysteries, but what I had in mind when I penned this word was the mysteries in nature-the mysteries of the highest mountain tops and the ocean depths, the deep forests and deserts and caves. What secrets do they hold that no one has ever seen? How about the darkness between stars and the shadows between leaves? What little worlds are hiding there? Just the thought can give me goosebumps.  Places I would like to see.

Recently was given an assignment by my art guru to make a list of the things I love to help me find my Why of creating. I didn't think too hard at it, just jotted down the first ten things I thought of. That was to give me an idea of my painting style. After I looked over my list it also called to me of how to write my artist's statement. So I'm working on that now, too. Here is the list as I wrote it mysteries stone nature the wind sparkle color percussion music texture the unexpected the night