Santa Fe artist Michele Lyon
I have never known anything different than being a creative person. From the time I was young I lived in a world of my imagination. It helped me to accept the outside world in my own way – making my own adjustments as needed, to fit into this world. My creativity took on different dimensions and different roles through the years.
I can remember as a young girl creating a stick figure with melted wax. I would melt wax in a tin can over a candle and then proceed to create a figure using Popsicle sticks. I became a recluse in the privacy of my bedroom. My room was my sanctuary, my earliest studio, a place where my imagination could take root and would form the basis for my future careers.
Creating has always taken on different forms. I never thought of myself as a “painter.” As long as I could create – whether it is through writing, gourmet cooking, upholstery, the making and painting of lamps and lampshades, the industrious sewing of curtains and drapes, pillows, and artful decoupage, or the painting of murals on walls, the list goes on. I have always had an affinity for doing things that I felt were possibly beyond my reach, either that, or I didn’t think twice about it and approached the subject head on.
Looking back, I see a pattern in my evolution as an artist. The more risks I took, the greater my chances were at reaching my imaginative goals.
Picasso said:
“Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.”
In painting “King James” I started with just a few drawn lines on the canvas. I then for some unknown reason started painting from the bottom of the canvas on up. I did not start in the middle as one could expect. I went with what felt to be the right way, however unconventional. But then, I am of the same belief of Robert Motherwell:
“In the brush doing what it’s doing, it will stumble on what one couldn’t do by oneself.”