July 2010 Featured Artist: Peggy Guichu
What is my art about? Now that’s a hard question to answer. I would have to say that it starts with color. A thought that passes through my subconscious. I don’t plan what I will paint. If I make a plan, draw out a painting, it never works for me. I get instantly bored. Most times when I start working on a painting it ends up being nothing of what I thought it would be when I’m finished with it.
Obviously I like the color red because it seems to be dominant in most of my work. It took me a few years and an observation from my granddaughter to SEE that most of my mountains were red. Of course I knew that, but never realized that I actually related the color red to nature until Bea asked me why I always painted my mountains red instead of green or brown. It was the same feeling I got when I was five and was telling my Mother how badly I wanted to tell her what cards were in the hand of the woman she was playing against at her bridge party the night before while I was flying around the room. She told me that wasn’t possible, that no one could fly. Painting my mountains red was as natural to me as flying around the room at five. It had never occurred to me that mountains weren’t red or little girls couldn’t fly. Hard to explain.
My work doesn’t fall comfortably into a category of abstract or realism. It’s been a stumbling block for me when I’m asked to name the category for competition or tag lines. I don’t want to put it in the fantasy category because that doesn’t reflect anything near to my personality. I’m a ‘feet firmly planted on the ground’ type of person. But I do go outside of my reality when I’m painting. There is a sense of other worldliness in most of my work.
My art is my best friend. I can tell it anything and there is no judgment and it nurtures me in a very special way. At night when the light plays across a painting I’m working on, I always find something new. That’s exciting to me.
I feel that my natural insanity gets therapy through my paintings. They tend to tell me I’m okay and stretch me in directions I didn’t know I needed to work at, on or in. I suppose I could say that my art is a simple reflection of myself. Of everyone really. We are all made up of many different colors, emotions, baggage and complexities. If you look long enough you’ll see your own reflection.
I’ve been told that my paintings give off the emotion of happy. I like that. In this world of anger and deceitfulness we all live in now, putting a smile on anyone’s face is definitely worth the time and effort I put into my work.
I will sum it up in this way: My art is an unplanned, subconscious composition of emotions, daily stress and my basic need to feel happy and show love. Maybe I just want to fly.
Featured Artist: Peggy Guichu