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THE CALLING
I imagined myself a Selkie when I was a little girl. In Scotland I spent hours looking for my sea family. I called to them in my mind, and they would always emerge with bobbing curiosity and those deep eyes you can fall into.
Years later, I worked at the Oban Seal and Marine Center on the West coast of Scotland. I was a visiting artist/intern, scrubbing tanks during the day and painting a giant mural of seals catching mackerel at night. I was 21, listening to Ani DiFranco on a boombox and painting seals, with mysterious cuttlefish and crabs and cod swimming in the watery glow of a darkened room next to me. We had three baby harbor seals we were rehabilitating for release, and as I lived in a flat on the property, I would make my morning tea and go sit by the pool. I literally had tea with the seals every morning.
This piece flows between being a painting and a drawing. There are new processes at work here and I am curious about this direction. There is a freedom in drawing for me that I don’t always feel in paint. It is that expressive line, that sensitivity of point to surface. I usually combine painting with drawing, though with this piece the scales are tipped to bring the seductive flow of water and fur.
