Having had no formal art training, miraculously, I began painting portraits in my 30s while raising my 3 children… I seemed to get so immersed (obsessed???) in art that I couldn’t stop creating… oils, acrylic portraits, watercolours, sewing, fabric collage and fabric portraits…filling my house to the brim…
After my father died, I saved his pipe and bic lighter and sculpted hands with clay to hold them…this later morphed into creating polymer clay jewelry…
oh the joy of running the clay through my pasta machine…
eager to see the swirls… the shapes… the patterns…
the endless possibilities……………..
Quite honestly, during 2018, my art became my “escape” (which saddens me, but for which I am extremely grateful…)
I am a survivor of the February 14, 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting…
I worked there 17 years and my 3 children attended there…
my world has changed… I have changed…
but thankfully art saved me…
During the height of COVID, and after 3 years of my kid’s
“not always so gentle urgings” (lolol), I finally retired at the end of 2020,
and moved to Connestee Falls in Brevard, NC… I learned pickleball and play 3x a week with a fun group of people…we laugh often…
i joined the Connestee Art League to meet people with similar interests,
try new art forms and continue healing, forever grateful to a wonderful artist with a kind soul, Barbara Walter, who took me under her wing and introduced me and guided me through learning to paint with water soluble wax pastels…
hopefully art will become less of an escape and return to the pure joy it once was…
I just turned 72… gosh… how is that possible???
I recently began selling my creations in two local Brevard stores,
Brevard Marketplace and Gra•vy
still figuring out what I wanna be when I grow up…
but i DO know that art’s gonna hold a special place in my heart,
year after year after year…………………
jilli ~ 5/2023