#001 Mortimer

I’m Elva Paulson and I’m excited to be joining Laure Ferlita’s 100 Paintings Challenge. Already I know it will good for me because I got me thinking about just what I would like to accomplish in the coming year--now that I am painting again. Laure’s advice to paint a lot and not worry about quality is just what I need. I need to learn to just go for it and not get hung up on everything turning out right. I have a history of painting carefully, with a goal in mind, rather than exploring. Just letting loose and giving myself permission to paint without judging is a significant challenge for me. I want to try new paper, new pens, new techniques. I already started on that path this past month, but joining this group is making it a commitment.

So maybe you need a little history about me to understand those thoughts. As a child I did a fair amount of drawing and painting. Enough that when I went to college I was excited at the prospect of being able to take an art class. Yech! We ‘expressed’ ourselves by drawing pieces of a junked car. I finished college, but never dared sign up for another college art class. Now, many years later, I have a better appreciation of what the instructor was trying to do … but I sure didn’t then.

When I was a young mother I got serious about my art and even took the Famous Artist’s correspondence course … which taught me a lot more than those junked car pieces. I have always been close to nature and, as a result, focused on wildlife art. I hung in several galleries, and considered myself a serious painter until about 13 years ago. At that time my husband, Dale, retired early and I assumed I would continue at least some gallery painting, but only a year later he developed severe mobility problems and my life become more crowed.

The past ten years have been good to us. … lots of nature photography from the car for Dale, and lots of sketching and photography in and near the car for me. I did tackle one big project, illustrating “The Birds of Oregon: A General Reference” for Oregon State University Press (about 100 black and white illustrations and a full color cover). I believe that cover is the only serious painting I did in the last ten years, that is until last November when I finally started a ‘real’ painting.

Life has taken a good turn for us. Two new hips and Dale is walking again … and I feel free to disappear into my art again. I’m in the process of figuring out just where I want to go. I know I want to enjoy art, not worry about it as a business, and to grow it along a path which expresses my connection with nature. Perhaps I’ll combine it with some writing.

My introductory painting is of ‘Mortimer,’ a barred owl raised by my mother. When Mortimer was old enough he was allowed to fly free and softly become part of the wild. An old screen door is a strange perch for a barred owl, but it is a memory from the heart for me.