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Short Version
Longer Biography/Artist Statement
5th edition 2008
I've been drawing and painting, it seems, all my life. My mom was an
exceptional artist, so I grew up painting and drawing and playing
art-related games with my sisters in our western Michigan home. My dad
was an engineer who was always reading about and investigating
metaphysics (clairvoyance, teleportation, the spirit world, etc.),
unexplained phenomena (UFOs, pyramids, crop circles, etc.) and the
latest scientific discoveries. He encouraged me to play the piano, loved
animals, loved the land and the lakes, flew airplanes and gave me the
name Skye.
The ideas and experiences of my first family, my family now and all the
people I've known and places I've been have contributed to the artist I
am. The process is a continuation; there's always more to learn and new
combinations of ideas to channel into artwork.
My art career began outside the family when I was in first grade and my
teacher asked me to do a chalk drawing of a Nativity scene on a part of
the blackboard. I created a crèche scene with the three Wise men and
shepherds walking from the hills with their sheep. It took up almost the
entire blackboard but the teacher left it up for weeks. Later, while
still in grade school, I drew portraits, ducks, scenery, and ribbons,
among other things. My first paid commissions were pencil and pastel
portraits in high school. I painted two murals while in the Navy, then
concentrated on science, painting, drawing and art history at the
University of Michigan. I worked during my junior and senior years as a
botanical illustrator, studied the art and science of holography and
created holograms (because I wanted to create with light in space), and
worked as the standards coordinator for the Ann Arbor Artist's and
Craftsmen Guild (now the Michigan Guild). After graduating with a
bachelor of fine arts degree in painting and drawing, I still wanted to
work with light in space, but the technologies used for creating
holography and laser art did not appeal to me. I wanted to bring artists
and scientists together and thus encourage the growth of holography and
laser light as an art medium. With these ideas in mind, I used money
from an oil painting I had sold to a professor at the U of M to buy a
bicycle and rode to the Keweenaw Peninsula and back (about 1000 miles in
10 days) then returned to Ann Arbor to organize and produce a very
successful Holography and Laser Show at the Slusser Gallery in the U of
M art school.
During this time of planning and putting on the show (and working two
jobs), I met Joseph, my husband-to-be. Later, as we began our family,
Joseph and I decided to realize our dream of having our own business.
So, for about a year, we made and sold folding screen room dividers. See
"Ancient Screens" on my website (www.skyegentle.com) for more words and
pictures. We enjoyed this endeavor but not enough to put up with the
stresses of having a variable income, traveling to sell and deliver the
screens and having our young children to care for. Joseph became a math
and computer teacher and tennis coach and I kept being a mother of two
and homemaker as I tried to continue painting and drawing. Unfortunately
(or fortuitously, as the case may be), whenever I started a painting,
the paints would dry before I had time to finish. In the face of this
new reality I discovered colored pencils and began using them to create
smaller paintings on plywood or bristol board. Using this new medium I
created original cards for relatives and friends (several every year)
and an original Christmas card or two every year. I also found time to
finish one or two larger colored pencil/acrylic paintings each year. (I
am able to finish many, many more drawings and paintings at this point
in time). From the older originals and my new creations, I have
digitally produced a substantial library of cards and prints. In
addition to artwork and housework, I home schooled my two children for
about three years. When they returned to public school I taught
elementary art and art history classes and tutored accelerated
elementary math students on a voluntary basis until I started working as
a technology para-pro and webmaster.
A request to draw the portraits of two graduating seniors at North
Muskegon Schools, where I was the webmaster and technology para-pro, led
to requests for more. In January 2004, I started accepting portrait
commissions, but only for graphite on paper. Over the next year, the
number of commissions escalated to such an extent that by fall 2005 I
became a full-time artist, while continuing as webmaster and technology
consultant for the school. During the summer of 2005, I began spending
less time with commissioned art work and more time on original oil
paintings, which have evolved into mixed media paintings because I
combine acrylics, pastel, pen, colored pencil, sand and modeling paste
with the water miscible oils*.
In February of 2007, I was invited to show (and sell) my work in
Synchronicity Gallery in
Glen Arbor, where I have sold several large (and expensive!)
paintings. This distinction followed soon after a successful first show
in Muskegon at the Bettye Clark-Cannon Gallery in the Frauenthal Center
for the Performing Arts. I directed this show and exhibited several
paintings along with artwork from several other invited artists from the
area. It was my debut as a full-time artist and a thank you party for
all of our friends and relatives. The following summer and fall proved
to be very challenging as our family adopted a black lab puppy from the
Leader Dogs for the Blind in Rochester, Michigan. We were given the
honor (and very hard work!) of raising "Roscoe" for about a year,
socializing him and nourishing him, body and soul. In May, we returned
him to the school where he became a leader dog after only four months of
intensive training. (I could never have done that well!) We were so
honored to be able to meet Roscoe with his new person. He was the same
great exuberant dog and his new person absolutely loves him. We are very
proud of Roscoe and very grateful for all the wonderful people who work
with Leader Dogs for the Blind. Just this September I was accepted as a
member of the Gallery Uptown in
Grand Haven. So now my work can be seen in Grand Haven and in Glen
Arbor, Michigan, as well as in my home where I also have my studio and a
substantial amount of work. (Call or email for an appointment to
visit: 616-607-8563 or
skye@skyegentle.com )
One of the main ideas behind my paintings is lines of light, which makes
me feel like I have come full circle around to my senior year in college
(when I was working with lasers and holography), although the circle
seems to exist on a higher, lighter plane than before. There are so many
ideas and feelings I've been trying to convey: lines or patterns of
light (like laser light, nebulas and star fields), many smaller designs
within larger ones, hidden images, movement and color that is luminous
and/or dazzling. I challenge myself to create artwork which will draw
people in because of minute detail and surface textures and still give
them things to study and enjoy from farther away because of the weaving
in and out of lines and shapes, the complementary colors and the
contrast of light and dark. My hope is that as you explore the paintings
and follow the paths that your eyes and mind discover, you will find
interesting and beautiful things along the way.
With all my drawings and paintings I feel that I am paying homage to the
wonderful people in my life who encourage and inspire me and to the
incredibly beautiful scenery I see all the time because of where I live.
My originals and prints can be found in private collections around the
world but mostly in the United States of America.
* Water miscible oil paints are engineered to be thinned and cleaned up
with water, rather than having to use chemicals such as turpentine.
Their water solubility comes from the use of an oil medium in which one
end of the molecule has been altered to bind loosely to water molecules.
Some of the paints do not use traditional pigments that are based on
cadmium and other heavy metals, which further reduces the toxicity risks
of working with them. Also, the paint dries in 1/4 -1/3 the amount of
time as traditional oils. |
