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Hester Coucke — mixed media

The Arts Center Exhibitions:

• 'Portals,' Winter Show & Silent Auction, 2011
• 'Where Birds Dream' Show and Silent Auction, Winter 2010

Artist's Statement '300...really?' - 'Portals,' Winter Show & Silent Auction, 2011

I don't do well with paint; so much of my work has a large element of drawing in it. I really love how the use of pencil determines the character of a drawing: are the lines made slowly, tentatively without much pressure, or the opposite where lines were made fast and decisive and consequently with a lot more pressure. This results in darker, straighter lines with a more dynamic to them. And so forth,and so forth...

This is a drawing made with sticks, not as a tool, but as lines.

I used yellow twig dogwood, of branches which lay on the ground, covered by leaves and were trying to send up new sprouts. It resulted in pointy, irregular twigs with little buds on them. This is the part that can be seen as moving the pencil tentatively around, filling an area with small irregular lines, searching to find a direction; the pencil barely touching the paper.

Other types of lines were made with red twig dogwood, mostly from suckers, that go up very straight. They gave me the option of make very decisive looking lines, big scratched marks that really determine the shape of the portal form I wanted within the larger drawing where lines go all over the place.

When I was working on the statement for this exhibit I re-read of the responses I received from the curators exhibit 'A Curators Holiday' at LBCC in Albany this spring. Quite a few of them referred to the pricing. One of the most posed questions to curators is “how do I price my artwork?” and I went for it!

So the title of this piece quotes on of the comments: “300...really?”