JILL KELLER PETERS - Artist
  • Art
    • Modern Paintings
    • Impressionist Paintings
  • About
    • PRESS
    • Interiors
    • Artist Statement Modern
    • Artist Statement Landscape
  • Events
  • Contact

"Heart Beat" oil painting

3/25/2017

0 Comments

 
I got inspired to create a painting titled "Heart Beat" at winter solstice and completed it at the entry of spring. I wanted to create a painting with a fair amount of depth, and while at ​my easel, imagined that I was inside my body listening to my own heart
Picture
Heart Beat - o/c, 48" x 36"

beating, and feeling the blood pulsating through me. I imagined the areas of oxygenated blood, contrasting with the deep, dark tissues and organs in the darkness of my anatomy, quietly sustaining the fragile physical balance. I explored the inner core, emotions and psyche of my being.

The painting was a good companion for a longish winter with many dark and stormy days, finding the dreary, very cold and wet weather to be a basis to contemplate the state of one's being. The color relationships of the reds and mixed blues were extremely enjoyable to explore, very cathartic. Cadmium red and Cerulean Blue were the most used tubes of paint.
The slide show demonstrates the various stages of the process. Masking tape goes on the canvas before a painting session, and it is pulled off as soon as the session is complete. The colors of the paint are selected for their reaction to each other and the mood that I'm channeling.
0 Comments

What Influences a Person to Become an Artist?

3/24/2017

0 Comments

 
​My mother and father grew up in Kansas and in upper northeast Texas during The Great Depression, and simultaneously, the Great American Dust Bowl. The Herculean challenges of these times were miserable and demoralizing.
Charcoal drawing,
Maxine in Kansas - charcoal and pastel on paper, 30" x 22"

Despite that my parents' respective families experienced resilience and determination and happy times as well. One of my aunts personally recounted a memory of seeing pies cooling on the railing of the front porch on Sundays when they went to church.

Mom and Dad got married after WWll and moved to California. It must have felt like heaven, a brand new life in a brand new place. My dad worked over 30 years for the Southern California Gas Company. My mom, Maxine, raised my brothers and I, and later ran the kitchen at a large church and nursery school. Their practicality, fortitude and ability to make life cheerful were a result of the character that was formed in their earlier experiences.

My parents had a high school education. Our family lived simply and always had plenty of healthy food and pies. I recall my parents loved Fritos and bean dip. We lived in the San Joaquin Valley, where my eyes continually drank in the Sierra Nevada, vast fields of cotton and alfalfa, and orchards of oranges, walnuts and plums.

Grandmother came to live with us for a few years when I was ten. She shared a room with me, and I believe we both secretly longed for rambling conversations with lots of giggles, but she was the quiet type . . . like her granddaughter. When I could, I hid away in my room, sat on my bed and secretly drew 100's of pictures on white bond paper.

How does one become drawn in to being an artist? Does one's childhood need to have artistic advantages, tremendous talent, trips to the art museum, tons of praise and fostering at a young age? Although I was a well-loved child, those were not a part of my experience. However, my eye was unsuspectingly pulled in to beauty and design, and I came to seek more and more of it.   
 
Teenage influences:
  • My dad's Arizona Highways magazine. I could see how much he loved reading it, and  I was pulled into its fantastic photography of desert canyons and deep azure skies. That's it. I was drawn in.
  • My English teacher from high school, Mrs. Story, asked me to be the yearbook photographer in my senior year. I ran with it and loved every minute. 
  • Junior year in high school was pivotal for me. I rode my bike every morning to the Humanities class that started an hour before regular classes. Alan Agol, a brilliant man and gifted teacher, opened my eyes and ears to music, art and thought. It was such an amazing bestowal of his own talents. For this, I am most grateful.

How we get to where we are in life is fascinating to me. A one step at a time process, one little step starts it all. The pressures and influences, the lucky breaks and the long, dry spells are the yin and yang of our development, our life long road that requires grace and love and passion. 

I write this article to those who have a passion for art, but think they have no great talent for it. I believe that art comes from out of our life experiences and personal relationships. For me, it is from the time that I shared my room with my grandmother and the view of the vast, expansive fields and orchards.

I woke up one day and from the depths of me came the words, "I am an artist." I just knew, and accepted it. If that happens to you, take a step, smile, and get ready for one crazy beautiful ride.

 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

An aside: I strongly recommend reading Timothy Egan's book, The Worst Hard Time: 
The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl.

I wish I had learned directly from my mother and father what their experiences were from their point of view. They never said a word about it.





0 Comments

Artistic Beginnings, Photography & Light

3/2/2017

5 Comments

 
When my friend recently called to tell me she had retrieved my old view camera out from storage, I was ecstatic! I opened the wobbly case and found it to be encrusted with grit in some of the nooks and crannies. Seeing it sitting on the chair in my home now, it causes a gut reaction as it brings me back to a time when I had to learn to maintain my creativity while learning a complex technical procedure.
Picture
Picture
4 x 5 Ansco View Camera
I bought the used camera  from a photographer in my home town when I enrolled at Brooks Institute of Photography, and planned to learn everything I could to be able to graduate and then photograph musicians for album covers. I was nineteen, what can I say?

This is a 4 x 5 view camera, (left) the larger style of camera that requires a tripod and a black cloth to be placed over one's head when viewing the image from the back of the camera. The black cloth blocks out the light so you can see the image on which you are focusing.I lugged the camera and a tripod all over Santa Barbara to shoot the required class assignments. 
After the first year, we were permitted to use our SLR cameras for EDL's (every day life),extra curricular assignments. My boyfriend (whom I later married) had a Linhof camera with a Zeiss lens, and most of the other students owned Calumets. I was the kid that stood out with my old army camera. I had earned and saved my money for photography equipment and living expenses, and purchased what I could afford. I ate a lot of pasta in those days.
Picture
Picture
Inverted image from view camera
Picture
Back of camera
The view from the back of the camera is an upside down 4 x 5 inch image (left).

When you're ready to shoot, the film is loaded into 
​the back of the camera with a film holder. The film holder (below) holds 2 sheets of film, and you slip the film holder into the spring loaded black bracket on the back of the camera (left). Shooting with this system requires many steps, and a great deal of focus and concentration. Once you get used to it, you just do it without a thought.
Picture
Film holder
While slogging away at photography school, my emphasis was on portraiture. I remember the expansive studios and tungsten and strobe lights where we photographed portraits and product shots, but I was more drawn to the natural light from windows and the outdoors. I was the champion film developer in the darkroom and helped out students whose sheet film got surge marks which were visible when when the negatives were printed on photo paper. I learned negative retouching from Kitty West to bring in a little extra cash.

Following graduating from Brooks, I went on to join in a partnership at a portrait studio that I co-owned and managed in Marin County for over twenty years. My experience taught me a huge appreciation for well executed photography and cinematography. It is certain that photography developed my eye for design, and even more so, enhanced my ability to see the nuances of various types of light and its simple truth. It's always been the light, 

Much appreciation to my mom and dad for believing in me and giving me my start.
5 Comments
    Picture

    Luminous Color Explorations

    My name is Jill Keller Peters, and I am passionate about using color as a language to 
    bring beauty, 
    hope and vibrancy to the viewer. ​
    Here I post thoughts, paintings and musings of art and on being an artist.


    ​

    Archives

    August 2020
    April 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    February 2019
    May 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    April 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011

    Previous Archives

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Art
    • Modern Paintings
    • Impressionist Paintings
  • About
    • PRESS
    • Interiors
    • Artist Statement Modern
    • Artist Statement Landscape
  • Events
  • Contact