LOREE HARRELL
ART & WORDS

I am an artist and a writer.  Not necessarily in that order in all of every day, but art and words are my work, my play, and my delight.

I have written short stories and poetry for a very long time.  The art came as something of a surprise late in 2000.  I had taken a large studio in the old Springdale School to have room and dedicated space for the writing and other creative projects.  I started drawing (scribbling), and saw possibility in the result for the first time.  From there, the art took over the show.  Soon the studio was filled with paint and paintings, easels and drawings, and visitors stopping by to see what was new.  My first sale, six months after I started drawing, was a series of thirteen small ink and pastel drawings entitled, "My Honor To The Code Talkers", for $2000 - a concrete encouragement that what I was doing had some value in the world.

My art and writing play off of each other - the art holding the seeds of the story; the stories bearing the energies of the art.  Sometimes they partner up in the immediate process and I work back and forth between canvas and paper, and sometimes they follow each other at some future date.  For now, I write when the words are ready, and I paint when the canvas calls.  The process of both keeps me endlessly engaged and fascinated.

I left corporate life in 1994, after fifteen years in hotel and sales management, turning down a publishing position in Vegas to take a couple years off to live by the river and write.  "Body Speaking Words" was published in 1995, as the winning manuscript in Anvil Press' annual Three Day Novel competition.  It is the only manuscript I have submitted for publication to date, although two books, close to a hundred short stories, and 500 poems sit waiting for me to quit creating and start mailing.  Active book projects are "The First Sentence Stories:  Tales Of The Hundred Willing", which is a collection of short-shorts written from the first sentences of contributors;  and "Wicked Dreams" and "Your Body Mine" - erotic novels.

It has been a challenge to find how the art and the writing fit together into the available time.  Or, more specifically, where the responsibility to move the work out into the world fits with the demands of two full-time jobs of creating.  This coming year is devoted to finding that elusive balance between creation and business.

I appreciate your interest in my work
and am wishing you

All the best,
Loree

"Body Speaking Words"
is available through Anvil Press Publishing, Vancouver, B.C.
Contact me for signed Author's Copy.

MATERIALS AND PROCESS

My primary mediums since 2006 are oil-based woodstain on paper, and pen and ink.

I love working with the woodstain - the discovery of infinite images within the context of a limited palette;  the fluidity that teeters on the verge of uncontrollable;  the smell... toxic, forbidden, love it.

Woodstain is an unforgiving medium.  Unlike paint, if you make a mistake, you don't have the opportunity for a correction, unless you were lucky enough to make the mistake in one of the light tones and can correct it effectively with a darker pigment.

I am frequently asked what "woodstain" means.  It is just that - the stain made for wood.  Paper being crushed wood.  It is a medium I may be the only artist using on paper, but the rich, velvety look of it hooked me the first time I tried it.  And the limited palette keeps me honest.  :)

My process is intuitive, leading me to label the style Energetic Abstract early on when forced to give it a label.  I lay down a line or brush stroke, and simply follow where it goes.  There is no preconceived outcome or known image in mind when I begin.  It is a process of discovery.

As images begin to appear to me in the process, I will at times actively strengthen them with choice of color, or by the addition of a line, but I always allow the work to lead.  The biggest part of my fascination with the process is stepping back when the work is complete and finding images at a distance which I hadn't seen as I was working with it.

But the best part is when other people look, and find completely different images and meaning in the piece.  This is an integral part of my work - that it holds something slightly or substantively different for each person that comes in contact with it, and that it holds a unique story for each.

I hope my work holds a story for you.