Artist's Statement
Art has been a part of my life since I was a small child. My father (an accomplished artist) started teaching me drawing and color skills when I was seven. At the age of eight I had a teacher enter a painting I did in a Smithsonian contest for children and I won first place (and alas they kept the painting). But my father went out and bought me an easel and from then on I had a nice place in his studio. As a young child I loved color and painting things that were lively. In high school it was the sixties and I painted flowers, and people and animals running and jumping and dancing. I started selling posters as a senior in high school and in college made good money doing life size girls in bikinis for boys dorm rooms as well as oil paintings of sea scapes for my parents' friends living rooms and floral designs for women who wanted color in their homes. Hooked rugs, macrame, and beaded clothing for myself also were part of my life then.
Quilting design came into my life thanks to my Grandmother who had taught me how to hand sew. After college I did layout work for advertising, sold paintings and had a stint at doing billboards for rodeos. I was always stretching and developing and hoping to keep learning. I longed to do something more than the fine art I was involved in but wasn't sure what.
It wasn't until my son was ill and in the hospital that I got the beginning of the artist I am today. I began hearing people's voices and the stories of their lives and started developing my own stories into my work. I worked to make my work simpler, more folk driven like Grandma Moses and other artists I began studying about. Instead of paint, I took quilting and patchwork as my medium. I like making each quilt stand on its own merit and I try to stretch my inner voice to make the message come through and the visuals different. It is my goal as an artist to make a person come along on my story journey and smile at what they see or at least "think" about it. Even better if someone is an artist themselves and can "see" the way I see from my heart and eyes. A nun who was one of my professors in school said "good art speaks for itself, don't over do or try to explain it for that is the work of the piece itself."
This is my vision as an artist and my goal.
I have found that many people do not know or understand folk art or at least my folk art which looks to be simple. It is the simple look that remains the hard part and in fact my joy since it pushes me in every piece. I want my work to be child like and yet, developed from many years of art experience. In 80 years I am happy knowing someone will know who I was, what I loved and what was important to me, for it is all designed on each original colorful quilt.
Mary Lou Weidman