ARTIST STATEMENT
My work involves a deep love for creating layers made from paper pieces and paint. Pieces of paper torn and pulled apart, usually old finds that scream with nostalgia through their color. The random chaos that forms is comforting. These small mixed media pieces become atmospheric dwellings that are housed on old book covers.
My hands keep busy and my finger tips are full of peeling glue as tiny detailed scraps are secured. This process keeps me ordered with disorder until something is solved through mark making and color. Random meaningful emerges. Beginnings are always happening and nothing is as it seems for too long. The quickness and remedy that takes place of misguided gluings easily becomes a thing of the past. A layered mess brings a small moment.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Andrea first emerged on the scene as a spunky midwestern from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After earning a BFA from The Maryland Institute College of Art (circa 1994), she relocated to Chicago, Illinois in 1995 and ever since has continued to make a home for herself and now with her family. In addition to years of artful makings exhibited at fairs and galleries, along with an intense participation in the Chicago food industry, she received an MA in Counseling Art Therapy from The Adler School of Professional Psychology in 2006. She currently works as a Licensed Art and Play therapist in her own private practice, Artful Growth Counseling PLLC.
Integrating her worlds as an artist and an art therapist has been a natural coupling that happily allows for even more accumulation of art supplies and scraps of paper. She continues to have an enthusiasm for collecting all things tiny, anything vintage, white erasers; because you never know when and where you’ll need one, and any thrift store sewing notion find.
© Andrea Picard