SHEILA BLAKE

About the Artist

To me the most thrilling concepts in painting are creating the illusions of light and of space, and to these ends in teaching I am most interested in weaving color theory into the practice of painting so that it becomes a seamless way of thinking about color, composing in three dimensions on a two-dimensional plane, and helping students use these ideas to find their own form of expression. I have been drawing and painting all my life. I grew up in New York City where I went to Cooper Union Art School. For most of my adult life I lived in Durham North Carolina where I raised my family. I’ve taught art to adults and kids,to undergraduates at Duke University, and now I teach painting in Continuing Education at the Corcoran College of Art and Desigh in Washington DC. I’ve raised 4 kids and have 9 grand kids. I’ve owned a leather shop, worked as a house painter and sign painter, and I wrote an advice column in Jane magazine. I have exhibited and sold my work nationally and internationally, but mostly I feel privileged that I have a life that allows me to paint every day.

Artist's Statement

I have been a painter most of my life. Since we moved to Takoma Park fourteen years ago, I have been working on paintings of houses in my neighborhood. They are developing in complexity of ideas and simplicity of image. I continue to develop my knowledge of color as light and feeling. I am obsessed with composing in a 3 dimensional space on a 2 dimensional field. I go to the National Gallery and the Hirshhorn and draw from paintings and sculptures there in order to better understand the spatial arabesque of the compositions of Titian, Chardin, Rembrandt, Henri Moore. I have been teaching at the Corcoran College of Art and Design since 2003. But mainly I paint: full time, every day. For all the cutting edge, idea-based art, and all the new technology, I still believe that there is a place for painting. I still believe that the lessons of Bonnard, Matisse, Hopper, Morandi, Diebenkorn and the past 400 years of oil painting carry the seeds for representational painting that can go further in this tradition. This is what I love and teach and dedicate my life to.