Today we’d like to introduce you to Elaine Farmer.
Elaine, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Fine art for me has been a lifetime endeavor. I grew up in Massachusetts and I am the second oldest of seven siblings, all with various artistic talents of their own. I began my own artistic journey at the age of twelve with my first set of oil paints and have been studying and painting art ever since.
Over my career, I have exhibited in juried art shows, won awards on a national level, and have a number of images licensed for commercial use. Having lived in England for three years, I can say my work is found in collections internationally.
Traveling the world to find new ideas, my body of work focuses on quiet landscapes as seen near home and far beyond. Using a simple design structure and brighter than life colors, I blend traditional realism with a contemporary impressionistic feeling, capturing the essence of my inspiration.
While exploring this new idea of simplifying the scene to reflect the bare essence of the theme, I hold the Hudson River Valley Artists in high regard for their valuable studies in plein air along with their classical academic approach to painting.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Living in a large household, art became my refuge from the chaos of a large family and because my parents told me I could never make a living with my art, I did not go to art school but I did study through classes and workshops with many well-known artists in the U.S. and internationally.
Over the years of working with many instructors, I always felt the absence of addressing color mixing. Through my teaching experiences, simplifying color mixing for my students, it led me to focus on developing an easy to understand book which I published in 2014, titled Harmonious Color Schemes; a no-nonsense approach using the Color Wheel, to be used by working artists, teachers and the novice painter.
Please tell us about White Birch Fine Art, LLC.
More recently, in September 2017, I launched the start of a coloring book series, Fine Art Coloring Made EASY!. The drawings for the books were originally created to use in an Art Therapy program for veterans that I conduct at the Manchester VA Center. The gray-scale drawings are a more desirable format for those unable to manage the confines of the many tiny geometric shapes found in most of today’s adult coloring books. Although the coloring book concept is not new, it does offer them a different type of experience for the colorist of any age.
For me, the images in the books have become a retrospective of my career, resurrecting older motif’s from paintings past, translating them back to their graphite drawing, to drawing images I’ve longed to create with hopes of painting them in oil in the future.
When catching up with family and friend, I am often asked what I’ve been doing lately and my response of “just drawing and coloring these days” makes me grateful that I am able to say it with a smile and that I really do make a living at doing what I love. I hope to get back to my oil painting soon but the images for the coloring books are leading me down unexpected paths so, at this point, I am just letting the books take me where they will.
My love of the arts has led me to be an active arts advocate in my community and my philosophy has always been that art should be an integral part of our daily lives. Whether it is fine art, music, dance or even other art forms such as the culinary arts or crafting, using our imagination allows us to use the creative side of our brains, and as a result, it places us in a contemplative, restful state.
So maybe, just maybe, if we could all find the peace missing within ourselves, we could collectively create a happier, connected world.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
Bunking in the same room as my three younger sisters, I had to carve out my own space within that room so I handmade a desk that I could draw and paint on. I reminded my sisters of this desk recently and they all remember it clearly.
Pricing:
- Fine Art Coloring Books $18
Contact Info:
- Website: https://elainefarmer.com/
- Email: info@whitebirchfineart.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elainefarmerart/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WhiteBirchFineArt/
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