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ARTIST'S
STATEMENT
I was born
into artistic creativity. It wasn't something that I thought about.
It was just the way things were. It definitely enriched my childhood
and has been directly responsible for most of the high points in my
adult life. I'm very thankful for my heredity.
My artistic
time has mostly focused on trying to help educate children and adults
to the wonders of nature and the natural world around them. The challenge
of bringing life and the pure essence of a bird, plant, frog, etc. to
the attention of the viewer is my goal. Creating art with the Delaware
Nature Society on several native plant projects and the Delaware Department
of Natural Resources and Environmental Control for shorebird protection
was exciting and broadened my experience and knowledge. Another artistically
enriching experience was working with the Dean of Humanities at UC Berkeley
to illustrate antiquities.
Raising my
son brought out a rather different side of my creativity. It manifested
itself into unique Halloween costumes, sculpted peanut butter creatures
for lunch at pre-school, sculpted birthday cakes, 'you name it, we did
it' things. My son graduated from college with an Ecology major and
will be starting graduate school this year. I'm pleased to say that
he has also inherited the creative/artistic gene and hopefully will
combine his scientific and artistic sides.
Now that
we are in San Diego I have a new studio that I'm beginning to break
in and I plan on playing and enjoying myself. I'm glad that I've met
quite a few interesting and talented new friends and I'm letting life
take me where it will.
PROFILE
Joyce has
worked as an illustrator and art teacher. Her work has been widely pubished and has been exhibtied
in numerous one-person and group show throughout Southern California
(where she won many awrds), Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.
Joyce belongs to several local art organizations including Escondido
Art Association, Ramona Art Guild, the San Diego Pastel Society, the
San Diego Museum of Art Artists Guild, the La Jolla Art Association,
and the San Diego Visual Artists Guild.
EXCERPT FROM
AN ARTICLE
Victoria
Chick "Ramona Sentinel Magazine" May, 2005
"Ramona
artist Joyce Stark's interest in nature led her to accomplishments in
scientific illustration, studying with the senior illustrator of the
Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at University of California at Berkeley,
and to botanical illustration for the Delaware nature Education and
the Pennsylvania Horticultural societies.
The drawings
and watercolors she did for scientific illustration were by necessity,
factual.
Since moving
to Ramona, Stark has changed her media choices as well as her direction
in art by moving toward a looser style with the goal of capturing the
life and presence of animals rather than mere facts.
Living close
to Ramona's Wildlife Research Institute has been a bon to observation
of birds of prey. The opportunity to draw and do close-up photography
enables Stark to see and present her subjects as personalities.
Now working
in acrylic paint or in dry pastel, she organizes her canvases I an abstract
way without losing the detail necessary for the viewer to understand
the texture of fur or feathers, the warmth of sunlight, and the chill
of water.
Viewers see
in Stark's paintings not specimens, but illusions of living, breathing
animals in their habitat.
Stark makes
use of wrapped canvases that she believes make her subjects ore three-dimensional.
Recognition
for her Wildlife art has included the President's Choice Award of the
San Diego Pastel Society, many first place and "Best of Show"
awards in juried shows since moving to Southern California, and on the
East Coast, reproduction of her botanical illustrations in magazines
and literature published in Delaware and Pennsylvania..."
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