Cowboy with Yellow 2008

One of the biggest pleasures in my life is teaching.  I teach professionally, and I teach personally.  If a friend needs to learn to ride a horse, I'm at the ready.  If someone else is having difficulty with their skiing and can't get their snowplow right, I'm there as "Inga".  It's some gene in me that just never seems to switch off, and I do love it.

I teach workshops around the country that have to do with what I do:  combining paint and collage.  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Holly-Roberts-Art/184875581524827Generally when I do a workshop, I never make my own work.  However, I have done several workshops at Anderson Ranch that are intensives.The students in those classes are fairly well along in what they are doing so they don't need me as much.  I have made images in those workshops, and have tried to set up parameters so that I'm not working in my usual fashion:  no photos of my own, no computer or printer to work from, and I "borrow" other people's paints and brushes. I'm also used to working absolutely alone, so to have people all around me, watching what I'm doing, is very disconcerting.

This small image was done during one of those intensives.  I did a demonstration on how to apply crackle to a surface, and then decided to use pictures from an art magazine to form the image.   One of the things my students and I talk quite a bit about, in making collage, is when it's okay to use someone else's images, and when it's stealing and/or in violation of copyright. I felt this was a good example of what's okay.  I used other people's images, but not duplicating what they did, just using their material to inform what I'd made.  So, this slightly paunchy cowboy,  made from bones and constellations, emerged with his substantial belly, and small, pointy cowboy boots.  I think this is most likely a portrait of my friend Kay(of the heart attack).   http://hollyrobertsonepaintingatatime.blogspot.com/2011/12/man-with-heart-attack-1989.html .