Pamela McKinnie

"I have been drawing and painting for as long as I can remember. As an only child, I would save my 50¢ a week allowance until I could buy a paint-by-number kit or some other art project to feed my creative spirit. I moved from hand-drawn paper dolls and collages of garden flowers to oil painting, watercolor, traditional Chinese ink drawing, acrylics, collage, digital painting, sculpting, and all forms of mixed-media. My degree at Central Missouri State University and adjunct professional training led to a lifetime of creating art and a 35-year career as a graphic designer.

I have always been an intuitive artist. I love to combine various art modalities, which sometimes leads to happy surprises and new ways of seeing life. My passion is to approach my art as a small child. When creating paintings on canvas, I lay a canvas on the floor and randomly begin to brush, dab, drip, spray and scrape paints, inks and other materials with no particular form in mind. After a few days of exploring the initial abstract, I discover the seed of an image that I liberate from the background. Multiple layers enhance the emerging image, which takes on a life of its own. When creating digital paintings, I layer my altered photography with numerous layers of painting, resulting in a creation that is unexpected and “new.” Sculptures are also intuitive and multilayered. In all forms of my work, often something other than the visible appears, which to me is a testimony to the underlying connectedness of life.

In the spirit of Rassouli’s Fusionart, my art is often a fusing of various cultures, a communication with nature, a blending of opposites. It is a reflection of what is felt rather than what is seen. What appears in the finished work is my spiritual and emotional energy fusing with whatever is longing to be expressed. I hope to create something that is alive with energy — something that invites viewers to connect with life in new and meaningful ways."