Audrey's Documetary
Audrey's Radio Interview
Born: Audrey Auclair Haverhill, Massachusetts March 21, 1936
I was born an Artist... The trait was recognized when my parents saw me drawing at age three and knew what the marks were. They gave me pencils, crayons, paper, and scissors, and I spent hours drawing and making things, using my imagination to act out stories with my dolls in the dollhouse that I made furniture for. I was busy and happy playing by myself.
My parents enrolled me in a watercolor class in Rockport, MA, where they rented a cottage for every summer. I was a teenager in a group of older women. We went to a different place each week. I had always observed my surroundings. I loved painting outside, and my way of seeing changed as I related to the way the students interpreted what they saw. Many artists of reputation lived in Rockport, and I saw their paintings in galleries and in the Art Association exhibits.
There was no one in either my mother’s or father’s family that knew anything about art or had any interest in it. My experience came from the summers in Rockport and a few trips to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. After graduating from high school, I was accepted into the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. There I learned the techniques of art, figure drawing, perspective, anatomy, design, painting, and art history. I was a serious student, dedicated to art.
Life has its way of teaching lessons. It is called experience. After art school, I went to Europe for a year studying and traveling. Upon my return, I found a job as a greeting card designer. During the time I worked at Rust Craft, I lived on Newbury St in Boston, and I met and married Charlie, a jazz piano player. We had two sons, and I continued to paint when I could while caring for the family.
The summer the boys were two and four, Charlie had a job on the Cape. Until then, I had never produced paintings I felt were very good in my assessment when compared to the paintings I saw in the galleries. My talent needed to be shaken up, and I was unaware of any stirrings until a wonderful thing happened. At the end of summer on a windy day, I was painting a watercolor of a shed in the backyard when an extraordinary thing happened. I produced an amazing painting, and I was elated with joy. I went from OK to very good in five hours. It was like someone else moved my hand. Almost every painting after that was good, so I entered a few National shows, and my work was accepted. This happened back in the sixties and seventies. During those same times, Charlie had wonderful experiences as a player and composer.
When our children were about twelve and fourteen, I went into a long slump. The more I tried, the worse it got. To break out of the slump, I decided to paint in a completely different way. I bought acrylic paints and the book “Master Class in Watercolor” by Betts. I started paintings from dripping paint with no idea in my mind and brought order to the chaotic color spots. I have always been able to arrange parts into good composition. Now I was involved with colors and shapes, without interference of subject and its limitations. I learned how colors affect each other, side by side, cool and warm, dull and intense. I was more excited than at any other time in my life, and from this experimenting and learning came the most productive period of painting. From that time on, I saw everything as shapes, not table or chair but the shape of the objects. My vision expanded from a narrow opening to a vast expanse. I noticed things I had never paid attention to before, and I was seeing them in terms of what I had learned with the paint lessons. I saw in real life the gradations, value changes, etc. I made paintings of the stairway, hall doorways, looking in, looking out. I noticed how the outside light changed the inside light. Everyone remembers “first times” as special, and that time in my life affected the rest of my life.
Just as one cannot express thoughts without the knowledge of writing down the letters of the alphabet and learning to spell, so technical skill is necessary to express one’s feelings with paint. While painting, I am always working at mixing of colors, applying, changing, or adjusting them when I see if they work together in the application of what I am trying to achieve. The process, the challenge, is the exciting part of making art. It may go well or end in frustration. Because of my knowledge, I can judge my result. I know if the composition works and if I emotionally achieved what I wanted.
I have always liked geometric shapes, lines, and curves, hard edges, and defined shapes. Order and harmony are important to me. For this reason, subjects may be buildings inside or out. I like windows that frame the landscape or windows that reflect. Everything I see, I look at as a potential painting. I am constantly turned on. All of my abstracts start from something I see. Subject matter is shapes of colors and values put together in a beautiful way.
Paintings communicate. They evoke emotions and feelings. I am thankful that through my talent, I have learned to appreciate man’s accomplishments, and I have come to appreciate all of nature that we are a part of. The achievement of great art, I believe, raises the consciousness of man. When I see an ancient Greek temple, or a modern skyscraper, with the sculpture of Michelangelo or the paintings of Rembrandt, I realize the potential and greatness of man. Through eons of time, as civilizations rise and fall, man will forever leave his mark on the earth; his creations will give testimony to his existence.