About Darci

To me, writing an "About the Artist" page always feels a little like writing a bad personal ad. "I'm inspired by long walks on the beach and...".  A place for me to spout tired cliches about how I always wanted to be an artist (I didn't - as a kid I wanted to be either a dancer, a bank robber or the cartoon character She-Ra), and give you the deep dark secrets to my inspiration. 

But here's the really deep dark secret - I don't get "inspiration".  In college art classes, I always felt like a fraud. Everyone else was always having deep angst-y conversations about the meaning behind their art and I was sitting there going "I drew a bunch of dragons roasting Genghis Khan's head. It's called Mongolian Barbecue."   I tried to be deep and angst-y and inspired, but it mostly became me trying to explain what I had painted with "I thought it was funny" or "because I wanted to". 

So getting an art degree ended with me working in Idaho, backpacking into mountain lakes to sample fish and cut the toes off of frogs.  I quit "making art" and got back to creating things.  I built stacked stone planters and remodeled a 100 year old log cabin. I drew pictures of fish as people to use as labels for homemade beer, made scrapbooks, and sewed my own workout clothes.  

People commented on how "artistic" I was, but to me, I was just solving problems.  I wanted something pretty on my wall.  I needed stone behind my pellet stove.  Therefore, the obvious and logical solution is to make the stone behind the pellet stove into a picture of a dragonfly - right?

Gradually it dawned on me that for me, art is never going to be this mystical ideal that is hung in galleries and provokes "deep" conversations.  It's adding a little fun and beauty to everyday things and day-to-day life.  
To learn more about how I got into this particular style of art and exactly how I create it check out The Art page.