Current Work in Progress--Completed!
See Mickey's Blog for more on this work.
Mickey at work on "Understanding and Enlightenment," a 4' x 5' canvas using acrylic paint. It is her premier work for 2017. In foreground, on drafting table, is "And The Wind Blew Past My Soul," another acrylic painting on canvas and the final work of 2016.
Current Exhibitions
Debut Solo: This summer in Wilsonville. Almost 40 artworks! Stay tuned for details. Contact me at mickey@artmsr.com if you want an invite to the opening.
Debut Solo: This summer in Wilsonville. Almost 40 artworks! Stay tuned for details. Contact me at mickey@artmsr.com if you want an invite to the opening.
About Mickey
Micheline “Mickey” Stefanie Ronningen was born a Boomer near Los Angeles, California. She spent her early formative years being led around by her older sisters while escaping “Huge snapping turtles!” in Des Moines, Iowa, corn fields. Then the family moved to Chicago. Her flatlander status being well established, Mickey made the move to the Pacific Northwest after graduating school.
Today Mickey's creative outlets include fine art, writing, editing, gardening and landscape design, performance, and dealing blackjack. Creative pursuits began with drawing pictures at the age of four and writing fictional illustrated stories by age nine. Performance work developed at age sixty-five. Pursuing fine arts won out with a summer spent at the Ox-Bow School of Art and eventual full-tuition scholarship and Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Mickey's current passion is to develop her artistic statement in the studio and find the audience for her fine art work, while working on marketing and sales. She fully intends to blog more often; see "Just Saying" [above] for any current and past essays. With a student and adult life revolving around the need to earn a paycheck, she finally now feels old enough to assert different values. "It occurred to me, rather late in the game, that only I could make my art--nobody else has been given this particular gift."
Today Mickey's creative outlets include fine art, writing, editing, gardening and landscape design, performance, and dealing blackjack. Creative pursuits began with drawing pictures at the age of four and writing fictional illustrated stories by age nine. Performance work developed at age sixty-five. Pursuing fine arts won out with a summer spent at the Ox-Bow School of Art and eventual full-tuition scholarship and Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Mickey's current passion is to develop her artistic statement in the studio and find the audience for her fine art work, while working on marketing and sales. She fully intends to blog more often; see "Just Saying" [above] for any current and past essays. With a student and adult life revolving around the need to earn a paycheck, she finally now feels old enough to assert different values. "It occurred to me, rather late in the game, that only I could make my art--nobody else has been given this particular gift."
Artist Statement
I use abstraction because I find it lends clarity to those murky and otherwise undefinable transient states of being. Abstraction is basic to our thought processes. As an art form, it also can allow viewers freedom from potentially limiting and reality-based associations. My style is necessarily contemporary.
I am intrigued by the invisible (such as feelings) and enjoy the challenge of giving form to things and ideas, translating experience into color, shape and composition. All the while I honor those aspects that direct one’s humanity and life course. Additional elements offer respect for humor and the restorative power of the meditative state.
Currently the materials I use to make such statements include archival paper, pens, ink, colored pencil, watercolor pencil, markers, paint and graphite. Pens offer a fine line element; markers are typically somewhat bolder. Colored and watercolor pencil offer specific textural differences. Ink may allow a wondrous drip. Paint provides solidity. I always begin a composition with graphite. The composition evolves as the statement evolves. Sometimes an artwork’s origins demand discovery, sometimes I’m way ahead of the process.
My ideal viewer appreciates color, balance and imbalance, a sense of play, a sense of identity and a sense of mystery. Many of my compositions invite meditative thought. I enjoy encouraging viewers to wander and safely embrace the unknown. Welcome fellow travelers….
I am intrigued by the invisible (such as feelings) and enjoy the challenge of giving form to things and ideas, translating experience into color, shape and composition. All the while I honor those aspects that direct one’s humanity and life course. Additional elements offer respect for humor and the restorative power of the meditative state.
Currently the materials I use to make such statements include archival paper, pens, ink, colored pencil, watercolor pencil, markers, paint and graphite. Pens offer a fine line element; markers are typically somewhat bolder. Colored and watercolor pencil offer specific textural differences. Ink may allow a wondrous drip. Paint provides solidity. I always begin a composition with graphite. The composition evolves as the statement evolves. Sometimes an artwork’s origins demand discovery, sometimes I’m way ahead of the process.
My ideal viewer appreciates color, balance and imbalance, a sense of play, a sense of identity and a sense of mystery. Many of my compositions invite meditative thought. I enjoy encouraging viewers to wander and safely embrace the unknown. Welcome fellow travelers….
