Wish You Were Wild" 10"x10" Framed Digital Art on Giclee by Marcela Poffald

Art making is a kind of research.

When working from life, I am committing to a period of close, intimate observation. I study the specific qualities of light and color, muscle and posture. For that moment in time, I am seeking a kind of total familiarity.

Similarly, when working from imagination, I am learning. First and foremost, about myself: I don’t know where the images come from, just that they have arrived. Why this? Why now?

Then, in the process of rendering these unbidden ideas, I pore over reference images of their components. In this way I get to study subjects I would otherwise not encounter, such as the mechanics of a hot air balloon, or the life in a coral reef.

Regardless of subject, I come away from a piece feeling more connected to the world — and myself — by knowing some part of it more intimately than before.