Audra Shares the Why and How

The time greatly varies and it's complicated to count . My first complex large work,"The Narrows" took me six calendar years to birth. Not all that time was actual painting and drawing. Large works take up a good deal of physical space, so there were stretches of time I had to take it down as set it aside, while I worked on other pieces.  Even then, ideas were perculating and processing.  When I first began "The Narrows", I was averaging 2 hours for every small 2" square. With 1000 squares total, naturally, I got much faster as it progressed.  Cutting and mounting them onto the acrylic took two weeks and building the framing system that creates the optical effect took several more days. It's not a fast process, but it's worth the time spent. 

I often use abstract string or ribbon forms and tiny globes to help my viewers to enter within and be pulled along through my work. The ribbon gives form to the wind and the spheres add weight like an anchor.  It really helps to propel you across the gaps and into new parts of the landscape. They also provide a bit of distraction so that I can manipulate multiple perspectives into one whole. It's a sort of visual sleight of hand trick. Specifically, I love spheres because, though a geometric form, they are pervasive in nature. The same is true of the ribbon like forms, which could be dodder, grasses, flows of water or other magical things.

We are presently in Earth's sixth mass extinction, one caused by humans. Other artists focus on putting rock star endangered species front and center in their work. I respect what they are doing. It's extrememtly important! For me, however, the approach is more subtle. For some time now, I have been incorporating threatened and endangered species into my art. Because in real life you have to look for these rare creatures, in my art you must do the same. In the process of researching local endangered species, I have come to speculate that we only notice those special neighbors if they are flashy or they get in the way of powerful corporations, developers, governmental projects or others who want to use them in disputes. If they don't fall into one of those catagories, do we even notice they exist before they are extinct?  My tiny "The Least of these are Sacred" is one work where I did put our endangered Ouachita Rock Pocketbook as the focal piece. Who fights for these plain humble mussels and our other disappearing friends? I feel like we need to know our plant and animal neighbors. We need to learn their names. 

We all stand on the shoulders of the creative ones that came before us and touch hands with those of our own times.  I have so many influences. These are a few: 
  Thomas Moran's monumental paintings of the American West may be the reason I gravitate towards creating landscapes. 
  Chuck Close's work certainly taught me how to create large works from smaller compositions.  My gridwork series interplays those ideas with inspiration from the Op Art Movement.
Less obvious but certainly important is the influence of Georgia Okeefe. I was first introduced to her work as a teen. Her use of color, curvalinear forms, and juxtaposition of forms within and against the landscapes can be seen in my work. I have always enjoyed the way her art can be interpreted in personal and intimate ways. 
  Emily Carr's landscpes of the Pacific Northwest created a language for expressing movement and color that soaked into my subconcious and came out onto my canvas. Only recently have I realized her impact on my work. Though she has been criticized for cultural appropriation, I would like to believe she did the best she knew to do to express respect for the First Nations. I wonder if she, like me, believed that if you can communicate our soulful connection to the environment, we will care better for it and for our humanity.
  Though I would not consider my work to be Surrealism or Magical Realism, there are influences there, particularly in the approach that one need not use rational thought to understand art.