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When
I permanently injured my right arm in 1984, I began painting with my left hand,
which resulted in a looser, more abstract style of aerial views of landscapes
and cityscapes, while my watercolors moved towards mystical symbols and
rainbows, with washes of vibrant colors. Although
I have been an artist in various media for many years, I became fascinated with
fractals in the 1980's. In 2002 I
began combining digital photographs and fractals with sepia photographs from the
1800’s, and called them “Crazy Quilt Collages”.
Recently I have been able to import pictures of my paintings and mixed
media artwork into the fractal program and manipulate them as fractals.
Then I export them, paint them digitally. This,
in turn, impacts my painting style of dots and tie dyed effects that have been
compared to Rorschach ink blots. As
a retired art therapist, the expressionists and visionary artists, such as
Kandinsky and his philosophy, have influenced my painting style in oil, acrylic
and watercolor. My current artworks
can be very ambiguous in meaning and content and some of them have been
describes as being like tie dye or Rorschach inkblots with hidden images and
pointillism dots. I
explore the richness and understructure or fractal base of the universe and the
texture of invisible infinity. Creating
art is my spiritual garden where I grow rainbows of colors and is my meditation,
along with yoga. It’s a way for me
to reach my higher power and achieve inner and outer harmony as I journey on the
spiral path of life. I
believe the universe is a holographic fractal and we are all made from the same
building blocks of love/energy/light. Fractal geometry provides order from out
of chaos. Hidden within the order are a myriad of spirals, which seems to me to
be the point where creation begins. Connie is an adjunct professor at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee, and at Murray State University in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. She maintains a consultation and private practice and is the founder and director of the "Rainbow Arts Center". She is a member of the Downtown Artist's Cooperative in Clarksville, Tennessee, and past president of the Tennessee Art Therapy Association. She was also director of the Art Therapy Internship Program at Mt. Mary College in Milwaukee, taught art at Sauk Valley College in Dixon, Illinois and art therapy at Oasis Center in Chicago. She has presented many seminars and workshops nationally on art and expressive therapy and is the author of Functional Art Therapy for the Severely Handicapped, and Forming the Pearl: A Creative Receptive Process Model of Expressive Therapy. She is listed in the Chicago Art Review and has had her artwork and an article published in Working With Images: The Art of Art Therapists. Connie is a board certified art therapist and is certified as an expressive therapist and hypnotherapist. She received her doctorate in expressive therapy from the National Institute of Expressive Therapy in Honolulu, Hawaii, her Master of Arts and Bachelor of Arts Degrees from Northern Illinois University in Dekalb, and her Associate of Arts Degree from Sauk Valley College in Dixon, IL. She has worked as an art and expressive therapist for over 35 years in a variety of settings. 2010
Hopkinsville Community College, Hopkinsville, KY, “And What Is It?” 2010
Downtown Artists’ Cooperative, Clarksville, TN, “The Rhythm of Paint
and Pixel” 2008
Fathom Gallery, 2008
Caladan Gallery, Cambridge, MA, March featured artist, “Microcosmic
Observations” 2006
Downtown Artists Cooperative, 2006
2004-05 2003
Downtown Artists Cooperative, RECENT
JURIED AND INVITATIONAL SHOWS: 2010
APSU Downtown Gallery, Clarksville, TN, Austin Peay State University Art
Department Faculty Show 2009
Upstream People Gallery, 2009
2009
Caladan Gallery, 2008
Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, TN, Artists’ With
Disabilities”, May – September 2008
Caladan Gallery, Cambridge, MA, Mystery of the Natural World” 2008
MOCA Museum Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, International Digital Fine Art Show 2007
Caladan
Gallery, Cambridge, MA, Pure
Color, Award, solo exhibition 2007
Upstream People Gallery, 9th Annual Abstraction International,
Special Recognition 2007
Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest, Honorable Mention, Madrid 2007
Upstream People Gallery, Omeha, NE, 9th Annual Collage &
Mixed Media Art
International Juried Online Exhibition, Special Recognition 2007
Caladan Gallery, Cambridge, MA, Darkness:
World and Culture 2007 Caladan Gallery, Cambridge, MA, Cosmic Influence 2006
Upstream
People Gallery, 8th Annual Collage & Mixed Media Art
International Juried Online Exhibition 2006
2006
MOCA Museum Gallery, Brooklyn,
NY, “The
Donnie 2006 Show” Paintings and Artist’s Statement in: Working With Images: The Art of Art Therapists and Chicago Art Review 9th Annual Abstraction International, 2007 Upstream People Gallery, Special Recognition Connie Livingston-Dunn of Springville, Tennessee takes advantage of her digital knowledge to create some very interesting collages. “Brahma Gupta Crevice” is one of those in which flower-like images composed of fanciful curvilinear constructions overlay a soften patterned backdrop. 9th Annual Collage, Digital & Mixed Media International Juried Online Art Exhibition, 2007, Special Recognition Connie Livingston-Dunn of Springville, TN has mastered the digital media in the wonderful layering of imagery which is quite successful in her piece “Dreamer”. The fanciful fractalizing overlapping the brain area of the silver-like face portrays the idea well. |
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email Connie at: yogart41 at yahoo.com for speediest response connie@rainbowartscenter.com or chiartconnie@gmail.com for information on purchasing original art, prints or mentoring program All graphics and web content are copyrighted by Connie Livingston-Dunn and Rainbow Arts Center, 2003-2014 |
