Susan Tonkin Riegel’s biggest tip for fellow artists is simple: “Do the work, keep working and don’t do something that doesn’t feel like you.”
Riegel has crafted an impressive art career by being herself. Her mixed-media works are arresting for their playful, abstract and figurative compositions and intricacy. Riegel loves to experiment with materials, from two-dimensional mixed media and oil paint to clay, fabric, batik, papier-mache, wood and, most recently, raw canvas that she paints and sews.
“I get tired of cranking the same thing out, so I switch media,” the longtime Granite Bay resident says. “My style is always changing.”
Few painters can make you feel like you’re really there. But stare at one of Tom Sorensen’s landscapes and you can almost feel the Santa Cruz wind ruffling your hair, smell the damp earth after a rain in Montgomery Woods, hear the surf crash against the shore below Pigeon Point.
Sorensen, hiker and outdoorsman, enjoys capturing beautiful places he visits. Oil paint and canvas are how he documents “grand views” from his travels.
“I’ve always been into hiking and enjoy being out in nature—it’s very restorative,” says the retired respiratory therapist. “Any time my mood is not good, if I get out and go for a hike, it makes me feel better.”
Signs of Life Multimedia artist lets her materials do the talking By Jessica Laskey August 2022 When I ask artist Julia Couzens how she comes up with ideas, her answer is swift. “I don’t lead the work, the work leads me,” she says. “I hold the materials in my hand and...
You probably walk by utility boxes every day without noticing. But if that utility box is splattered with vivid colors and a woman’s piercing stare, her head crowned in wildflowers, you might stop and stare.
Beautifying everyday objects to bring art into public spaces is the goal of Midtown Association’s Art in Unexpected Places initiative. Launched in 2016, the program has covered 21 trash receptacles, 13 utility boxes and six dumpsters across Midtown.
Robert Regis Dvorak is an artist’s artist. He paints, draws, writes and sings. He teaches. He works in watercolor, oil, acrylic, ink, etching, woodcuts and silk screen. He’s filled more than 300 sketchbooks, many during trips abroad. Even after decades as a professional artist, he has ideas that will keep him busy for years.
“When you’re an artist, you do what your heart leads you to do,” Dvorak says. “If I had any sense about me, I would have gone into music—the path was there. But I really didn’t want to. I enjoyed drawing.”
Dvorak hails from a musical family (yes, he’s related to Antonin Dvorak, the Czech composer), but knew from an early age he wanted to be a visual artist. His parents were concerned he wouldn’t make enough money. They convinced him to try architecture.
Tracy Tayama Brady lives by a maxim from one of her favorite writers, Elizabeth Gilbert: “Art is not one magical thing—it’s the act of creating.”
Though Tayama (who uses her maiden name as an artist) has made art since she can remember, it’s only now with two kids and a career as a child psychologist that she’s in a place to understand what it means to be an artist.
