60Dr. Eve Riser-Roberts (thecatgallery)
Joined 11 years ago from Santa Fe, NM
Eve Riser-Roberts received her B.S. and M.S. from the University of Arizona and her Ph.D. from the University of London, England, in Microbiology. She worked for 20 years in scientific and medical research in the U.S., Germany, and England. She has written and published two technical books on biological, physical, and chemical processes for cleaning up the environment from petroleum contamination.
Eve is now a full-time artist! She studied art in London and Wales and at Ventura College, CA, and has participated in numerous art workshops conducted by nationally acclaimed artists. She has been honored to receive awards for her art in California and national competitions. Her original oil paintings, etchings, acrylics, and watercolors are in collections in England, Germany, and the U.S.
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My life has now gone full circle. After more than 20 years of scientific and medical research in three countries, I have come back to my first love, art. There are many ways art and science are related. Creativity and imagination are elements of both. Now I apply my love of experimentation to works on paper and canvas.
Ideas play a part in my paintings. I enjoy working in series, that is, producing paintings along a certain theme. This forces an artist to move beyond a routine, comfortable style or approach. There is a point in a series when the artist who is open to the process has a shift, as something from within rises to be expressed. And this is when something original and exciting happens. It's unpredictable. It may be the mind subconsciously manipulating various factors and suddenly expelling them as a solution to a problem. It might be something new in a totally different direction. Looking back over my works, I can see that the awards I've won have often acknowledged the uniqueness and originally that resulted from this process.
I am finding that a part of myself that has worked its way into some of my paintings is a touch of humor. But this humor can take different forms. It can be amusing. It can just be a unique twist. Even in the art parody series based on other artists' styles, I see my own originality and sense of fun. Painting cats allows me to try out some wild ideas and go where my imagination takes me. But I also love painting the female figure and have combined the two in another series, "Woman with Cat".
The response to the Famous Artists' Cats series has been a treat. Newspaper articles, images included in books and used by publishers for book covers, orders from around the world, along with awards for the original paintings. So many delightful surprises for something that just started out as a cat painting for a girlfriend's birthday.
On the other hand, since 2004, I have been developing a new concept, combining vintage and antique jewelry with vintage haori and michiyuki kimonos, into a chatelaine revival with a twist. Coming soon!