Website under construction!
But this early bio is still cool.
FOR A CURRENT, ILLUSTRATED BIO FROM 2021 see it on my mural website.
NOTE - This little sketch is from about ten years ago. I still like the doodles though. For more recent activity see my political page
As in many families, art was in our blood. My mother was a commercial artist, book cover designer and art teacher. My dad, Dickinson Sinnott, should have been a bard in medieval Ireland, but was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 1926 instead. A serving of his poetry and thoughts may be found on his own his own page (RIP, Dad).
What I remember most absorbing from childhood is the ecstasy of being in the jungle of giant fallen elm trees and playing Indians ALL the time. Not cowboys, just Indians. My two sisters and I had toy horses, Barbies and bags of leather to make their clothes. Mom made us a teepee and we ran barefoot all summer long.
I drew early and a lot. Going through some old university notes recently, I realize I must have doodled my way through entire classes. Some typical examples are included here.
The first really cool work in my "oeuvre" comes from age 4 and of course my mother saved it. It is a picture of a lady that was rolled and stood up in cylindrical form. The image amazed me years later when I realized that she was so much like the Snake Goddess statues from Minoan Crete with their apron-shaped, tiered skirts, their tiny waists and flower crowns, and actual fabric capes. This echo from the past pointed towards the future discovery of my spiritual path and the inspiration of earth and sky, god and goddess in my fine art. The beauty and joy of life, the delight of the senses and of the spirit translated into color, form and pattern are what I want my works to express.
In high school, my parents had the wisdom to send me off to spend a year as an AFS exchange student in Liege, Belgium, where by necessity I became bilingual in French. Getting a taste (literally) of European life turned out not to be enough of a good thing. After earning my BA and BFA (in painting ) at Rice University in Houston, Texas, I turned to Art History, specializing in the Venetian Renaissance. On my first visit to Italy, taking the train from Paris to Rome through the Appenine Mountains under a moonlit sky, I felt like I was coming home. In some way, the Etruscan hills hold part of my soul and the art of the Italian peninsula through the ages inspires my own painting.
A canvas in the Museum of Fine Art, Houston, became the topic of my Masters thesis and it was a fortuitous choice. It is an enigmatic portrait of two anonymous Venetian gentlemen, attributed to Vittore Belliniano around 1515. After researching a similar work by another hand of the same two men in the Louvre in Paris, I realized that in all likelihood, the red-haired figure in the Houston portrait is an uncredited portrait of the very well-known Early Renaissance painter Giovanni Bellini.
After traveling several times to Europe and receiving an MA from Rice, I taught Art History for six years at the Glassell School of Art in Houston and was perhaps best known for using a saber for a pointer and dressing in leopard tights.
Subsequent travel has taken me to Canada's far north, to Yellowknife, capital of the Northwest Territories, where I had the great fortune to spend time at a base camp on the open tundra. This deeply spiritual experience led me onto a whole new artistic path --- landscape painting. I was asked to do a mural depicting the tundra on a historical building in town, and the success of this picture was just the beginning. Part of me will always be out there in the windswept, sweet-smelling hills of the land of countless, nameless lakes, the land of white wolves and free roaming herds of caribou whose bones lie bleached on beds of the light green lichen they eat.
Read more here...
The next several months will be ones of travel, as well, this time by bus: a white, converted 1977 International Harvester schoolbus with cedar floors, a wood stove and a ceiling painted to look like the sky. My family and I will be going west to California, then north, visiting intentional communities and cool places to find a new home base. To follow the progress of this Neo-Renaissance gypsy artist, check on the soon to be created changing page in this website. To recommend a place you know, send me an e-mail.
The products found here at Artgoddess divide into two main camps: painted and printed imagery, and fabric creations. When I was a teenager, I had some of the lowest, tightest hip-hugger pants ever seen in Wisconsin, because I could sew my own and all the rest of my couture flowed from there. Clothing can be so creative and ravishing and MY mind is one of those that provides a constant stream of ideas for draping the human form. Most of those that come to fruition are one of a kind garments, but some of my best fashions for sale are found here on this site. [to be updated soon. ]I also do high quality, highly creative individual commissions, so feel free to inquire about that Medieval gown you've always been meaning to get, or the black satin tuxedo G-string for the liberated groom (or ANYTHING lovely that strikes your fancy, which also might strike mine).
The Velvet Vulva TM line of sumptuous purses and bags is one of those ideas that has blossomed and taken on a life of its own. It came to me in the shower and what can I say? It's an idea whose time has come, with its expression of the sacred, sensual, life-giving, tempting, target-like nature of the feminine genitalia. Once one begins thinking along these lines, the possibilities seem boundless. The Vulvas are each unique celebrations of love and life.
Thank you for your interest in my work and my website.