83 Years of Scribbling

Poetic Brush Strokes with Color and Movement

At 83, I find myself reflecting on how a lifetime of painting, teaching, learning, and simply paying attention has shaped the artist I am today.

I’ve decided it’s time to share some of that journey.

I’m beginning a new blog where I’ll write about my paintings, my creative process, the places and memories that inspire me, and the many lessons I’ve gathered along the way... my LIFE. I’ll also share some of what I’ve learned through decades of teaching and working with galleries and collectors.

My first post is about where it all began—and why, after all these years, I’m still curious about what can happen when I make the first mark on a blank canvas.

I hope you’ll take a moment to read “83 Years of Scribbling” and join me for what comes next.

With warm wishes,
Billie

Where It Began: A Lifetime of Drawing and Painting

Long before I understood that I was becoming an artist, I was a little girl on a hot Louisiana porch, pencil in hand, scribbling flowers that seemed to open a door into another world.

My dad had just bought a big old house on the outskirts of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It was a California bungalow, with an apartment on either side. We lived on the right side, facing the front of the house. Across the front was a long, wide porch.

Summers in Louisiana were hot and humid. Even though the house had 12-foot ceilings, it seemed impossible to keep it cool. So, as I remember it, we spent much of our summer days out on that front porch.

I would have coloring books or sheets of paper, and I would draw. I remember making little arbor-like shapes covered with roses and flowers. I loved drawing those flowers.

Looking back now, at 83, I realize something that I couldn’t possibly have known then: I am still doing it.

I am still scribbling flowers with all sorts of media including paint, acrylic or oil, or watercolor.

That little girl sitting on the front porch with a piece of paper and a pencil was already beginning the life I would eventually lead as an artist. The flowers she drew then are, in many ways, the same flowers I am still exploring today.

It is a wonderful thread to follow—from that front porch in Baton Rouge to where I am now.

Today, I continue to live and work as an abstract artist in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where the memories, colors, and experiences of a lifetime continue to find their way into my paintings.

It was and has always been about just scribbling and making marks with color that captured my brain and hands. The surface of the paper was an open world where I could be free

What Does “Inside/Out Painting” Mean in My Abstract Art?

My marks, regardless of the tool I use, are very spontaneous. The impulse comes from deep within. Everything I have ever experienced becomes part of the creative spark that bursts out through my hand when I draw. There is no thinking involved. My marks originate somewhere deep inside me, whether I am observing or imagining my subject.

Today, this intuitive approach has become central to my abstract painting practice. My work often begins without a predetermined image, allowing marks, color, memory, and experience to guide the painting as it develops.

I like to respond quickly in order to achieve a fresh, honest mark. Relaxing the hand, body, and mind is essential to this kind of mark-making. I am literally pulling the mark from within to without—from the inside out.

Because I work this way, it is always difficult to “copy” myself. Each time I begin working, I am a different person, in a different moment, responding to a different experience. I abhor dishonest, static lines. I would rather reveal my life as an artist through my marks than produce a precise or “correct” rendering of my subject.

For me, the mark is not simply a description of what I see. It is evidence of the experience of seeing—and of being alive in that moment.