Today we’d like to introduce you to Michelle Drummy.
Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
I was born and raised in the same neighborhood I currently live in, Bay Park, San Diego. Growing up, I was involved in many activities, including basketball, writing, and art. I realized I wanted to pursue art in high school and majored in Studio Arts at UCSB. I graduated after three years and moved back to San Diego to teach art to kids. After four years of teaching at a business called Little Artists, I began teaching drawing and painting at Saint Augustine High School. Five years later, I still teach at this school and serve as the Visual and Performing Arts Department Chairperson. A dream of mine was to go back and get my masters degree in painting. I just finished my first year at SDSU in their MFA program with an emphasis in painting and printmaking. I’m lucky enough to be able to teach how to make art and continue to further my own artistic career.
Please tell us about your art.
I create work that centers around personal experiences in order to connect with the viewer. My art represents reality from my unique perspective. I am an analytical person, and I try to glean truths from my daily life through the analysis of my observations. Emotions, mental states, and ideas are the subject matter, and I believe that with each creation I make, I put out a new truth into the world. I make the intangible tangible.
During my first year in the MFA program at SDSU, I focused on anxiety- both as a scientific, psychological disorder and a personal mental experience. At first, I researched the anatomical origins of anxiety in the brain and learned about the amygdala. The amygdala is responsible for our fight or flight responses, and there were found to be more connections stemming from the amygdala in people who have anxiety than those without. I used the high contrast of black and white photography to depict the amygdala. Using a combination of bleach and blade engravings, I wanted the connections to take over the pieces. It was important to me that the connections visually overwhelm the work to convey the feelings I have when dealing with anxiety.
Later in the school year, I shifted my focus to exploring my own mental consciousness. I documented my feelings in a journal using expressive line markings instead of words, letting my hand move as it wanted. I categorized each entry with the date and a word or two describing the mood I was in. I expanded these line drawings to a larger scale and later worked on a scroll.
Throughout this time of personal investigation, my unintentional focus on my own anxiety became a lot to handle. In an attempt to counteract this, I drew and painted scenes from the period of the day that I find most calming. After the sun sets, the world feels like it’s washed in blue. Even though the synthetic orange lights tend to pierce through the blue, this special moment creates a feeling of stillness in me.
Do you have any advice for other artists? Any lessons you wished you learned earlier?
I wish I learned to play more when making art. That is what I am trying to do now. I want to stop taking my work so seriously and let it evolve through play and exploration.
How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
I will be having an advancement exhibit in the spring of 2020 and my thesis exhibit in Spring of 2021 at the SDSU University Gallery. I have a website and an Instagram account for my artwork, where you can view my work. The website is: www.michelledrummy.com and my Instagram handle is @michelledrummyart
Contact Info:
- Website: www.michelledrummy.com
- Email: michelledrummy@gmail.com
- Instagram: michelledrummyart
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michelledrummyart/
Image Credit:
Francesca DiGiovanni Tennyson
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