Artist of the Month

The walls of Burlap and Bean are currently
featuring the work of Dot Vile.

In this group of work, I wanted to take what I traditionally learned about still life and color exaggerate it. If any of the pieces seem a little experimental, they are! My studio art teacher in high school, Karen Can, taught me how to work with different mediums well, but also gave me a good amount of breathing room to go my own way with it. That lady let me do anything. Love her!

I love any material that gets my hands messy. There’s chalk, thick oil paint on a palette knife, and pastel. All of these materials got my hands moving throughout each piece. It shows especially in my more recent experimental ones. Layering is another favorite. Something that started off as a pastel drawing ends up becoming layered with paint, more pastel, and sometimes scraps of paper and thread. I can’t be tied down to one medium. The experimentation I’ve been doing let me see which materials work well together and which do not.

By the way, you may see some spoons. I like them! Metal as been my favorite surface to study for a while. The way the light hits it in certain parts…so pretty! Anyway, I took the same image of a spoon and put it through a few tests. The embroidered one was my favorite to work on.

If you are interested in displaying artwork, please email
our cultural arts director at tara@burlapandbean.com.