By Sue Bergstrom for Valdez City News –
Lydia Marcelle says, “In the past few years I have found a strong relationship between painting and graphic design that I hold very dearly to my heart. Both are heavily reliant on making marks.”
Making marks is something that Lydia has been almost obsessed with for as long as she can remember. Her first nickname was Doodlebug because she marked anything she was able, especially books. Her favorite was the phone book. She says an instrument in her hands urges her to alter and enhance surfaces by drawing on them. She does this with various media including watercolors, acrylics and pixels. Her work ranges from black and white to brightly-colored in styles that range from realistic to whimsical or highly fantastic.
Lydia does both digital art and graphic design, which she did professionally in Montana. Graphic design and digital art are two sides of the same art form. The difference is that graphic design has the practical goal of identifying or conveying information about something, like a company logo or a web banner or sign. If the same process is used to make a purely artistic statement, to be decorative or to illustrate an idea, it’s digital art. Digital art, or any art, can become graphic design if it is incorporated into a commercial product, like an album cover or an advertisement.
Unlike many artists, who have one preferred method in which they do most of their work, Lydia’s watercolors vary not only in style but in basic appearance. Some are in black and white and resemble pen and ink drawings. Others are drawn and then washed with bright colors. Some resemble the style of oil-painting , but done with acrylics; bright and textured with fine lines, like her black and white pieces, and layered with shaded colors.
Lydia moved to Valdez in 2015 from Bozeman Montana where she grew up. She attended art school at a small private school outside of Seattle, achieving a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. She moved to Valdez at the urging of family members and to try her hand at teaching. Valdez is her introduction to Alaska and she’s impressed. She says, “this places blows my mind every day.” She loves to spend her spare time in what she calls our glorious mountains and is often torn between going ice-climbing and going skiing. No matter which she decides to do, while she does it she is avidly planning ways to interpret the landscape around her in her art.
“Everyone has a language that they speak the best; a preferred form of communication. Mine is visual.”
You may have seen Lydia around town. She walks everywhere wearing her backpack. Those interested in cross-country skiing may know her as the Valdez team’s assistant coach. Paint Night with Lydia is a regular event hosted by a local business in which she teaches painting. Her art was displayed in the ‘On The Edge’ exhibit at Valdez Museum and Historical Archive. She has also made logos for businesses in town.
|
|
