Jacquelyn Hughes Mooney

I am an artist…

I am enchanted with movement and color. “Those rhythm and hues so like the blues…hold me sweet and sway”. My direction became apparent when I surrendered to the sublime. I strive to convey pure emotion and articulate truth…my perception, my truths. The momentous challenges in my time drew me to examine, not just my internal truths, but to act on them.

Consider me an idealist, and I’ll say you are right. But consider me as I strive to see beauty and merit even if it is at times on the sunny side of misery. I have struggled, as with all of us, to not want to engage, not to achieve, or to see a flaw as wrong rather than at worst a misstep, not a mistake. And not to see something that is fragile as a weakness, but as something precious. That nothing or no one is little let along my vision.

You will not see, in my visual poetry "perfection", as I am not. But you will see what I propose, to convey a rightness that is, because it is. We all have an inherent birthright to be heard and for me no story is too small or any person too small for acknowledgement. My heart’s siren call will not be locked into whatever prescribed mode is current, fashionable or elite.

During this ongoing process, I have come to discover that many others’ footprints crossed my own, co-mingling their life stories, willingly or not, into my own. And by doing that, they wrapped their truths into mine aiding in the creation of these textile collages that is now mes affaires belle (my beautiful belongings).

Martha Beck, author, once said, “Great art is simply a reflection of the artist’s ability to disclose his or her inner experiences very directly and accurately”. In doing this we act on something that is fundamental to humans, to chronicle and archive our stories, leaving a mark, making a declaration that I was here and it matters.

“Pursue the things you love doing, and do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off of you. All the tangible rewards will follow”. Dr. Maya Angelou