When you walk into the Gainesville Artisan’s Guild Gallery or the Keyhole Artist Co-op in Cedar Key and see the paintings of Judi Cain, the 2017 Old Florida Celebration of the Arts Design Contest winner, you can’t help but notice a boundless, perhaps even psychedelic, energy in her artwork depicting people, pets, wildlife and nature. And, if she happens to be working at the desk the day you are there you may be lucky enough to connect with this women who not only enjoys what she does but embodies the “joy of living.” But, it hasn’t always been that way….
Judi had no formal training in art until high school art classes but her ability to “copy just about anything,” including creating pencil portraits of her friends from their school pictures in grade school and drawing elegant clothing for paper dolls, led her to consider fashion design as a possible art career. However, coming from a small town in the Midwest, options for this sort of education were few, and she ended up finishing her undergraduate degree with a triple major in Art, Home Economics and Teaching from SE Missouri State College and began teaching art in the public school system.
But, this was the 70’s, and after meeting and later marrying a man who had no art education but “innate artistic ability and endless creativity,” she “ran away” with him in their VW van and became part of a group of traveling “mall artists.” The Mall Circuit took them all over the country and ultimately to Gainesville where they settled in 1980. As her husband’s art career took off and they started a family, Judi put her own art on the back burner. Together, they took their talent, love of Halloween, costume making and mall art experience and became the primary providers of hand-made and commercial costumes in North Florida, running the legendary Center Stage Costume and Magic Shop in Gainesville for three decades.
Throughout this time, although she continued to do mostly commissioned portrait work, Judi never considered herself a “real artist,” as she felt that she was still just copying what she saw, not creating something from somewhere deep within like she saw in her husband’s work. It was not until living through a life crisis that resulted in the loss of their business, his career, and their marriage that Judi, on her own for the first time in 35 years, decided “there were no more excuses” and she was not going to let what happen break her.
Determined to find her inner creative ability, Judi started by spending 15-30 minutes every morning with her colored pencils and “just drawing.” Eventually, at the encouragement of her daughter, she went outside her comfort zone and started to use acrylic paints. She still remembers the day when her “ego mind shut up and the energy began to flow.” She had decided to just squirt all her paints on a huge 30” x 40” canvas and then, using her lovingly cared for 30-year old brush, began to see something and do something she’d never done before. For the first time she was painting not just from knowledge and what she saw but from intuition and a boundless energy that now drives her work.
As soon as she read the theme for the 2017 Old Florida Celebration of the Arts Festival Design Contest, It’s All about the Water, Judi knew it was something special for her and what she had come to call her “Creative Energy Paintings.” Water, and everything about it became the focus of her artistic mediations. Once again going outside her box, she experimented with Golden Liquid Acrylics (recently received as a prize) and Aqua Board (believe it or not), and she “let the paint tell her what to do.”
Her painting entitled Water was chosen from 40 entries for the 2017 design contest. In it, you will see something different each time you look at it. If you look closely, you will also see that it doesn’t quite fit into the frame and you might think that was a mistake on our part. But, when you ask Judi about it she makes it clear that this was intentional. “I don’t like to confine my work to a set space. If I do, it means my ego-mind is in control. I want my art to be limitless, beyond boundaries, so that it embodies our connectedness to all that is and all the energy around us.”
The 2017 Old Florida Celebration of the Arts is planned for Saturday and Sunday, April 8 & 9 in Cedar Key, Florida. In its 53rd year, the annual spring arts festival in the small Gulf Coast Community has received national recognition as one of the top small juried arts shows in America. For more information go to www.CedarKeyArtsFestival.com.
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