Santha Koonce
Santha Koonce is an American artist who creates artwork that aligns with her unique vision of beauty. She enjoys working with a variety of mediums including colored pencil, watercolor, and collage, and has been creating art for over 30 years. She is an avid sketchbooker and art journaler who has taught workshops in her community for over a decade.
Koonce is a native of Shelbyville, Tennessee, where she resides with husband Doug, son Elijah, and two grumpy felines. She taught high school art for many years before leaving the field to develop her art practice. She has exhibited art at Middle Tennessee State University and the Fly Arts Center in Shelbyville, Tennessee. Koonce is the Visual Art chair at the Fly Arts Center and a member of the Bedford Arts Collective. She is excited to see what the future holds for her art practice.
“I love creating art and find fulfillment in the tactile experience of the tools in my hands. My desire is to express myself authentically, and perhaps touch a soul out there for whom my art resonates. I believe art is part of what makes being human beautiful.”
I am drawn toward nostalgic themes and old objects -- the rusting, the crumbling, the faded, the broken down. They retain their beauty, but it is transformed. The weight of the years and the people whose lives they intersected make these objects beautiful. With these three works -- an abandoned train, a forgotten car, antique books – I imbue these objects with new life. Colored pencil is a time-consuming, intense medium that requires many layers of different colors to achieve the final result. The richness of depth resulting from this process parallels the layers of time that have built up around the objects I depict. Working with colored pencils is a slow, meditative process in which I become intimately acquainted with my subjects while they whisper their past lives to me.
santha@novemberroseart.com
@novemberroseart