Glitter makes me happy, passionate and free…..I love the sparkliness… I love the colors, shades, hue and textures of the different types of glitter….When I get ready to enhance a color burst with my fun accouterments, I take them out in their color palettes, I feel excited with the many shades and hues of all the colors.

I know most people and certainly, all the institutions on Maui don’t take glitter seriously, and I hear “You don’t fit in….you don’t follow the rules.” I never have — but as an art professor who was first to visit when I opened up my home gallery to the public said, “I love your bold use of color and not following the rules.”

Could be because I didn’t learn them having only minored in art because my best friend was on an art scholarship and could draw. I was intimidated…so I did photography (which I am now collaging into color bursts) and other non-drawing art and art history. Then still in denial of who I was and it being pre-women’s movement, I married an artist, fantasizing he would be the next Salvador Dali.

After that failed, I ran the Women’s Building (which was the longest running feminist arts institution) and began to explore my own creativity. It wasn’t til the loss of my only child that I proclaimed myself as an artist. While living at Esalen, I held a ritual honoring my son’s passage and my birth as an artist. That was in 1991 and I have been exploring my creative and healing ever since.

What I love about art…

Color – means everything: passion, fun, vibrancy, life, darkness, depression, anger and death. It lifts me up and expresses anger or sadness or…

I talk about movement and shapes — movement makes me happy and I represent that with movement in my art. There are many snake-like shapes and creatures, swirling and twirling.

Texture is like the layers of food, which your taste buds enjoy: a multitude of flavors in the same bite because the chef layers the food as I layer my color bursts.

I love using variations of color and the excitement I feel when I am ready to Glitter the piece and I have all the glitters out on my tray and am ready. There are even different textures of glitter and I love the combination of color and texture… Play!

Emotions - Painting and creating is meditating on one level but exciting and stimulating on another. Ying and yang.

~ Hermine Harman