Starart

by Debby Chesher
Starart Productions
1979

This is a short excerpt from the Starart book, published in 1979. Copies of the book are now available from the author at her website.

"Disney was to me, as a child, the greatest of magicians. When I was five years old, I went to see 'Bambi' and was deeply affected by the fire scene. It really struck something in me emotionally and I came home and did a whole series of drawings of fire and the deer running in panic from the flames. That was the beginning of an intense emotional contact with the paper and I began to develop some kind of an identity as an artist."

Joni Mitchell was born in Alberta, Canada on November 7, 1943. She spent her grade school years in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan which she describes as, "a purely academic culture which recognized and revered technical ability above soul." Joni was not academically inclined so she devoted most of her time to creative inspirations. "I used to space out in school and I would draw and write poetry all through my note books, the doodling of a dreamer. In class I was impossible to get to and the teachers finally gave up trying. In the fourth grade I had a teacher who wrote on my report card that I had a gift for interpretation, so she must have recognized something of the poet, and later I would try to appease my teachers for the bad marks that I had in the academic subjects by doing charts and drawings. For the mathematics teacher I did a complete series of drawings of the historically great mathematicians, and I did a tree of life for my biology teacher. The French teacher was also the drama teacher so I would do all the backdrops for the school plays. As a matter of fact, one teacher once told me that if I spent as much time concentrating in class as I did down on my knees in the gymnasium painting something that I would probably have been an 'A' student, but to be an 'A' student was never anything I wanted to be. I was always an artist and that's all I wanted to do.

Copyright 1979 Starart Productions Limited
Printed in Canada by Herzig Somerville Limited.
Bound in USA by A. Horowitz & Sons, New Jersey.
Typesetting by CompArt Limited, Rexdale, Ontario.
ISBN 0-09690053-0-X
Published by
Starart Productions Limited
Box 29, Site 1, R.R. 1
DeWinton, Alberta
Canada T0L 0X0