Creating a Dolly Parton series was a natural evolution for me as an artist, and so much of her life story is familiar to me. One of my favorite things when visiting Dollywood is to stop by the replica of her childhood home. It looks exactly like my grandmother's house when I was a toddler. She had 13 children, and the family experienced poverty, too. So visiting Dollywood always feel like a homecoming.

Painting Dolly Parton is challenging. Her facial features are delicate, and her make-up is bold. One must balance the iconography of both in the artwork otherwise, it will not feel like her.

It is all about interpretation when an artist creates a painting about Dolly Parton or any icon. One must create many preliminary sketches from pop culture sources. This helps the artist to connect with the content that motivated them to make the artwork and to gain insight into the context that will resonate with the viewer. Creating artwork from the preliminary sketches gives the work an authenticity and authority it would not have otherwise. Great artists who created paintings from their preliminary sketches include Frida Khalo, Max Beckman, Edgar Degas, Susan Rothenburg, and Pablo Picasso.

Spin, acrylic on board, 14" x 16"

Goodbye, acrylic on board, 8" x 10"

Preliminary drawing for the painting Goodbye, pen on paper, 8" x 10"