Bright Colors, Shiny Things and Experimentation by Sheri Ishmael-Waldrop
Heidi de Contreras in her Tulsa studio.
The earliest memories of creating art come at the age of four when her mother taught her to draw faces by drawing an oval with a cross for correct eyes, nose and mouth placement.
“What I like best about teaching children is that they are natural risktakers when experimenting with their art, like sponges that absorb and wring back out tons of creativity. They are natural artists,” she said.
“I loved painting at the easel in kindergarten,” artist Heidi de Contreras said. “As I grew, I painted a portrait of Jesus in a paint-by-number set I got for Christmas which frustrated me! As a child and teenager my hands were busy. I made Romeo and Juliet puppets for an English project, macramé and jute wall hangings with homemade carrot beads, and antique skeleton keys.”
She has taught children for over twenty-five years, with a background in educational training. “I hope above all, that they take away from my classes the confidence that they can make art on their own, that I am only a guide, teaching them how to use their tools and pull on their own creativity,” she said.
De Contreras is a self-taught multi-media artist with an incessant inventive streak, and a children’s writer with a passion for teaching and nurturing her students’ “artist within.” Her love of art and the method of creating has given her the drive to share through teaching.
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“I want viewers, especially my students, to take away a desire to create their own art, pulling from their own creative well-spring. I also want my art to cause the viewers to come up with their own conclusions about the story in my painting,” she said.