About

Merging textural fabrics and classical oil painting, Twyleen creates elegant portraits and enigmatic landscapes with nostalgic charm. Twyleen’s paintings feature realism, impressionism, impasto, brocade fabrics, upholstery, rhinestones, and found objects which when mixed together create an array of textures that keeps the viewer delighted as their eyes wander across the canvas.
Born and raised in Stillwater, Oklahoma, Twyleen grew up loving art. Her love for texture and color prompted her to study fashion design at Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia, but she could never forget her first love for creating with a
paintbrush. She now indulges in both her loves as she creates her “fabric paintings” while living in Enid, OK.

Exhibitions

2018 November, "Spellbound" Solo Exhibit, Circle Cinema, Tulsa, OK, USA
2018 March, Paseo Gallery One, Oklahoma City, OK, USA
2018 February, Paseo Gallery One, Oklahoma City, OK, USA
2018 January, "Twilight Dreams." Solo Exhibit Featuring Twyleen, The Circle Cinema, Tulsa, OK, USA
2018 January "Yellow Wallpaper." The Paseo Plunge, Oklahoma City, OK, USA
2017 December, "SmallArt Show." Paseo Art Space, Oklahoma City, OK, USA
2017 October, "A Night at the Bronze." 51st Street Speakeasy. Oklahoma City, OK, USA
2011 Gallery Espresso, Savannah, GA, USA

An Excerpt from Twyleen's Journal

A few life lessons I learned from painting...
🖤Hold on to a vision but don't focus so hard on how something "should" be that I can't appreciate the unexpected and uncharted beauty that may evolve along the way.
🖤Fine detail can be beautiful but not if made timidly or insincerely. It's more important for my brush strokes to be made with certainty and to seem purposeful even in their possible ugliness and distortion than for my brush strokes to be insecurely nudging here and there in search for a vision that if found I'd be too timid to even trust. So I mustn't stress over minute details and instead trust myself and live with my whole heart even if it makes for an abstract mess.
🖤Highlights and shadows create form and the impression of life. They also give meaning to each other because a highlight wouldn't be a highlight if all the tones on the canvas were similar. They can't fulfill their purpose without each other. And so do happy experiences and sad experiences enhance and define one another. And so is true for all opposites. Without one its opposite wouldn't exist. The law of polarity. Contrast is life.
🖤Similarly colors are often defined by their neighboring colors. A certain gray may appear very blue when compared to other grays but when placed next to cobalt blue it may appear warm. So this gray would recede into the background in a scene of predominantly warm colors, but it would appear to be in the foreground in a scene of predominantly cool colors. Its neighboring colors define its purpose. Likewise we all enhance each other's attributes. A variety of people help to define one another's purpose and uniqueness.
🖤Laying down the wrong color may at first seem like a mistake but it's actually an opportunity. I can now glaze over it with another color to create a more dynamic color with more depth than any color I could have mixed on the palette. So mistakes are really just opportunities for me to create a more dynamic reality and to put to use all that I've come to know and be.
🖤There is not a limited supply of creativity. I can make more, and I can make better. And there is not a limited supply of love. I can love more, and I can love deeper.
🖤Painting is the creation of a vision but also the destruction of the purity of the canvas. Creation and destruction are always simultaneous and they are always happening. With every brushstroke. With every step. With every breath.