“I delight in the unforeseen, the happenstance, the incongruities of things!”
—The Impoverished Landscape Painter Reflects on Art, by Carla Sweet Chlouber

The fragility of life and its ever-changing nature, both beautiful and tragic, sometimes ugly, compel me as to explore what gives us meaning and hope.  Over the last ten years, my work has considered our relationship to other animals and the earth, exploring ideas such as communication, compassion and sustainability.

My most recent body of work is a “collaboration” backward through time, inspired by the writings and poetry of my mother, Carla Chlouber, and her father (my grandfather), Arthur Sweet. Within my mother’s papers we found a trove of her and my grandfather's unpublished poems and writings, which were hidden in old trunks and file cases—scraps of family history.  Using fabric and embroidery, along with printmaking, encaustic, acrylic and oil paint, these mixed media pieces hold for me a haunting beauty and a transformation of family, love and loss.  

Exploring their writings has made me see the past differently, not as something that ends, but as ever continuing. 

Belinda Lee Chlouber