BIOGRAPHY

Raised in Calgary, Canada, Simone Wright has been an avid artist since childhood. Largely self taught, she attended art school for a brief time, but left when she decided to follow the guidelines of her heart instead of a textbook.Her love of adventure and the outdoors have taken her mountain climbing in Wyoming, whitewater rafting in Washington and on photo safari to Africa and Alaska.

She began her professional career creating small commissions for friends and family, eventually moving into pet portraits for private collectors. Upon moving to Los Angeles, her first commissioned client was world famous lyricist Bernie Taupin (writing partner of recording star, Elton John) Her collectors grew to include celebrities, politicians and businesses such as the MGM Grand Casino in Las Vegas and Mirage entertainers, Sigfried and Roy. She has been featured in galleries in New York, Florida, Oregon and California and has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show.

While her works on canvas were gaining recognition, Simone discovered a new and exciting medium. In the year 2000, she began working on ceramic and through several years of trial and error, developed her own technique and dramatic style. Each item is a hand painted original and no two are exactly alike. The process is a difficult and meticulous one. One slip of the brush or misfire in the kiln can easily destroy a piece that has taken weeks to complete. The new medium has proven to be a wonderul new niche for both Simone and her collectors. It allows her to work in a new style and her collectors can expand their collection to include canvases and 3 dimensional pieces created by the same artist. The pieces are unique, dramatic and beautiful, with nothing else like it on the artistic market. Her award winning fine art ceramics, which she named 'Safari Works', have gained international recognition and won several awards. She has developed a varied and vast list of collectors from Russia to Mexico - Italy to Africa.

Her intention now is to create a partnership, a pairing of both mediums to allow collectors to create vignettes in their homes featuring the works on canvas accentuated by a gorgeous vase, platter of lamp. Collectors have also commissioned Simone to create paintings on canvas that capture special moments from their Safaris adventures. Often times pairing the painting and one or more of her ceramic pieces to create a dramatic and dynamic focal point in their home or office.

As with most artists, her creative desire brings her continually into new venues and she has recently begun to sculpt and paint the human figure. She travelled to Italy for an intensive sculpting program which openned a new and exciting creative door for her. Spending 6 weeks studying and touring, she attended classes in the town of Pietra Santa, (Saint of the Stone), home to Michaelangelo and many of his contemporaries.
She picked up the technique of the medium like a natural, "It's hard not to be inspired surrounded by the energies of the 'Masters' like Michelangelo and Bernini at every turn. It will be exciting to see where this new medium takes me."


"I have always felt such power, peace and beauty in nature and find it to be a very calming and centering place to go to contemplate or to be inspired. Especially in our world today, so filled with the man made, the un-natural. For me as an artist, my desire isn't to try to get the viewer to feel what I feel, but rather to find that place within themselves that only they know, only they can relate to. For every one of us it is different, so I don't seek to achieve a specific goal, or send a certain message with my work. No two people will climb a mountain or see a fabulous sunset and experience it in the same way. No two people identify beauty the same way. I paint what moves me and I hope that in whatever way it reaches the viewer, that it moves something in them as well. I think that is the goal of any artist, to share a piece of themselves and hope it finds someone out there to connect with. That is the gift."
~Simone Wright