Drawing Has Become The New Outlet

For A Multi-Dimensional Artist

By Shannon Hicks

For a singer, losing your voice is about as bad as things can get careerwise. For Gisela Matisons, the former lead singer for the band Fox Fire, it was just a turning point. An automobile accident in 1999 took away the voice of Ms Matisons, ending her singing career while opening the door to a new vocation.

Instead of mourning the loss of her voice, she found another creative outlet and returned to the art she had worked on 25 years earlier. Today Gisela, who works professionally under her first name (pronounced “GHEE-zla”), is an artist of another sort. She has traded in her musical talents for her portrait and illustration talents.

Recent art by the Newtown resident is being presented in the lower community room of C.H. Booth Library. The exhibition quietly opened last week but will have its official opening reception on Sunday, October 12, from 2 to 4 pm.

The show will remain on view until October 24 and can be visited any time the library is open.

The exhibition presents 25 works of art ranging from portraits of people and animals to works Gisela calls her “abstract doodles.” There are oil paintings, graphite drawings, market drawings, and pieces that combine pen-and-ink with marker, and graphite with pen-and-ink and colored pencil.

The show includes work that date back as much as 25 years juxtaposed with her most recent drawings. These days she is working on a new commissioned portrait as well as illustrations that will be published in a book used to help children learn foreign languages.

“This is my second creative outlet,” Gisela said in an interview published in The Newtown Bee last fall. “Drawing and portraiture doesn’t fully take the place of singing, of course, but it helps.

“I still have something to offer people,” she continued. “I don’t have my voice, but I have my art.”

While today’s voice may not be the lyrical hum that Gisela emitted a few years ago, it is still there to a point. The singer’s voice has been replaced with something that rarely rises above a whisper, but it is still sure and confident.

The home the artist shares with boyfriend (and local musician) Joe Proc doubles as a gallery area for Gisela and a teaching studio for Mr Proc. The front room of the house features Gisela’s portraits and abstract doodles. Gisela’s working studio is set up in a house she owns in West Haven.

Drawing doodles that evolved into intricate pictures was something that started while Gisela was working through the days and months following the 1999 car accident she was in. She calls them “cathartic doodles” and says she decided it was time, besides the doodles, to start doing something different with her life. She started working in earnest on the abstracts, sometimes working only in ink and other times adding color. The doodles became something she looked forward to doing. Soon she started enlarging the pieces and framing them, and they were well received by those she shared them with.

When a friend approached and requested Gisela do a portrait of her daughter, something clicked. She works primarily from photographs instead of having people sit for her.

“I like to draw children, but they like to fidget,” she said. Working from photos has not been problematic, even if parents cannot come up with anything larger than a snapshot. With today’s technology, detailed enlargements are easy to come up with. Works take about a month to complete, which would be tough for children to sit through.

Graphite is her medium of choice.

“I like to do fine line drawing, and eyes are very important to me,” she said. “Graphite allows me to get very detailed.”

In addition to her art, Gisela is also a full-time student. She attends Housatonic Community College, where she studies occupational therapy, and also works part-time as a home cleaner.

Gisela did not attend school or classes to fine-tune her talent. Her work is all done instinctively; for those who need a label, she would be considered a Naïve Artist, or someone who is self-taught.

“I just do this my way,” she explained. “Sometimes it just comes from inside, it’s a feeling. If you have the way of putting it down and sharing with others, you should.”

She has been told that she should try to focus on one form of art or the other, to choose between her portraits and her abstracts, but Gisela says “No Thanks” to that idea.

“It’s possible that if I picked one area I might excel in it more, but this is how I express myself,” she said, comparing her art to the music she used to perform and still enjoys listening to. “Like my music –– which ranges from folk and rock to jazz, blues and reggae –– I can’t sit down and just work in one direction.”