Ginger Lou

San Diego, CA, USA

Ginger Lou is a mixed media artist from San Diego who currently works at a multicultural art school for children and a middle school for children with disabilities. She creates collage art using new and vintage paper materials, paint, found objects, epoxy, wood and her deep spiritual nature. Ginger has always considered herself an artist and became a professional artist in 2002. During that era Ginger Lou appeared in the San Diego CityBeat magazine pages regularly and was an active artist and arts organizer who threw art and fashion events at alternative venues around San Diego as well as Los Angeles and San Francisco. However, she dropped out of the scene and remained relatively low-profile for several years while she struggled with serious health issues caused by mold exposure. In 2012 she returned and was interviewed by CityBeat Magazine launching her first show after her recovery:

“I really appreciate life and continue to push myself to keep on no matter what. I don’t sweat the small stuff, and my philosophy on life is totally different because of my experiences.

I am thankful for everything I have and what my son and I have lived through because it has made us who we are today, less judgmental, more positive, happier. It’s a whole different outlook. I believe the experience has pushed me forward as an artist in ways I could never have imagined. I actually made my first collage while living in a storage unit in Texas on a small piece of sheet metal using paint-sample paper, glue and a hummingbird magazine from Home Depot.

My art has become more spiritual and I trust in my natural flow process a lot more. I have given up control of it from a logical perspective and [recognize] the signs pointing where I should go… judging from how it feels. If you really look at my art, you can read it comes from a very deep place. There is a lot of symbolism and emotion behind it.”

Her work is dynamic, edgy yet feminine. Her pieces are sensually surrealistic, emotional, vibrant and thought provoking. Her female subjects are represented as struggling entities who are strong and fierce in their determination to face all that the world has to offer. There is also representation of personal growth, introspection, connectivity to others and the world around us. Transformation is a reoccurring theme in her work that is represented by the butterfly. Each piece is a hopeful embrace of life both for what it is and what it might become if one continues to push further, much like the delicate hummingbird that seems to overcome gravity and defy all odds just like Ginger Lou herself.