“To me, very much of what is artistic is people’s very creative and inventive ways out of impossible situations – life situations -and they show us a path when they do that.
(James Taylor, American Singer/Songwriter)
They make a trail or they make a mark of some sort when they do this thing – this daring daylight escape.
And when we see this, it looks like art.”
I Love Doing Art. I Love to Write.
Welcome to My World.
May Your World and Mine Continue To Cross Paths in This Beautiful Journey Called Life
Sometimes I wonder why I write so much and so often, why (and to whom) I am expressing. I am so verbal. In addition to being highly visual, creative and metaphorically-thinking – I am so frequently contemplating both the small and the large things in my experience of life. In some sense I seem to be almost writing and composing in some backburner file folder in my mind.
I would venture to guess most people do this, yet not all make the time to write or talk about these things.
I imagine much of what I think and write may not even be read by anyone, nor seem to fill any greater purpose. We all have our own thoughts, memories and inner world. So many people remain disconnected from others in so many ways, without intimate witnesses to their life story – past and present – as they walk through life in their unfolding journeys. What it is that makes some reach out to connect and others retreat, I do not fully understand.
We all want to know and be known, to love and be loved. It is my hope that my own need to express from my world will not only bring a sense of order (processing), comfort and empowerment to myself – but in some small way will be a catalyst for the same, and more, in others. We often do not know how our lives, expressions and actions ultimately interconnect with others on the journey, nor do we necessarily need to know.
In Ecclesiastes it says there is nothing new under the sun. In a sense, I have nothing new to say. My experiences of life are not entirely unique, and it is in that space that we all can and should connect with others in the journey.
So, I will write.
I cannot help but write.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Eileen Slifer, Artist
Visual Design Arts, resides in East Berlin, PA, Established 1989
“A Day With My Artist Friend Eileen”
Filmed and Narrated by Erin Lokken
September 2019
See what a typical day is for Eileen as you tour her studio and gardens and learn how she started and grew her business from 1989 to 2019. Filmed at her previous home and studio in Trinity, Alabama this introduces you to her current services and documents the history of how she started and built her career/business from a kitchen table in Newark, Delaware in 1989 when her first child was an infant to her current services and set up.
Thank you
for your
interest in both my artwork and my writings
(Left)
Artist’s
Self-Portrait
with “Mr. Lost and Annabelle
by Moonlight”
Eileen is a fine artist/illustrator and originally a native of Newark, Delaware – where she was born, raised and lived there until 2012 when she relocated to Decatur, Alabama for about eight years. She came back north in 2020 and now permanently resides in East Berlin, Pennsylvania.
She offers a variety of artist’s services from her home-based studio including commissioned portraits, caricatures, calligraphy, bouquet preservation, watercolors, illustrations, murals, painting parties and custom framing. She also does live caricature drawing and event painting at parties and weddings.
In 2006 she illustrated a children’s book entitled “The Model Maker,” which tells the story of her Uncle Bill, a World War II veteran, and his hobby of making model planes out of clothespins and popsicle sticks and about his experience in the Battle of the Bulge. In 2014 she wrote and illustrated a book entitled “Letters to Rodney” which tells the story of her father, and his involvement in the CCC during The Great Depression. See Children’s Books for more information.
Eileen has been involved in fine arts and custom calligraphy since 1989, with thousands of satisfied customers all over the United States. She has created more than 1500 customized pieces from her signature “Cord of Three Strands”™ design since 1991.
Eileen studied art and community/family services at the University of Delaware graduating with a B.S. in Home Economics. She started her business in 1989 after the birth of her first son, because she loved doing creative work and wanted to earn money from home while raising and homeschooling her children. Starting with small calligraphy projects and addressing invitations, she gradually built and expanded services with both calligraphy, caricature drawing and illustrative/fine arts over the years.
Her Etsy Store features many of her matted prints and notecards with inspirational calligraphy quotations, floral and other artwork. Please visit her online store in addition to this website for ease in purchasing these type of items!
When not busy with her artwork, Eileen enjoys her family (she has two grown sons), gardening and “building things!”, canning and cooking, casual photography, church fellowship and volunteer activities, home decorating projects, her four cats and thirteen chickens (and her son’s dog, Wiley) plus any random child that visits her or she can chat with in public! ha ha!!, good films and knitting in front of the TV at night.
She also has a produce stand business called Home-Grown Fresh Produce for those local.
AKA “Supervisor Cat”
He’s happy just to be inside!
(“C”~ute and “T”~rouble together...”Cute Trouble!”)
– he’s a red heeler!
“We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. Through the unknown, remembered gate when the last of earth left to discover is that which was the beginning; at the source of the longest river the voice of the hidden waterfall and the children in the apple-tree not known, because not looked for but heard, half-heard, in the stillness between two waves of the sea.”
—T.S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets (Gardners Books; Main edition, April 30, 2001) Originally published 1943.”
A Note About My Products and Services:
I offer my products and professional services in a spirit of love and respect to anyone.
I reserve the right to decline any custom project/professional service which I believe to be obscene, hate-based, inflammatory, or would otherwise require me to violate my beliefs/values/speech, rendering me unable to benefit the client.