Arts Advocacy Is My Livelihood

Gretchen Peters serves on the Advisory

Board of the Nebraska Cultural Endowment.

To learn more about what the NCE does: https://nebraskaculturalendowment.org/

Forest Floor

There is something about hanging art on a wall in your house.  It reflects who you are, what you’re interested in, what you see as beautiful or provocative. It can hang there for a really long time, or just a while. It is part of the whole space. There’s the furniture and rugs and books but when the art goes up, it makes the space come to life, it makes the soul.

Appreciating and learning about visual art, and all the arts, can be a lifetime exploration. Living with art and seeking out art makes us all more interested and interesting. It’s for everybody.

It is so important to educate the whole child, the whole human being.

To make it possible for everybody, it’s important to teach little kids about art so they can make their own creative choices about what goes up on their walls, or the sounds that go in their ears or the sights on their screens. In the current learning cycle, students are drilled with rigorous repetition of words and numbers and are missing the joy of creativity and invention. It is so important to educate the whole child, the whole human being.

Frost on Hosta

As for the way I make art, I work with nature’s forms, making representational pencil drawings in blocks of color and movement. Like Georgia O’Keeffe’s floral explorations, I am interested in shapes of color that travel the eye on the page. And then adding light and shadow to shift over those surfaces to build depth and interest.

About Gretchen
Gretchen Peters is an advocate for the arts. She volunteers for the arts, makes art and teaches art.

She taught art at Gering High School for 35 years and now makes art derived from her surroundings using colored pencil as the medium. She has received numerous awards for her teaching and drawing skills and her works are in collections across the country.
She serves on the boards of  Humanities Nebraska, Judicial Nominating Commission, West Nebraska Arts Center, Theatre West and the Advisory Board for the Nebraska Cultural Endowment.  Gretchen’s  previous board work includes: Nebraskans for the Arts, Nebraska Arts Council, and the Nebraska State Historical Society.

Gretchen earned degrees at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Chadron State College. She works and resides in Gering, Nebraska.

For inquiries about Gretchen Peters’ work email gpeters4@charter.net