Arts & Culture Magazine - March/April 2008 - (Page 58) Florence Putter m an A Late Bloomer As a young girl in Brooklyn, Florence Putterman liked to draw. But when she was in high school, her teacher said she shouldn’t be doing art, and Florence’s parents listened to her. So Florence went to NYU’s School of Commerce and majored in advertising and journalism. After college she got married, moved to central Pennsylvania, gave birth to two sons, and continued her education, studying at Bucknell and getting an MFA at Penn State, where she worked on photography, ceramics and printmaking. Awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant, she traveled around the US southwest collecting images for her art, and did a video for public television. She made prints and paintings involving the Anasazi Indians, then went to Alaska and did work with totems. She got fellowships two years in a row to do painting, at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Florence feels that her career as a professional artist began in 1986, when she was in her 40s and had her first show on Manhattan’s 57th Street. “Quite an accomplishment for me,” she says. “I then started showing my work nationally. I changed my imagery and got more involved living in Florida and put all of my symbolism together, and so my canvases kind of explode with a lot of different imagery.” Along the way, she created a foundation that donates some of her work to non-profits, such as her 1960s heart prints that she gives to hospitals all over the US. “It gives me a lot of pleasure,” she says. Being a late bloomer has shaped Florence’s career. “I worked twice as hard because I started late in life and wanted to get somewhere,” she says. “I wonder just where I’d be if I had started earlier.” But she has no plans to retire. “It’s one of the nice things about being an artist; you don’t have to stop, you don’t have to retire,” she says. www.putterman.com 58 : : arts and culture magazine www.artsandculturemag.com http://www.putterman.com http://www.artsandculturemag.com
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