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Ione Citrin
Artist
Ione Citrin is an avant garde artist whose artistic
expression takes fantastic shape through her diverse
oil and watercolor paintings, bronze sculptures, found
object collages and mixed media assemblages. Her contemporary
paintings and sculptures range from abstract to realistic
to impressionistic - all visionary interpretations
from her imaginative soul. Citrin describes her work
and her process, "When I paint, I dip my brush in
my soul... Being an Artist is a life force, not a
career choice. Each piece represents a fragment of
my life's work. I present the world artistically as
I see it, as I wish to see it, and occasionally as
I once saw it. You see, It is my identity. Without
this expression of self, I am nothing. Through my
art I give love."
Citrin uses only one name, but a variety of styles
to soothe her wild imagination. A native of Chicago,
she is a former television star and commercial voice-over
artist. Now she wins awards and sells her creativity
through her hands instead of through her larynx. Her
art is as original as she is - bold, colorful and
highly decorative.
Citrin states, "My art reaches out from my heart,
guts, body and soul to all! Ever since I can remember
I've always had a desire to communicate with every
person in the world. At first I thought I could accomplish
this through travel. And so I did. I toured through
India, Africa, Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East,
Europe, South and Central America, plus the more usual
places in the U.S., Mexico, Caribbean and the like.
I even scoured more remote areas of the world like
Easter Island, the Galapagos Islands, Myanmar, Nepal,
Srinigar. There is almost nothing or no one which
has escaped my eye. Throughout these countries I managed
to speak with everyone I could. I've taped, recorded
and photographed my conversations from inside the
huts of African villages to the alleys of remote towns
in China. I've shared beetle-nuts with women squatting
in circles in temple areas in Algeria. Been in places
where no one had ever heard of the Jewish religion.
I could go on with my endless adventures...endlessly.
But they did not satisfy my thirst for communication.
Then there was my performing career. I appeared on
television every morning in the Chicago area for WLS-TV.
My show was called "The Prize Movie With Ione." Here
I chatted and connected with fellow Chicagoans five
mornings a week from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. for over seven
years. The show was the highest rated television show
in that time slot. For over thirty years, I performed
on a variety of television and radio commercials.
With an ear for mimicry, and an ability to sight-read
I was a "natural" for voice-overs. I sang, and did
multiple voices on all sorts of recordings in the
Chicago and Midwest area. The average listener was
unaware of whom I was, because doing commercials as
a "voice" is anonymous, particularly when I did a
huge range of voices similar to Mel Blanc. Old ladies,
children, accents, dialects, impersonations, cartoon
characters were in my repertoire of hundreds of voices.
I was able to accomplish these voices through visual
images of the characters. If I could see the person
I was trying to capture, I could produce the voice
or sound. But this was not enough. I was tired of
physically performing. Tired of presenting myself
in this fashion, I took this huge imagination coupled
with endless driving energy, and thrust it on canvas,
cast it in clay, and welded it in metal. Now I can
reach out beyond the limits of my previous endeavors
to touch and find love, appreciation and understanding."
www.artbyione.com
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