Thoughts on My Painting

In general, I feel that I work in a fairly intuitive manner. I don't have a "method" per se of getting a painting done, but I do have natural inclinations to the way I work. I did not have any painting instruction during my short time at ACA, so I am for the most part a self taught oil painter. Most of the techniques and modes of the medium are not knowingly a part of my painting vocabulary. Any that I do employ have been discovered by trial and error, and a few less by reading.

I have been taking some note of this way of working in the past week and have come to the conclusion that the feel or mood of a painting is more important to me than the exact representation of a particular subject or environment. Technique must follow vision and it is only a vehicle to get to that vision. I have known this personal supreme importance in a wordless sort of way for a long time. These observations that have long been nothing more than intuitions are very difficult to spell out.

All artists are creating illusions and my work in particular with its use of anthropomorphic mythology and narrative pushes this fact further. Even in the embryonic stages of an idea, I am first struck by the feeling of the image in my mind. If the feeling is strong enough, I move ahead to the research step. If it isn't, the idea is put on the back burner to cook until the right combination of images and words come together to meet that emotional standard.

As far as technique, I do not follow the traditional method of blocking in shapes, working from form to detail. I jump in right away starting with a few lines for placement of the subject and go straight to the eyes working out from there in detail. This is the way I see.

Painting delivery

There was some doubt about the delivery of "The Flowering Bull" yesterday to the clients. With a few days of ice and snow, a drive over to their place back in the woods by the river and up a long driveway looked unlikely. But by the afternoon I got the all clear for the meeting.
The wife in the couple had not told the husband about the painting, only that it was a surprise and that he would love it. I have to say I had a few moments of fear on the short drive over. This would be the first time he would see a piece of art he was about to spend a lot of money for.
They met me in the driveway and in we went for the unveiling.

I have to say how overwhelming it was to see the expressions on their faces. They absolutely loved the painting. Relieved, we talked for awhile about the work, their collection and beautiful home. I headed grateful. Grateful that these lovely people would value my painting enough to spend their hard earned cash to own it and equally that they connected on such a deep level with the image. As I got into the car they said, "We will be contacting you again."
Wow.

Today's Painting

I come from a long line of obsessive cleaners and this morning I got it into my mind to rearrange the studio. I was convinced I would be able to make to a better area in which to work. So after two hours of that this morning, I went on to painting with a renewed view of my space.

I love how he is revealing himself......I am at the intoxicating "wow" moment where the vision is coming alive. Our hero shall indeed rest on shallow waters.

Dinner with Trish

Last night I had a fabulous dinner with friend and fellow PAQA member Trish Williams at La Sardine. La Sardine is a wonderful French bistro in my building that has Prix Fix night on Tuesdays, where you can have a 3 course gourmet meal for $25. YUM! After we finished every last drop we realized we should have taken pictures, but we were so distracted by the deliciousness of our meal, good wine and great conversation that it never came to mind.

Trish is holding an origami ornament my son Ty made. Ty made quite a few ornaments to sell at Christmas to pay off a new laptop he got this fall, but business was not so good this year and he was left with a bit of inventory. I bought his remaining ornaments to give to friends.

I am off tomorrow for a get together with some friends for a non football weekend. For those who partake in the sport, enjoy the game!

Must Have Cardigan

The Must Have Cardigan #2 progresses, I have now completed the body, knitting the fronts and back in one piece.
I love cables! I am so glad I am finally at the level of knitting that I do not have to consult the chart for every line and can blissfully knit away knowing what I should do next. Things have also become faster since I learned to cable without the extra cable needle. Now I am knitting the sleeves, both on one long circular needle. Although I do not like dealing with the two yarns wrapping around each other, I prefer having sleeves that are the same size. I have made identifying the individual sleeves easier by color coding with the markers.
The yellow marker on the far right is where I begin each new row with all the rest being green on that sleeve and only purple on the other sleeve. The orange clip indicates my increase row, so I can keep track of when I need to increase next.

Today's Painting

I found a bounce light in my camera drawer which helps a bit on a snowy day.
Now my shoulders are screaming, so I have to lay off for the day. Good progress today. I am still really on the fence about what I want to do with the environment.... As usual I will probably get it nailed down last as I can't commit until I see that the subject is telling me. Or is that hear what he is showing me?....

Michelle meets the new President

Friend and fellow member of PAQA, Michelle Hardman went to Barack Obama's inauguration. Michelle worked tirelessly for the Obama campaign traveling to several states to get out the vote message. Michelle also organized getting art quilts hung in the Chicago Obama campaign office.

Michelle is wearing a scarf created especially for the events by Susan Shie.

You can read about Michelle's interesting experience meeting President Obama at the public greeting held at the White House in this Washington Post article.

Busy but not much to show

So it seems like I have not been doing much, but I really have. It's just not a whole lot I can show you.
In the non creative realm I have been trying to tackle the excessive files we have accumulated in the file cabinets. I don't think we need every phone bill from the last 20 years as well as a lot of other unnecessary paperwork.

I also have a kitchen table covered with utility bills and statements that need to go somewhere. So I bought a shredder, this thing is a shredding dynamo. I bought and returned a shredder two years ago, that overheated after only a few minutes of shredding and needed a 20 minute cool down before shredding anything else. This time I did my research and got probably more than I need, but boy does it work great.

I have also been preparing for the classes I am teaching in February, buying paints, ordering inks, dyeing fabric, copying class notes and materials and organizing samples.

And I have been working on a project that I am doing with a group of other artists. I can only show a few details for a teaser.

Oh Happy Day!

This is the home page from the White House website. Isn't that a glorious thing? This is a proud day for America. I can only imagine the world is also sharing our happiness with this change of administration, it has been a long eight years.

It was snowing here in Chicago but even that couldn't dim the joyousness of this occasion, the sun was shining and the snow was glistening, sparkling crystals falling from the sky.

We have begun a new day. Peace.

-18° F?

How can it get that cold? that was the temperature at 6 am. The wind chill last night was -40°, now it has warmed up to a balmy -13°. The interesting thing about temps that cold is how crystal clear the air is. It is like the lenses in your glasses have been changed to super focus, everything is so crisply defined and sharp.

I am glad the sun is shining, because it really warms our place up with all the large windows, the heat hasn't even come on since the sun came up.

International Quilt Festival Chicago

Are you going to quilt festival this spring? I will be teaching two classes at IQF Chicago in April.

On Thursday April 16th, I am teaching a three hour class on Tsukineko Inks.

I will demonstrate two different methods for working with the inks; the dry brush method using the fantastix foam applicators, blending colors on the fabric as you work and the second method using paint brushes and mixing the inks with aloe vera gel.

Friday the 17th, I will be teaching a six hour class on Painting Fabric for Whole Cloth Quilts.

In this class we will cover a variety of painting techniques such as creating smooth gradations of color, glazing and adding fine details to work, with lots of tips for getting the best results from different types of paint.

I would love to have you in one of my classes, check your catalog and sign up now.

Fiberart for a Cause

This is my donation piece for Virginia Spiegel's fund raiser Fiberart for a Cause. It is an Invitational Reverse Auction of Fiberart, March 24 - 26, 2009. Each artist donates a fiber artwork with 100% of the proceeds going directly to the American Cancer Society. 5 1/2” x 9 1/2”

To make this, I painted white PFD cotton fabric with textile paints, the letters were cut from magazines and collaged with gel medium. The finished painting was fused to Peltex heavy weight interfacing, and quilted. I cut the metal house shape from a sheet of aluminum craft metal with decorative scissors and used an x-acto to cut the window and doors. I used a 90/14 needle on my sewing machine to stitch the metal with a heavy cotton thread and embossed it after it was sewn to the panel.

I wanted to draw a more elaborate design on the metal than random doodles, so I drew a design on tracing paper and laid it over the metal and lightly traced over the design with a stylus transferring the design to the metal. I went over the design with the stylus embossing it in the metal giving it more depth and adding details.

Caught in the act.

How could anyone resist a soft pile of freshly dyed cotton batting to snuggle up in? Unfortunately for Abby, that batting needed to be used for something else.


A project for RIT dye.