Painting and Reading

We finally made the jump to turn off the cable TV, which really is essentially a time waster; let's be honest. I have been reading more at night (as long as it isn't LOST night.) I finished up "The Artist's Mentor." Artists say many weird things that don't make any sense. I read a lot of quotes and came away with a "what??" I am not sure that this book has been as much a mentor as it was an amusement.



So, last night I read more of "The Widening Stream: The Seven Stages of Creativity" by creativity guru David Ulrich. This is a good book, though I am sure I am not deep enough to get most of it's contents. I do have a few "what??" moments with this one, too. Maybe its me.



Chapter four is about coming away from the work by retreating and withdrawing. This is something I have experienced lately and with much angst. In a product oriented society, we are steeped in the ultimate value of doing something that produces and we feel something is really wrong if we aren't on this track all the time. Having to walk away from work that isn't moving forward is a good thing giving us time to refocus and reflect. Good words and a lost art, this meditating and reflecting, right? I have to remind myself repeatedly "quality over quantity."


I am exceptionally tired today and have spent the morning doing things like this. Will I paint today?....



From yesterday. I feel really good about the head and have laid in the first color masses in the antlers.

National Gallery of Art

We make a visit to the National Gallery two or three times a year. Saturday after a brief visit to the American History Museum, we headed over there for my must have encounter with the Van Gogh portrait in the collection. I always get weepy, it is always an emotional experience. I have talked about this is the past. For me, considering his life, his letters and his struggles I feel all the more connected to the work. It wasn't until about twenty years after his death that people began to take notice of his work and now, could he even imagine where his paintings might be and that one portrait could deeply effect one woman in Washington D.C.? I managed to compose myself in this photo taken a few years ago.







I was focused on seeing Mark Rothko's paintings, so we made our way to the east building which houses the modern art collection. I have never felt greatly connected to modern art. And as a matter of fact, walking into the gallery, immediately I was struck by the coldness if the atmosphere. There is even a weird undercurrent of "horror", if I may use that word. I find most modern art void of humanity and beauty which is really important to me as a painter and viewer (hey, and as a human.) But last year, I sat and looked at one of Rothko's paintings and remember being quite moved. I wanted to sit and look again, though this is a different painting than the one on display last year. Maybe I am beginning to "get it." It may help to acquaint myself with his story.


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I want to mention Thomas Cole's "Voyage of Life" series beautifully displayed in the west building complete with the artist's statements about each massive painting. They are numbers 10 through 13 here. Really beautiful and moving works.


So, a great day in our capital and off to Trader Joe's on the way home. Yee-ha.

Center for the Arts Exhibit

The art director send me the official email about my upcoming three woman show in 2010. I guess that isn't upcoming, but a bit daunting, since I need to have 15 strong paintings by then and a few have sold. My numbers are going down. Not that I am complaining.....

I will have the honor of showing with Karen Eide and Kathleen Kendall at the Center for the Arts in Manassas about a year from now. Loosely, the exhibit is the conceptualization of the theme of myth and nature utilizing human and animal representation. Cool, right?

Leon Frederic and Black Swans

Craig mentioned black swans tonight over dinner (cannot remember why) and I have been pondering for some time a painting called "blank's (insert name) New Day Rising."
The black swan came right to me. I could see it so clearly in my mind.

So, researching tonight, Craig found a really amazing painting by late 19th century Belgian symbolist painter Leon Frederic. I have never heard of him, but am thrilled to stumble upon his work. He was around sort of at the height of Impressionism, so his style is weird for the time. He just did his thing. I love when artists do their thing.


"The Lake" by Leon Frederic

New Painting

I just spent the last hour and a half getting submission ready. Some of these venues can really make you jump through lot of hoops. Man.

New Painting work from yesterday. Now we are rockin'. Antlers go on next week barring any issues. I seem to have a lot of issues lately with my paintings...

And, finally:

Paintings and Happy Accidents

I have had so many sad accidents lately, I am thankful for a happy one. I need more happy accidents, please.

I have used equal parts stand oil and mineral spirits solely as my medium since I started using oil paint. A painter I took a class from a few years back uses it, so I started using it not knowing much about mediums. His paintings look good, he knows what he is doing, so why not?

Well, I hate it. It is sticky, really thick and gunky (or is that "gooky?") I went through my drawer full of painting add-ons and found a little glass bottle of refined linseed oil. Man, what the hell?! Love it! Where have I been using this other crap?! No offense to those who use stand oil. So, you can hear my intense feeling about this, because it comes on the heels of the baboon painting, which has been a veritable nightmare. I am really tired of dealing with it, which is a really bad place to be regarding a painting.

Here is a new painting I am in the beginning stages of working on. I have a long way to go, but lets hope it isn't as long as the above. Oh, but I have a magic medium from heaven, now, so no worries, right?

Canvas book

Last month I made a canvas book after seeing Jane LaFazio's segment on Quiting Arts TV. Jane used artist canvas as a base for a mixed media collage. I have not worked much on canvas and thought it would be a lot of fun to try using it as a base for a book.

I bought a yard of canvas at the art store and tore it into two 12" x 24" strips and two 6" x 16" strips and painted a coat of Gesso on each side of the canvas. Gesso creates a surface to paint on, so all your paint doesn't soak into the canvas.

Next I put color on each side of the canvas, so I would not be working on blank pages. A blank white page can be so intimidating. I also collaged some paper images onto the pages with gel medium and stitched a couple pieces of painted canvas to the pages.

Then I stacked the pages together and sewed them together on the sewing machine. I found that my Janome was not happy sewing through the layers of canvas, but the Bernina plowed right through four layers of painted canvas with no problem.

This book was not meant to have a theme, just be a place to try new things, new techniques and randomly add things, a continuous work in progress.
This page has a paper bird from wrapping paper in the upper corner and a painted bird in the bottom corner, painted with textile paints. The patterns and text were printed with thermofax. I had never printed with thermofax screens before. The images printed a little more distressed on the bumpy surface of the canvas. But I love the layer of texture. I can see why so many people love working with thermofax screens.
The photos of the women, here, on the cover and the back of the book are from acetate transfers using matte medium that Lesley Riley gave me. The one on this page was transferred onto a piece of buckram.

The cicada drawn on the red fabric and the patterns drawn on the leaf were made using a ruling pen. This was a great tip from Melanie Testa, I had forgotten all about ruling pens. I used to use them all the time years ago for inking things. I have several of them that have sat unused in a box for the last 20 years. I even have my dad's ruling pen and drafting tools that he used in his days as an engineer for the Navy. I am thrilled to rediscover the ruling pen, it is a great tool for drawing fine lines with paint or thickened dye.
In Jane's QATV segment she also used stencils to add more visual texture to her collages. When I was at Blick I saw a set for $2.99 how could I resist? I numbered my pages with them using the number as a design element on each page.
I drew the bee on the page with a permanent brown pen and painted it using transparent glazes of textile paint.
This center page has a thermofax print on a piece of wool felt and a scrap from the fabric I made to create the apron I posted about a couple weeks ago.
On page 12 I sewed a machine felted fabric collage.
On my last page I sewed a pocket so that I could keep things I want to add to the book in the future.

This book is still far from finished, I am planning to keep adding to it indefinitely.

It has been a fun experiment, canvas takes paint so differently from fabric. You can push paint around on its surface and pick it up again with a cloth making interesting textures in ways that you can't on cotton fabric. I also like the body the canvas has for book pages, flexible, yet sturdy. I can see a lot of ways one could explore using canvas for books.