Monday, January 25, 2010

Travel & Jetlag

I am on the go, have moved in one week from Sydney to Beijing to UK. And also to USA, finding myself at the moment in Charlotte, North Carolina. Not warm here either, cold and about like it has been everywhere I've been north of Sydney ! I will take it a bit easy today, can't find sun to reset the body clock, but need to do something as antidote to being rather "washed up."

As usual, posting from China is not so easy and my schedule there was very rushed anyhow to fit lots into a short time. Same with UK--very hectic work sked there and pretty jetlagged too. So, I hope to download some pics and post something more interesting tonight ! But first, having done some work, I will find more coffee, breakfast, and a bookstore. Maybe buy a new pair of shoes ?(hey why not ?! great thing to do, I can squeeze one more into the suitcase, and US is definitely the place to do it !!). Then a drive south this afternoon to get me to the area for my next few days meetings. I have to do more work tonight on line, and be up at 5AM tomorrow.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Creating New Compositions

I am working on a series of three new compositions taken from my paintings. I photograph the paintings and have chosen a slice of each of three I like and will plan to size and scale them to each go on a canvas of the same size, tall and narrow. I think then I can display them together. Quite by happy accident then they have some color tie ins and can work together !

Formatting these panels wasn't easy--my skills manipulating formats on blogger as still a bit basic

Meantime, I will not be painting them quite yet. I have to head out today on business travel: China, UK, USA, Brazil and Chile. With two very opposite seasons the dilemma this week has been what to pack !

More soon, I hope to remember the camera cable and contact lenses this trip. So I can load pics for posts and also so I can see what I am doing !


Monday, January 11, 2010

Brilliant Greens

While I am getting back to work, I continue to work on some paintings and themes. Today's thoughts are of brilliant and uplifting greens. I keep coming back to greens. Lime, emerald, verdigris, dark green blue, and more.

First, a verdigris and rust touched green angel perched on a planter at the front door here, planted with succulent plants that echo the angel's colors and have interesting textures.

Then an an elegant still life pose from Pookie, with a vintage green glass juicer and a bowl of limes. He enjoys doing photo shoots and will pose and be posed with items very cooperatively. He seems to be offering to make margaritas here and the green items in the composition pick up the color of his eyes !

And a green inspiration from one of my recent sunflowers paintings. I am experimenting taking portions of some of my paintings and creating from them new compositions, with different proportions and some of this is an exciting direction. I am starting with this one. And I have a three more, taken from different paintings (not all green !) to do a series of three panels. This is fun and some of the work to find and create the new compositions has been more promising than I thought. More on that in a next post.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Journey

In the past month I have gotten a fair bit of painting done and also experimenting. Here is some more of what I was working on just before Christmas.

This is more in encaustics, but instead of small pieces with tissue and other papers in the wax as I showed in a post last month, I worked on a large board. Working large in encaustics is a LOT more work. It takes more effort to cover larger surfaces, as the molten wax and pigment harden up quite quickly once taken out on a brush or adhered to substrates and surfaces. It takes quite a while to create and build up and cover a large board like this one, which is 48 x 61 cm (19" x 24").

There were some very cool looking corrugated cardboard pieces around, quite large and so I dipped it in the wax and thus attached them to the board surface. It took several pieces to create a doorway. I like doorways, gates, portholes and windows. Basically vantage points to frame and see other scenes, or gateways to other places and experiences.

This piece is like my vantage point to a journey. I have a recurring image and dream about a journey, one in which the path is not clear until I am about to take the next step, and then all of a sudden it is presented to me... before that moment I did not know which way it would go or what it would look like, but then it magically becomes apparent and I can continue, knowing the way ahead.

The corrugated surface is like many sheds and buildings and rooflines here so perhaps it is symbolizing my journey to this life and home here. Even in the studio space at Salon Rouge Gallery (where I painted this), you can see the same shape and texture making up some of the Gallery walls behind me. The Gallery was formerly a mechanics shed and garage in its previous lifecycle and some of those original walls have been retained, offering some genuine character. I enjoyed using dark blues and greens and also making the surface look weathered and rusty. I used wax for that, building up the surface. The weathered bits are made of many shades of related colors and the rust is orange, dark red orange, yellow and orange-yellow hues.

Adhered onto the gateway's surface are some postage stamps, small items that make possible passage ways of their own, little tickets for messages and letters that will cover distance and time to get from senders to destinations. Perhaps they will accompany pleasant deliveries to their recipients ? I like to think they will.

The lettering came out well and I have created a blue sky vista beyond the portico here. The view beyond is created with layers of beeswax and paint in colors of buff, white, offwhite, and soft blues and cerulean. The surface has been scraped and polished to create the texture shown.

This piece reminds me to see the blue skies ahead.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Done and New Directions

The second sunflower painting is now done, happy with that. It and the first one will go into the third bedroom, which has gotten new curtains I made up this week, from Indian silk I had here that features yellow green in it. The same room has a vintage chandelier with daisies in yellow and white with green leaves on it. Perfect perfect !

Then I began to work on a collage with sketches of horses. Not sure what direction this will take, but it is fun to explore. I am reading a new book "Art Revolution" by Lisa Cyr. It has fantastic ideas for mixed media and interesting techniques. After reading this, I scanned a sketch of the horse I had done and have since printed it on old vintage pages, old paper and on regular paper. One of the ones on old paper then got pony and horse related words typed on it with my sky blue vintage typewriter.

Stay tuned to see what becomes of this.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Introspective Sunflower

Happy New Year, it is now 2010 everywhere !! Hope it is a good one for everyone, in some small or even big way. Not sure if you keep more make up resolutions...I don't call mine resolutions per se, but I do make up a short list of things I want to do or remember to integrate into my life and outlook for the coming year. I have made up 2010's list, but it is not refined or prioritized as yet.

I continued working on the sunflowers, starting painting number 2. And unopened flower. We about to open, because yellow petals are visible, but instead of being open and petals stretching outward, they are still pointed inward. An introspective sunflower perhaps ? It is contemplating before opening up in its next flower stage.


It is a close up composition and I have done a fair bit on it.

Later today or early tomorrow I will finish it. I am about to start on the third in the series, before I lose the still life models I have, five sunflowers that still look ok, but soon will be done with their time in the vase.


Did you find the surprise in the previous sunflowers painting ? (see painting photo in previous post to this one) If you did not, it is s small green heart, hidden in the middle of the foliage. Not intended or planned, but I find it a charming surprise to see when I was surveying the finished painting at a distance. Obviously meant to be there, so it shall stay :)