Offering for Ash Wednesday

Usually, trips are a great catalyst for me and I come back, if not brimming with ideas, then at least having a few pop into my head.  In this case, I went to an art fair in Boca Raton, and met a very nice (and I might say from his paintings, accomplished) artist who had a piece which was charcoal done on canvas and fixed with the usual fixative.  I had not heard of such a thing (being  ignorant and at the beginning of a steep learning curve) and so decided when I got home to try it.

This was the result.  It is called "Are you so sure?"  I really like the charcoal on the canvas idea, but not sure yet if it is durable enough.  I have put fixative on it and will see how it holds.

 

Sometimes Bigger is Better

I just finished a watercolor, a much bigger version of one I have hanging in my dining room.  The one there is a favorite of my husband's and it was his idea to enlarge it.  I hadn't done it for two reasons.  First, could I pull it off again?  Second, it would require an expensive frame and matting if I did pull it off.

However, everyone is gone and I decided to take paint in hands.  After a trip to the local craft store for a ginormous piece of paper this was the result, and the effect I sought in the first picture actually came to life in this one.

 So, sometimes bigger IS better!

In Praise of the Slow.

I have always, always been what you might call a slow person, who likes to take the time to deliberate before doing.  Indeed, if you rush me, as my mother always (many times rightly) tried to, I will misplace or lose or forget something.  It is one of those limitations I live with;  I can "rev" up, so to speak, but it always makes me tense and nervous.  Needless to say, in this country where the premium virtue is haste even in places of contemplation (!), I have often been the slower car--you know the one--who is taking their time while everyone else is rushing to the fire. 

So imagine my delight in finding this link called Slow Painting.

http://slowpainting.wordpress.com/

It isn't just about "slow art", but slow architecture, slow cooking, slow living.  I hope you slow people out there will enjoy it as much as I have.

And take your time.

Christmas Card

I really was going to try another technique and still may this am before I have to start cooking (and cooking and cooking--artist in the kitchen today!).   But instead, the brush had different ideas;  I went with them, and offer you a Christmas card this morning.  May you have a blest Christmas filled with light and beauty and peace.

From Small to Large

Here's the latest. Its unfortunate shadow at the top is due to a) it is a watercolor sadly in need of a frame, so I have it pinned to my wall but b) I ran out of pins so c) because I stole some from the picture above, d) the picture above is casting a shadow.

I did a lot (17)  of sketches the last time I was in NM, but this is the first I have tried to enlarge.  It is outside of the town of Abiqu, along the Chama River, not far from the Christ in the Desert Benedictine Monastery which I was fortunate enough to visit for the first time. This is Georgia's country all the way.  I think it is the best kept secret in the United States, because the cliffs are colorful, moody and grand, the silence palpable, and the sky incredibly, unblinkingly New Mexico blue.  And the painting itself is technically much better, not overworked, not saved from the grave like my last offing.

From time to time, I start wondering why I do this--paint, I mean--and why I am so passionate about it.  After all, I am not going to be making millions in the wild New York (yes, I read the WSJ) art market.
And I am not sure my paintings say anything anyone else's don't.

The anwer is simple:  freedom to express what I see, as one of G-d's creatures. And I am blessed by G-d to have the option.  As a notebook I have says, "Pretending to be a Normal Person day after day is Exhausting".  Hmmm, and what IS normal, anyway??

Finally

I should call this Much Ado About Nothing. It has taken me about two hours to get this picture downloaded only to find I could do it much more easily. Ah, technology, where we "save" time. I accept this as something I needed to know. *sigh*

Enough grousing. I decided to share the painting of my flower garden--the reworked and re-reworked version (who says you can' t rework watercolor?--and the result is not bad, at least in my estimation, considering where this piece came from. (as in trash heap). I am tempted to try again, maybe in different colors, just to see what will happen.
More later. Must get to work.

Not Quite There

I just read my last post and realized that I had given my art her head and she had galovanted (is that a word?) down a different path.  Flowers, however are key.  As I looked again at Georgia's "Black Holly hock"  I was again taken by the stark richness of it all.

My adventure into flowers has been quite different (and I can see right now that I am going to have to learn to get some pictures up!)

1. First, I had had NO, repeat NO intention of doing flowers at all.  It just came to me after an attempt to do an abstraction of a sky the other day.  How I love Winsor Blue (red)!.

Unfortunately, as a sky, it just didn't work.  I did my usual thing of getting everything nice and medium with no contrast.  Fail.  I took out the charcoal to see if adding contrast in a redo would work.  Double fail.

2. Impressionistic.  I had looked at the sky...and saw....flowers everywhere. Everywhere!  I put on Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23, second movement (a slow, mournful Mozart, if you can imagine), and began to paint in details; the results were, well, mixed. 

A couple of great tulips, roses (white with Winsor blue shadows) and poppies, and a garden path, but that charcoal did absolutely nothing for the piece.  I am faced with:

3.Redoing.  This is OK.  If Georgia could repaint a mesa three hundred (300) times, I can repaint this once.
Problem:  I am scared to try because how will I get that constellation of shapes again?  It IS, I must remind myself an EXPERIMENT, not Van Gogh I am ruining.  Just a piece of paper...Just a piece of paper....just a piece of paper....Unfortunately, in my real other life, people are being somewhat critical of everything (not YOU dearest), and times are, shall we say, stormy. (Ha! Does that make me an Artist now?).  I can see them all--ghosts standing in my studio, looking over my shoulder, making snide comments.  Need to leave the criticism where it belongs--a very big trash barrel outside the Solar System.

4.  Editing.  Yup, get out the scissor and judiciously cut out the worst of the charcoal offense.  Not sure this will work, but may give it a go.  Anyone need artistic bookmarks????

I will probably do all of these. 

And my ideas?  Not even sure what they were, but right now, have a desert piece on the board, and am working on People with the idea of going Icons.  In this case, it is a matter of using a pile of very small frames a friend is donating to me.  Form follows function. ;p