Tuesday, August 11, 2015

In the Light of a New Day

Covered over yesterday's coneflower painting with a mulch of gesso and worked it all into the garden of my mind. Gave it a little hypnagogic water in the night. Woke to the light of a new day with new energy.

Sure enough, those coneflowers had much more liveliness than my brush accorded them yesterday!

Ironies:
• I was able to be 'precious'—using up scraps of watercolor paper squirreled away from other projects—while also being playful and loose and open, painting quickly and freely.
• The only painting class I ever took—and I didn't even know it involved painting when I signed up—was a collage class about fifteen years ago. Hated it. Jumped ship. Yet, what was my great pleasure today? Using paint to create a collage!

Very enjoyable. Especially loved being able to give my cobalt blue vase a nod.

Coneflower Caper
6x6", acrylic on gessobord and watercolor paper
floral


2 comments:

Unknown said...

So different! Striking. Are the petals literally lifting off the page as they appear to be?

Still can't fully accept gessoing right over a painting (eek!), but when I imagine doing it I picture it could be very freeing.

dotty seiter: now playing said...

Yes, the petals are literally lifting off the page! The background is painted on gessobord but I painted the petals, pistils/stamens, and stems on watercolor paper, cutting them out and gluing them to the gessobord, and curling and overlapping the petals a bit as struck my fancy. The whole exercise was very quick, spontaneous, and playful.

I confess that more often than not it does take my breath away to gesso over a painting but, as you surmised, doing so can be freeing. Letting go, letting go, embracing change.

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