Following Directions

Jane Davies has been playing with scribbles for awhile, and her blog post in January caught my eye with its multi-layered repetitive-back-and-forth scribbles. I wanted to try my hand at layers and back-and-forth.

I looked through the squares I'd cut from a 6 x 9" start I made on my first Bo's Arts afternoon, with an eye towards a background that might lend itself to just such scribbling.

I selected this square.

Then I layered and back-and-forthed with wild abandon.

Wait.

What?

Here's what came of that inspiration and my layers of intention. Hahaha!!!

I do love when I don't follow directions—who is it that issues these directions? Who is it that disregards them!

Handsome Herringbone
3 x 3"; acrylic, ink, and collage on watercolor paper
abstract floral
2023

On the Fly

I was really hankering to settle in with some linework and rounding of corners Wednesday afternoon but I was on the fly, prepping for a day trip to Maine the following day.

I circled back to the idea of wanting to try my hand at a neurographic painting on a neutral atmospheric background, an idea that had caught my attention a few weeks ago.

Only got as far as the neutral atmospheric background. 

a start

 

Backstage, Part 2

I went to my studio fully intending to paint a sheet of paper with atmospheric neutrals.

But my eye was pulled to a sheet of lifted paint.

More backstories:

1. I think I first learned about lifting acrylic paint from artist Jane Davies. The technique involves no more than periodically stopping to press scrap paper onto the wet surface of whatever work is in progress to lift some paint away. Doing so contributes to delightfully unpredictable organic effects and overall depth. In addition to lifting paint from a work in progress, I often capture last bits of paint from my palette in the same manner.

While the lifted paint is still wet, the lifting paper itself can be used to press prints onto work in progress. 

Once dry, sheets of lifted paint make excellent collage paper.

sample sheet of lifted paints

2. On a Nova Scotia vacation some years ago I purchased lunch at a deli and immediately recognized the paper used to wrap my sandwich for its potential as excellent lifting paper. Win-win-win: great sandwich, great vacation souvenir, great art supply. I now own a box of Dixie All Purpose Food Wrap, the contents of which I use regularly, though never to wrap food.

So, here's my actual new painting start—all purpose food wrap with lifted paint, pulled from my handmade collage paper collection, now adhered to drawing paper with matte medium.

work in progress

Scrappy

The word scrappy floated up in a hypnagogic moment of partial wakefulness during the night. It popped into my field of attention a second time in the light of day. 

scrappy • made of scraps; consisting of odds and ends; composed of disorganized, untidy, or incomplete parts; disconnected, disjointed

scrappy • having a determined spirit; feisty; exhibiting firmness of purpose and energetic pursuit of results; manifesting moxie or demonstrating grit; stepping into the arena

YES!

Look Around at the Terrain of Possibility
3.75 x 5.5" postcard, acrylic, collage, and oil pastel
on card stock
abstract
2022

Books and Bookmarks (2)

Re books:

You can tell 

she’s really good at reading 

no matter where she is 

or what’s happening around her. 

There’s this look on her face 

like she’s not there at all, 

she’s gone wherever 

the book takes her.

—Rodman Philbrick, Max the Mighty

Re bookmarks:

Here’s another thing I like about a hand-painted bookmark: its beautility! A bookmark is an exquisite marriage of beauty and utility. It has an immediate chance to broadcast its beauty—it doesn’t languish, waiting to be purchased; it doesn’t end up stuffed in a drawer or box, neglected or forgotten. I can do the equivalent of putting it on display instantly. Not only that, but also it has a practical job to do and gets busy doing it the moment the paint dries, snuggling cozily for short naps between the pages of whatever book I’m reading, all the while holding my place with an expectant eye half open and its whole self ready to radiate creative expressive energy all over again when I reopen my book. The best!

When I'm Reading, Wherever I Am,
I'm Always Somewhere Else
1.75 x 5.5" bookmark; acrylic and collage on paper
abstract
2020
sold

I Do, 10/11/1975

Forty-five years. Flame still burning hot and bright! 

 A Surprise in the Familiar
4.5 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic and collage on paper
abstract
2020

Is There a Purpose?

Artist Jane Davies recently posted a conversation in response to a question that came her way about the value of art if it isn't practical or doesn't make a salable piece—if, for example, as Jane had done, one was making small simplified works on paper with self-created 'rules' just to get ideas moving by keeping hands and eyes doing something in the studio. The question behind the question was: what to do with all those impractical unsalable pieces of art?

So many thoughts and ideas I have in response to that question but, for today, only this:

Keep them! Keep them all! You never know what might become of one of those pieces! Or when!

Part of the fun of this postcard, made before Jane posted the aforementioned conversation at her blog, is that the pieces come from exercises I did several years ago while taking an online class from Jane! What if I had pitched them because they weren't 'practical' or 'salable'? No thank you!

Deep Inner Space, Extraordinary Knowing
4 x 6" postcard; acrylic and pencil on drawing paper, mounted on cardboard
abstract
2020

Postcard Play

Outdoor-gear magazine story.

Real-estate advertising.

Found wisdom.

Because This Old Planet Still Has a Few Tricks
4 x 6" postard; acrylic, ink, and collage on drawing paper,
mounted on card stock
abstract
2020 upgrade of a 2016 piece

Parentheses

I know, I know, you thought I was on a roll with a series of postcards from that 18x24" start done last summer at Lake Champlain.

So did I.

But.

While cleaning my studio, I bumped into an October 2016 mono-stripes exercise I did for a Jane Davies online course while on vacation in West Virginia, and you know how one thing

mono-stripes exercise 2016

leads to another.

I Was Putting Papers Away When the Telephone Rang
4x5" postcard; acrylic, pastels, and collage on card stock
abstract
2019

  

August Benchmark

Stepping into painting/creating almost always lets me step out of whatever is on my busy mind. I slow down and 'get lost' in the act of painting. Often, thoughts and memories bubble up from my subconscience. Today's meander:

August 1975. Teaching in the summer program at Landmark School. Lunchtime. Sitting with a few women at a picnic table overlooking the Atlantic. None of us married, then-new acquaintance Sylvia and I with weddings on the near horizon. Topic of discussion: would we keep our maiden names or take our husbands' surnames?*

August 2018. Sylvia and I have been BFF's for 43 years now, and our respective marriages are very much alive and kicking. Pretty awesome.

Happy Anniversary, Sylvia and Dan!

As We Go Along, Ways Open Before Us
4x5"; acrylic and ink on paper
abstract
2018
[gift]

* We took our hubbies' names.

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue?

Something old: a square on my Core Values work in progress, waiting weeks for its day in the sun.

Something new: a fine line marker.

Something borrowed:

(a) Simone's first-layer approach: do anything; it is early yet

(b) Jane's model of fearless veiling to create depth

(c) Betty's spirit of mark making on top of mark making

(d) Sylvia's vivid warm application of color

Something blue? Not so much!

This patch-in-progress is going to sit as is till tomorrow.

Keeping the Barns Full / Q&Q Cut-Up #7

A passage in the middle of the lightest of carefree novels, Miss Buncle Married, by D.E. Stevenson, jumped right off the page and into my artist's heart recently, carrying with it depth and resonance in abundance—enough and to spare:

…  the truth is that authors have no idea at all how or where they garner their harvest. The harvest is garnered by some busy imp that watches and garners daily, hourly, keeping the barns full, so that when the day of threshing comes, and the wheat is winnowed from the chaff, there shall always be enough and to spare for the making of the bread.

I actually do have an idea where my busy imp harvested a handful here and a handful there, keeping my barns full so I could make a little bread today. Thank you, Betty Krause, Jane Davies, and Simone Nijboer, for planting seeds.

For Five Minutes She Suspended Judgment of the World and Fell Silent
4x5"; acrylic, ink, collage, and oil pastel on unstretched canvas,
mounted on card stock
abstract landscape
2017
[gift]