Change of Direction

Was poking around looking at art online a few nights ago, bumped into a piece at DailyPaintWorks by an artist named Mary Ellis, and just had to change direction from my current exploration of b&w linework to try my hand at an appropriation. I'd earlier bumped into a stack of 6x6" canvas board paintings on which I'd painted over the original works with chaos layers, and I'd been hankering to do some negative space painting using those chaos layers, and suddenly here was inspiration! Thank you for waking me up to explore something new, Mary!

Ready, set, go!

Same Place, Different Day
6/12/2016

chaos layers painted on top of
Same Place, Different Day
October 2020 (I think)

This Holy Instant
6 x 6"; acrylic, ink, and oil pastel on canvas board
figurative
2022
appropriation, after Mary Ellis, DailyPaintWorks.com,
thank you!

Whole New Kettle of Fish

Unexpected adventure today—a departure from the neurographic series I've been painting for several weeks. Thank you, Amanda Evanston! She offered a free sample class for kids online. I forwarded the info to granddaughter Emmy. 

Yes. yes. yes. I would definitely like to do that! 

Me, too!

So we each called on our inner Claude Monet and painted us some water lilies, I tell you what!

The class was short and high speed, 78 rpm to my 33 ⅓—I opted to watch and listen while it was live. Once the class ended, I turned myself loose to PLAY. 

So. Much. Fun.

Painted up a green chaos layer. Let it dry.

Used tape to mask off some would-be lily pads, painted up a blue chaos layer on top of the green. Pulled off the tape.

work in progress … will return to this tomorrow

Amanda has a gift for tapping the child in me for sure; little Dotty was giddy with delight with paper, paint, brush, and an 'unfussy' role model leading the way.

Negative Space, Positive Space

Just have to post this next step in a piece that is still in process—as I played for a few minutes in my studio creating negative and positive space on my canvas, I moved from a negative internal space to a positive one! Grateful!

work in progress
6 x 6" canvas board

Taking Note

For a number of days now, I have been especially thought-full, noticing alternating current in my day-to-day living, noticing the back-and-forth in play between peaceful engaged presence and agitated internal chatter as I created this piece.

In a Hurry has become a visual meditation: a reminder to breathe, a signifier of the space between an in-breath and an out-breath, an invitation to move at a slower pace, a nudge towards mindfulness.

In a Hurry as the Babysitter's Meter Ticks
7x7"; acrylic, latex, India ink, and handpainted collage on canvas paper
abstract
2018

Hobby Nook

My current project-in-progress takes me right back to Hobby Nook at Camp Takodah when I was maybe nine years old and making a ceramic-tile-and-grout trivet for my mom. I had no concept whatsoever of a to-do list, no sense of having to get anything done by a certain time.

When I was at the waterfront I was at the waterfront. When I was on the badminton court I was on the badminton court. When I was in Hobby Nook I was in Hobby Nook.

Hobby Nook was entirely sensory: chair legs scraping on the wooden floor, fragrant candle wax melting on a hotplate, dust drifting in through wide-open doors and windows leaving an earthy taste on my tongue, woven wicker making a pattern against the backs of my legs, the colors and sheen of half-inch ceramic tiles lighting up my eyes.

When a cabin leader clanged the bell on A Field, I put away my trivet till the next day, with nary a thought about its being 'finished' or not.

Today in Hobby Nook—a few tiles here, a few there, some grout, and then off when the bell rang.

detail, work in progress

detail, work in progress

Positive Negative

Took a start from a few weeks ago, part of which I'd previously used to make a postcard using negative-space painting.

Decided to use negative space differently this time. Embellished my start from June to my liking first. Loved the process, love the product.

In fact, I think I need to get a job painting collage paper. Wouldn't that be so cool?

But I digress.

Next, painted a sheet of canvas paper to be my negative space, so to speak. Again, loved the process, love the end result. It was hard to photograph to satisfaction, but the subtleties here delight me.

Started putting the two together. A perfectly positive 'negative' experience!

work in progress

Kapiti!

We used to have a mischievous and thoroughly endearing parakeet named Kapiti, one of whose habits was to nibble the edges of paper. In order to protect papers I needed in plain sight, I purchased a piece of clear acrylic 'glass' under which to place them.

Kapiti died many years ago and I lost track of that sheet of acrylic … until I did a round of deep decluttering a few weeks ago and rediscovered it! I had a grand time today using it as my palette to mix a color for the negative painting of this work in progress.

Oh my gosh, if Kapiti were alive now he would have an absolute field day in my studio—sitting on the ends of brushes for wild rides, walking across what I was painting, and chasing and pecking at brush bristles, all while narrating his activities in a chipper stream-of-consciousness monologue as I worked!

work in progress
new layer: acrylic on paper

Nosegay

Back at our cottage, bursting with the important news of our wildflower finds, my sisters and I select a vase from the tiny open-shelved kitchen, fill it with water and, with great ceremony and a fair amount of mess, create a nosegay—or tussie mussie, as such an arrangement is also called—of

• daisy fleabane,
• buttercups,
• blanketflower,
• purple asters,
• scarlet beebalm, and
• cornflowers.

Summer magic!

newest patch

detail

new patch in the bigger picture;
working title: Core Values

Bringing a Year to a Close

In the spirit of tying up loose ends, giving a nod to the old, and making space for the new, I plan to bring closure to 2017 in my next few posts—one of which appears here today in my last blog entry of 2017, the rest of which will show up on the other side of the weekend at the beginning of 2018.

Janus, god of transitions, invites me to take a close look at the metamorphasis from this start—

collage on paper,
taped to a cafeteria tray

to this completed painting—

All Are Born Radiating Light

The dramatic change knocks my socks off and seems impossibly magical … even though I was its agent and witnessed the transformation firsthand as it unfolded moment by moment!

Simple Gifts

This painting got its start two years ago (two years!) when I taped a sturdy piece of paper to a cafeteria tray and covered it with collage bits torn from a variety of magazine pages featuring a range of greens and a variety of patterns. It sat taped to that tray until today.

I found myself humming the plainspoken Shaker hymn "Simple Gifts" by Elder Joseph Bracket as I painted late this afternoon.

'Tis the gift to be simple
'Tis the gift to be free
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be
And when we find ourselves in the place just right
It will be in the valley of love and delight.

Simple gifts in my studio:

• mixing up titanium white, phthalo blue red shade, and glazing medium,
• veiling and collaging negative space,
• scribbling with India ink, 
• coming down where I ought to be, in the place just right.

All Are Born Radiating Light
4.25x5.75"; acrylic, latex, India ink, collage, and oil pastel on paper,
mounted on card stock and tissue paper
abstract
2017

Stopping in at Camp Briefly

Blink!

Where did August go? And September? And now October?

Back in August I set up some painting starts to take to camp for an inquiry into using negative space.

The earlier history of one of those starts:

8x10"

One quarter of the above:

4x5"

Last seen (and never posted here, I just realized) looking like this, still back in August:

Revisited yesterday and today, and now mounted on matte board, ready to head to a new home:

Grandma Moses Hangs Towels on the Clothesline at Camp
4x5"; acrylic, grease pencil, collage, ink, pastel pencil,
and oil pastel on canvas paper,
mounted on 8.5x11" matte board
abstract
2017
[gift]

Haiku on the back:

Inner tube, inner

life, laughter, Camp Takodah

gives rise to friendship.

Q&Q Cut-Up #3

A quotation caught my eye at the library today, something 'prodigiously talented and successful musician' Leonard Bernstein evidently once said:

To achieve great things, two things are needed: 

a plan and not quite enough time.

My plan is to show up every day in my studio … and I never have quite enough time.

Perfect!

Way, way, way back on September 22, I started scribbling on a piece of 16x20" unstretched canvas with a PaperMate pencil, a grease pencil, pastel pencils, and a graphite crayon.

Working a few minutes at a time over the course of many of the days between then and now, I eventually cut the work in progress into eight pieces, one of which became the 'starting' point—so to speak—of today's completed painting.

Sleeping in the Room with the Drying Herbs
4x5"; pencil, pastel pencil, ink, and acrylic on unstretched canvas
abstract
2017

I love the softnesses and breathing space in this piece.

Fast and Furious

You know how some folks do five-minute paintings?

Or 20-second paintings, for Pete's sake?

Those folks?

They would not be I.

---

Parallel play continues here: bathroom mess increases by the minute, studio is barely recognizable.

FEMA may be called in.

---

Before, during, after:

from this 8x10" start,



to this 4x5" quadrant,



to this coverup,



to a completed painting.

Allowing for Accident
4x5"; acrylic, pen, collage, pencil, and oil pastel on canvas paper
abstract
2017

Tissue and Print

Rainy day. Wind, tossing the trees.

Replacement studio door installed, adjacent replacement bathroom door now in process.

Mess in my studio up to Category 3.

Grab another quadrant from one of my Takodah-inquiry starts.

Paint with tissue and print. Work still in process there, too.

work in progress
4x5"

Namaste

Having a yoga practice helps me bow to myself when I paint, helps me tap the divine spark located in my heart chakra.

Gathered up a little prana today and finished the piece I worked on yesterday, part of my inquiry into painting negative space. I think this piece is the seventh in my series.

---

Before, during, after:

from this 8x10" start,

to this 4x5" quadrant, 

to this coverup, 

to a completed painting.

Holding Vrksasana, Finding My Edge
4x5"; acrylic, ink, collage, and pastels on paper
abstract
2017
sold

Mise en Place

You know the term mise en place, the French culinary phrase that means 'put in place' or 'everything in its place'?

Well, everything is in a place in my studio today, but it certainly isn't in its place.

Dave is installing a new door in an old house. Yup, our old house. Yup, my studio. Nothing about the undertaking is straightforward. There are tools, nails, wood shavings, installation instructions, work gloves, a whisk broom, and hardware scattered in the vicinity of the door.

I am short on time and painting quickly this afternoon. My mess includes matte medium, a tooling stylus, paintbrushes, tubes of paint, a wet rag, scraps of torn paper, and a paint palette, each of which gets put down with no thought as I reach for the next item to move forward the creative idea of the moment.

Where door installation ends and painting begins? Hard to tell, hard to tell.

Great fun, though.

Tomorrow I will mise a few finishing touches en place in this painting and call it complete.

Oh, and maybe set my studio to rights, too.

work in progress
4x5"

The Grand Fun of Asking Questions

I prepared colorful painting starts to take to camp with me a few weeks ago, along with an inquiry: What does it mean to paint negative space?

The inquiry has become the ongoing and limitless grand fun of asking questions:

• what happens if I do this?
• what next?
• how will I fix this mess?
• what is this piece still missing?
• how will I create contrast?
• it took me how long to go from coverup to completed (4x5"!) painting???

Today I finished the 6th in my series. If you look carefully in the lefthand towel hanging on the line, you'll find the partially obscured word camp.

---

Before, during, after:

from this 8x10" start,



to this 4x5" quadrant,



to this coverup,



to a completed painting.

When I Had the Washing Hung Out, I Took a Nap
4x5"; acrylic, pencils, ink, collage, and pastels on paper,
mounted on manila stock
abstract
2017

Scratching a Living Out of the Earth

The way I've been painting of late feels like scratching a living out of the earth.

I stake a claim and then give myself over to the pure concentrated wholehearted all-in satisfying rhythms of making shelter, working the ground to yield nourishment, pausing every now and then to take long deep drinks of cold water, and sleeping like the earth itself at night.

---

Before, during, after:

from this 8x10" start,



to this 4x5" quadrant,



to this coverup,



to a completed painting.

A Simplicity of Sun and Earth and Lake and Pine
4x5"; acrylic, ink, china marker, collage, and pastels on paper
abstract
2017
[gift]

Geologic Gestures

The natural world deposits layers, scrapes topsoil away, presses down sediment, tosses pebbles to the wind, grows giants up out of the earth, moves mountains, whispers clouds, offers insights into beyond, teaches me how to paint.

The Great Consoling Immensity of the World
4x5", acrylic, collage, ink, pencil, and pastels on paper
abstract
2017
[gift]

Apps

I never know if or when an app will come into play with any given painting.

By app I mean application of something I practiced in a class lesson, or learned in a book, or noticed in someone else's art.

Today I 'downloaded' all sorts of 'apps' and pressed them into service:

• the contrast app
• the variety app
• the complementary colors app
• the transparency/opacity app
• the lines app
• the veiling app
• the neutrals app
• the negative space app, and
• the sunny, blue-skied, late summer day app.

Before, during, after:

from this 8x10" start,



to this 4x5" quadrant,



to this coverup,



to a completed painting.

Those Hours Spent in the Resplendent Light of the Outer Orchard
4x5"; acrylic, ink, pencil, and soluble pastels on paper,
mounted on manila stock
abstract
2017
sold