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

Backstage

I love backstories, the stuff that goes on behind the scenes—or behind the seens—in art.

Also, I love thinking about where to start the telling of a story.

For this story—the story of a new painting in process—I'm going to begin with a blogpost of mine from June 2016. 

What was I doing poking around old blogposts from 2016, you ask? Well, maybe my story needs to start there.

I recently set out to weed my email to free up some space on my computer and declutter my mind. I have multiple tidy, well-organized email folders where I save messages of importance to me. Within those multiple tidy, well-organized folders sit thousands of messages, a huge number of which (a) are no longer of importance, or (b) I never reference because I no longer have any idea they're there. 

I was able to delete a bunch of folders without a backward glance.

Then I bumped into the folder that contains the nightly emails my dad sent to my sisters and me for nearly six years, starting when my mom had a stroke six months before she died and continuing until my dad's death just shy of a year ago. Those emails I am rereading (and mostly saving), usually in one-week clusters at any one reading. Because I started my art blog a few weeks after my mom's stroke, I am also rereading the blogposts whose dates correspond with whatever cluster of emails I'm revisiting.

Yesterday, I bumped into a post in response to which my muses woke up and took note. I loved the quiet application of neutrals I'd used to start a painting, followed by an overlay of blind contour drawing. Two posts later, I bumped into the very inviting what-if-I-did-this mindset that is always a gift when I paint, and my muses perked up even more.

I thought, what if I started a new neurographic painting with a neutral atmospheric background like this rather than on plain white drawing paper?

To be continued …

Undercurrents

Saw a piece of art online that sparked me to want to try my hand at creating something in the same vein. That quickly became a non-starter.

Turned my paper over to its unused side and instead moved my pen very unhurriedly and intuitively until I had a relatively simple doodle in place. 

Started rounding corners.

Rounded more corners and emphasized a central design of some density set in a less dense visual field.

Rounded yet more corners, letting one mark lead me to the next, watching to see what would evolve. 

While vernal magnificence is expressing itself abundantly in the great outdoors, it is evidently not doing so quite fast enough for me—my doodling and coloring point to undercurrents of an inner impatience for lilacs to bloom.

Its Sweet Time of Readiness
4.5 x 6"; ink, acrylics, and oil pastel on drawing paper
abstract floral
2022

I Am the Boss of Me!

I have a vivid first grade memory. 

Teacher distributes a mimeographed worksheet with eight circles drawn on it; each circle has a color word printed below it. 

Directions: Use crayons to fill in each circle with the color named below it.

Easy peasy. I recognize the color words. I begin coloring.

Teacher circulates around the room to check on our progress.

Teacher stops me from using a back-and-forth motion with my crayon, informs me that the correct way to color each figure is with a circular motion, insists I do so.

What??! 

I am still annoyed.

But! I am now The Boss of Me, and I get to color any which way I choose.

A Cheerful One-Room Schoolhouse
5.5 x 8"; ink, acrylic, and oil pastel
on a book page
abstract
2022

———

Containers

In simplest terms, the basic guidelines for creating neurographic art are essentially these:

    • Use a marker to draw a long, looping, criss-crossing, scribble-like line on paper.

    • Round all corners where lines cross or turn, filling in the resulting gaps with ink (Have I mentioned how much I love rounding out the corners?!).

    • Add color.

What I notice the more I play with this neurographic form is that for me the doodles become structured, supportive containers that invite me into their protective confines to practice my art. Today's container beckoned me to play with size and shape, light and dark, compositional balance, freeform linework, busyness and resting places, and monochromatic neutrals.

The Musky Smell of Fallen Tree Trunks
and Mushrooms and Moldering Damp
4.5 x 5.25"; ink, watercolor, water-soluble and oil pastels
on drawing paper
abstract
2022

 

Tracking Patterns in Geometry

I had the opportunity in high school to take honors-level math classes. I think I was closer to the B- cutoff for eligibility than to the straight A's end of the spectrum, but I enjoyed the logical reasoning and quantitative calculation, liked my teachers, had terrific classmates, and loved doing homework over the phone with best friend Ann. 

Truth to tell, in addition to writing two-column proofs for such suppositions that if AX and BY bisect each other, then triangle AMB is congruent with triangle XMY, Ann and I kept a running multi-column chart on the inside covers of our respective math books in which we made daily entries of what color button-down Oxford shirt each boy in the class was wearing. Was there a pattern? Did they call each other the night before to coordinate?

Not sure what theorem we were aiming to prove!

With an affectionate nod to my glory days in math classes, I opted today to forego the characteristic freeform looping scribble of neuroart in favor of straight-edge lines that offered up geometric shapes. So many corners to round!

We Are Not in Control
4.5 x 6; ink, watercolors, acrylic, and oil pastel
on drawing paper
abstract
2022

Sweet Spot

Today marks the sweet spot of a three-week sweet spot that I celebrate every year. My son Scott's birthday falls on Earth Day. Exactly 21 days later … my birthday. 

In that little three-week span between late-ish April and nearly-mid-May, in my neck of the woods here in New England, Scott's birthday is marked by the first barely-there lime-green confetti-like evidence of tree leaves unfurling from buds. By my birthday lush foliage has made itself known and we find ourselves in a world made new, with canopies overhead and horizons brought close with maturing greenery that's filled the empty spaces of winter. 

Magic, I tell ya.

What better time—positioned as I am today at the midpoint of the transformation—to share the large canvas I've worked on sporadically over the past few months?

i thank you God for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
36 x 36"; acrylic, latex, oil pastel, and collage on canvas
abstract landscape
2022