Shadow Spheres

A newly completed piece from my "Spheres" series, which has been ongoing since 2008. The full series can be viewed on my website, HERE.

"Shadow Spheres," acrylic on fabric on canvas, 30" square, 2015.

Summer wrapup

It feels like summer is officially over (despite the summertime temperatures), as my fall semester classes at Framingham State University start today. But I have a productive summer in the studio to look back on with fond memories. Here's the last painting I completed, a few weeks ago, which takes the basic composition I have been exploring in my "Filigree" series into the realm of color.

As yet untitled, acrylic on canvas, 20" square

In career news, the summer season ambled along as it usually does, quiet and uneventful, then things wrapped up with a burst of opportunity toward the end of August: a painting sale and offers of two upcoming shows. Details to come, on this site!

Familiar technique, new destination

New and now in the studio: I've had ideas recently about turning my "Spheres" series ...

 
... into a large wall-mounted installation. I was thinking of mounting the fabric I print onto round canvases and then positioning them across a wall, then I got the idea to press the fabric onto clear contact paper trimmed into circles and mount that on a wall. That's enough of a plan to get me going, so here's the first step: creating the fabric in the first place.

We'll see how the next step goes!

Touch of turquoise

I am adding a bit of color to the ongoing Filigree Series, with some turquoise tones. The size is 40" H x 30" W:

Filigree series continues

I am continuing on with what I am now calling the "Filigree" series. Here are some studio images as the layers build! Working on both canvas and paper.

Shaping up

I am very happy with this new series that is starting to take shape. Each canvas is 40" H x 30" W. Stay tuned!

Out of hibernation

This week I'm getting back to the studio, after a hiatus of two months. It's just been determined that this is officially Boston's snowiest winter on record, and my recent lifestyle has been a reflection of the season! Between bi-weekly bouts of helping my husband to shovel out our driveway, I've spent a lot of time curled up under the covers, reading and reading! (For the record, I've polished off "Our Mutual Friend" and "David Copperfield" by Charles Dickens, and "Jude the Obscure" by Thomas Hardy.)

But just because I haven't touched brush to canvas for a while, that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about painting! I have page after page of sketches and ideas for how to proceed at the easel.

A few days ago, I got to my annual session of super-cleaning and organizing my studio (a tradition that usually happens every January), and now I'm ready to get going. Last night I stretched a canvas and made some tracings, and tonight I applied the first layer to the first canvas in a series. Here's the first stage:

This series will be closeups of paintings from a 2013 grouping called "Markings" (see "Scrawl 2," the initial inspiration, below). I am figuring that by focusing tightly on the basic calligraphy of those earlier pieces, the emphasis will be on the simple beauty of the lines and the intriguing (hopefully) way in which they cut through the square canvas. I will string a group of them together so that the squares build into a long row. By using only flat black on white, I'm hoping the marks will seem to float like dramatic, abstract almost-words across the gallery wall. We'll see how this direction develops. Meanwhile, it feels good to get back to painting!

"Scrawl 2," acrylic on canvas, 30" square, 2013

Out of left field

I've just completed a pair of new works on canvas that, due to colorations, resemble landscapes. I love the idea of a vertical "slice" through the type of scene that is traditionally horizontal in format.

What prompted this change of pace, you ask? Nothing carefully considered, frankly - just the fact that my art budget for 2014 has run out, but my desire to create has not! So I am using up whatever stretcher bars, canvas lengths, and paint I have left over until the new year kicks in! (Both are acrylic on canvas, 20" high by 12" wide.)

New spheres

Recently I've begun a new grouping of "spheres" paintings, a theme and technique that has interested me for many years. I now have a number of color variations, and it's interesting to see how the uniformity of pattern brings the different mood of each color to the fore. For example, the yellow is so bright and cheerful; the white on brown is ghostly and mysterious; the red is striking and dangerous. I'm enjoying making these, so ... more to come ... (All are acrylic and fabric on canvas, 30 inches square.)

"Gingko Spheres"

"Brown Spheres"

"Blood Spheres"

"Prussian Spheres"

Psyching out my new drawings

As I've completed 15 of my "bubble drawings," I am preparing to get them out into the world as a formal series. This includes writing an artist statement. The series came about very spontaneously; I didn't think about it at all, just made it. But since the artist statement is necessarily a verbal exercise, the experience of composing it caused me to realize many things about both the series itself and my state of mind as its creator. It reads:

My father died in April of this year, and I was so devastated by his passing that I thought I'd never make art again. Even though I had been used to an almost-daily practice of painting or drawing for the past 15 years, I found myself stopping completely and sinking into despair.

Then, after months of feeling so sad, I woke up one morning and realized I suddenly felt better. I felt like myself again,as if the pain had eased and I was ready to embrace life again. These images of bubbles floating through apparently limitless space were the first ideas that came to my mind, and I began putting pencil to paper, one drawing after another.

There was something about the buoyancy of the subject matter and its fleeting nature that seemed to reflect the realizations I had after my father's death. The bubbles have an impermanence to them, like life itself, but there is something in their ephemeral beauty that reminds us to appreciate and enjoy what we have, however limited its duration.

The works are made with white drawing pencil on black charcoal paper. They are created spontaneously, in whatever arrangement I am feeling as I created them. I have chosen to place them in a square format, as it seems to imply a lack of definite time, weight or location. There isn't any particular intention to their compositions, although I was aiming for a range of viewpoints, from up close to far away.

"Bubble 1," pencil on paper, 8 inches square, 2014

"Bubble 2," pencil on paper, 8 inches square, 2014

"Bubble 3," pencil on paper, 8 inches square, 2014

Pearlescent

I've started working on a series of small (eight inches square) tonal drawings in white and ebony pencil on toned charcoal paper. These pieces are a translation of shapes that have "popped into my head" recently: rounded white forms floating across a darker background. In some cases they are simply shapes; in others, they refer to "real" objects such as bubbles or pearls. I plan to work on the project simultaneously with my larger painted works, on an ongoing basis, as the urge hits ... more to come!

New grouping of 10

As I've noted in past posts, I've recently been creating a series of works on paper. My idea was to reach a total of 10 that I felt satisfied with, then pause and reflect on them for a bit before deciding how to proceed.

After several months of work, and culminating in a productive session yesterday morning, I now feel as though I have arrived at a cohesive 10 pieces, so time now it's time to live with them for a bit. But I certainly plan to continue on after some time for consideration; for each of these 10, I have 10 more ideas for possible variations in tone, color, line direction, line width, etc., etc., etc.!!

Here are my favorite 4; the entire 10 are on view on my Facebook page, here.

"Patterns 1," acrylic on paper, 30" H x 22" W

"Patterns 4," acrylic on paper, 30" H x 22" W

"Patterns 7," acrylic on paper, 30" H x 22" W

"Patterns 10," acrylic on paper, 30" H x 22" W

Looking good on paper

I decided to return to working on paper again for a change, after having painted exclusively on stretched canvas for a while. So I purchased a new pack of 30" x 22" paper, loaded up my squeeze bottles with fluid acrylics, and I was ready to go!

In this process, I draw lines with the squeeze bottle onto the paper, lay another piece of paper on top, and roll over it with a brayer, essentially making a monotype. The beauty of this process is that I am left with two replica images; one can be left as is, and the other can be reworked for as long as desired. This eliminates the disheartening "oh no, why did I paint over that - now I've wrecked it!" experience. (We painters are always lamenting that we don't have a "Control-Z" feature when we work ... )

I'm having such FUN!

Icy

Here's a studio shot of a new triptych I've just finished, titled "Icy Tendrils." Each piece is acrylic on canvas, 20 inches square.

An autumn nip in the air

Took advantage of the long Columbus Day weekend to complete some new pieces, with a burnt orange theme. Feeling the fall season, I guess!

"Orange Cascade," acrylic on canvas, 40" H x 30" W

"Orange Spheres," acrylic and fabric on canvas, 40" square

Series in Progress

I'm continuing to work on my latest series of long thin paintings plus a grouping of (what will eventually be) nine 12-inch squares. Here's a view of the works in progress. You can see that my palette has been inspired by Petey, who is shown here inspecting the project.

Old materials, new results

As I wrote in an earlier blog post, "Painting within my means," 2013 is my year to pay off a lingering charge-card debt forever, which means I've been adhering to a strict policy of austerity. And for a former art-store shopaholic like me, that means no new art supplies until the bill is paid off (and from then on, careful consideration before a single penny is spent). I had planned on dealing with this year's restriction by working only in black and white, and re-using old stretcher bars and pieced-together canvas scraps.

That plan has worked fine for the first six months of the year, but I'm finding I'm almost finished with my latest black and white series. Being a person who only feels alive when I'm creating something new and, on top of that, a Gemini, I was beginning to wonder how to deal with the eventual day when I put the last stroke on my black and whites and then start to get antsy for the next project (not to mention a return to color).

An idea came to me this morning, when I thought of a collage I made in 2010 for the Icons + Altars show, which used to be an annual exhibit at the New Art Center in Newton, MA. That year, the deadline for creating a piece for the show was looming and I didn't have time to whip up anything new, so I recombined strips of several old paintings into this collage (below). I liked the result and the piece sold at the event, so I pocketed the proceeds and mentally filed away the technique for future reference.

"Wine Lines," acrylic on paper and fabric on board, 16" square, 2010

When I remembered that experience this morning, I thought of the piles of old paintings and drawings currently languishing in my studio, artworks which weren't bad enough to paint over or throw out, but weren't good enough to exist as finished works on their own. "Hey," I thought, "how about if I recombine them into entirely new pieces?"

So, working intuitively, I put together this collage on a 12" square cradled board I had lying around.

Not yet titled, acrylic on paper on board, 12" square, 2013

The interesting thing about this process is that these various paintings and drawings were made at completely different times (from approximately 2005 to 2012), and created without the idea of their ever coming together. So to combine them together now joins the various techniques and thought processes I've been working on over the years in new and interesting ways. Below are some possible combinations of old works I might try in upcoming collages. We'll see how this new direction unfolds!

Final stages of "Suspense"

One of my current projects, a group of five paintings on stretched canvas titled "Suspense" (each piece is 56" H x 12" W), is moving a step closer toward completion. Today I hung the five canvases together on my dining room wall (the only wall in the house that is bare and large enough to accommodate them - hence the light switch and electric socket!), so now I can see generally how they will look when on public view. I have a show coming up in early September that I want to include them in, so I need to complete the series before my busy summer teaching schedule kicks in. They still need a few coats of white to finish off the background areas and sides, and then we'll be ready to take this show on the road.

Here are some of the earlier steps in the process. This shot was taken in February, when I first got started:

This was the next phase, shot in March:

And this picture was taken in April:

We're getting there!

New diptych

Just finished this black and white diptych; each canvas is 30" square. They'll photograph much nicer on a clean white wall; I'm hoping the "writing" will appear to float in space. For now, I'm just happy to see how they look finished!

"Cursive 1" and "2"

Here we go again

Early stage of "Cursive 1"

Almost a year ago (April 10, 2012, to be exact), I decided to stop writing this art blog. I had kept up with it faithfully with almost-weekly posts for approximately 5 years, and I honestly felt that over that period of time, I had written everything I wanted to write. My posts had covered the many aspects of my life as a painter -- creating my work, exhibiting my work, selling my work, and the additional things I've done to be able to afford to keep on painting, which I love but not as much as I love painting, such as teaching, writing and public speaking. I had also recorded my observations on other artists whose work I admire, exhibits I'd seen, books I'd enjoyed, and other art-related experiences. And yes, there were even a few pictures of Petey, my cat, thrown in for good measure.

So after 5 years of this diligent blogging, I felt finished with it. I also couldn't help looking around and noticing that blogging as a form of communication had lost its trendiness. In 2007, everyone and his brother had a blog. But by 2012, it seemed that no one was blogging any more. Most of the blogs I had subscribed to and looked forward to reading on a regular basis were now added to only occasionally, like every few months, or neglected altogether. Even the bloggers who still posted more than once in a blue moon seemed to be focusing on the general topic of "I'm burned out on blogging, I'm considering ending this blog." If anything, blog popularity seems to have decreased over the last year since I decided to ditch my own blog.

But this morning, the thought popped into my head, "Hey, why not start blogging again?" And I realized that this fits right in with my "behind the times" personality. It seems that I'm always way behind in popular trends. I only saw the first Harry Potter movie a few months ago. With my penchant for thrift shopping, I'm always wearing the "latest fashions" years beyond their expiration date. I'm still using the same "candy bar" cell phone I got in 2009. Why not start writing in my blog now that everyone else seems to have jumped ship?

So here I go again. I had many loyal followers when I stopped last year, and hopefully they will return as readers of my humble blog again, plus I might pick up a few additional fans along the way. We'll see what happens!

Here's the latest thing in my life as an artist, and if you're my friend on Facebook, you've seen me post pictures of this series in various stages since its inception. I'm now working in black and white, both to keep the view plain and simple, and to reference penmanship, or black ink written on a white page. There are two parts to the series: "Cursive," a triptych of 30 inch squares (one of the three appears in the upper left) and "Suspense," a grouping of five 56" high by 12" wide canvases (see below). I'm excited about this new direction and looking forward to eventually viewing these works as a complete group.

As I'm in the midst of a busy semester of teaching, this particular way of working is perfect for me, as the series is created in multiple layers. So I don't have to be particularly "in the zone" to work on them; I can just pick up a brush, fill in a few sections, and stop when necessary. My goal is to be finished by August 1, so I can start to exhibit these works during the fall season. We'll see how it goes!

Beginnings of "Suspense," acrylic on canvas, 5 pieces, each 56" x 12"