Messing with monotyes

As a change of pace from the "Spheres" pair I just completed, I spent the evening making a bunch of monotypes. These are the initial layers of inspiration; I will be adding more paint on top and then reshaping and reconfiguring them. More fun to come!

Playing with pleather

Continued experimentation time in the studio! I've been extruding paint onto pleather, an especially receptive surface because it doesn't absorb the paint at all, so the lines stay crisp and clean. More to come ...

First steps

I'm starting to create some small works on canvas for an upcoming solo show ... details to come! These little guys are 12" square.

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!

Old meets new

It's interesting when older works intercept with newer ones, in ways that you as the artist didn't plan or anticipate! These two paintings seem to have been made for each other, even though the one with the circles was created in 2010 and the one with the lines was completed last month. I only noticed the connection because both works were selected for presentation by an art consultant.

"Aquamarine Spheres," acrylic on fabric on canvas, 20" square

"Filigree Square 9," acrylic on canvas, 20" square

Rejunvenated studio

Fourth of July holiday weekend! A good time for barbeques and fireworks, right? Well, I admit, I'd rather be organizing my studio! Here are some views of the finished product.

I moved several of my tables to the sides of the room, and now I have more space to move around in. And more space to invite new ideas into my work!

Then I moved my shelving units together along one wall, which also frees up physical and mental space.

And finally I created a comfortable corner to curl up in and contemplate.

Now I'm all ready to plunge into some new canvases!

Frustration

When I went to bed last night after time spent in my studio, I left two almost-finished, awesome-looking paintings on my work table. As I was kicking off my slippers and climbing between the sheets, I thought, I have just one more layer, and I'm done! Then I can relish my two new creations.

Well, it didn't quite turn out that way. When I added the final layer just now, UGH. Yuck. Too much. No problem, I thought, it's acrylic, so I'll just rinse off the top layer and I'll be back to the wonderful surfaces I created last night.

No, not happening. Because it had only been about 5 hours since the original layers were created, the water began taking off everything. No problem, I thought. I'll just "go with it," and remove some color and have a soft muted surface.

Not in the cards. The sponge I applied smeared everything, leaving a blurred mess that showed no sign of last night's promise. Gone, bye, unsalvageable. And I have no more canvas, so I'd have to drive out to the store to buy more, and I really don't have enough money in my budget right now for new art supplies.

Sigh. Such is the creative process! Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I should take comfort in the fact that I HAD two cool paintings that, with effort, time and money, I will be able to duplicate to some degree.

As I was cleaning up my studio in frustration after this experience, I remembered other times in the past when I have been frustrated like this. Well, truth to tell, there are too many to possibly remember them all. That's part of being an artist!

But I remembered two paintings in particular that I really like, and that were a direct result of feeling so angry, desperate, and ready to SCREAM because nothing was turning out that I started slapping stuff on the canvas ... and these spontaneous emotional responses turned out to be much more visually rich than any kind of intentional application.

One of them is the painting "Hook," shown below. I had removed and reworked these large fabric pieces countless times, and still I hated the composition. I finally got so mad that I just pulled them all off the canvas and threw them on the studio floor. Then I had one last impulse to act; not an idea for a solution, mind you, but an undirected burst of energy. I grabbed them off the floor and just stuck them onto the canvas, letting them land anywhere they happened to land. And then I stepped back in amazement. Somehow, this worked better than any of the careful arranging I had just spent hours doing! My initial instincts for color and shape had been fine; I had just been "trying too hard." This remains one of my favorite paintings.

"Hook," acrylic and oil stick on fabric on canvas, 64" H x 44" W, 1998

A similar thing happened with another favorite, "Scribble 1." I was trying to create a collage, again arranging carefully, with torn pieces of paper. Nothing was working. After I tried and tried and tried, I felt frustrated that all of this work was amounting to a big zero. I didn't feel like spending all this time in my studio with nothing to show for it. I happened to have a blank stretched canvas nearby, and I grabbed it and started flinging the collage pieces onto it haphazardly, just gluing them down beside one another, wherever they happened to land.

And you know what? This cool painting resulted!

"Scribble 1," acrylic on paper on canvas, 48" H x 28" W, 2009

I guess there's something to be said for simply letting the painting paint itself. (Jackson Pollock's most famous quote deals with just this issue, and who am I to argue with The Big Guy?) But it's hard to do that! We want a good-looking finished piece to show for all this time spent, dammit! We don't want to have to start all over again from scratch.

Sometimes, however, frustration can lead to spontaneity, and that might be just the "breath of fresh air" that the painting needs.

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

Autumn studio visit

What every artist dreams of: a quiet, secluded studio; a commitment-free day to work; and a series in progress that's going well, ready to jump into. I feel privileged to say, that is the situation I'm looking at today.

I especially enjoy my studio at this time of year, when the weather is temperate enough to open the door to the outside, and the serene back yard takes on the autumn colors of the season's peak. Here are some views out the door, and a look at the "bubble drawings" I'm currently working on.

Time to put on some soothing music and apply pencil to paper!
 

Let the sun shine in!

Look at those colors!

Series in progress

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 year's broom sweeps clean

It's an annual ritual for artists: with the new year, many of us decide it's time to reorganize and clean up the studio in anticipation of another year of discovery and creation. I've spent my weekend doing this, and am quite pleased with the result. Below are some views of my freshly neatened space. To find out how I got here in the first place, click here to read a post from 2010 detailing the labyrinthian path that led me to this destination!

View from the entrance

Storage for paintings, tools and paint bottles

Three tables, plus a fourth out of view to the left, give me plenty of room to work

View from the back door

Now it's time to MAKE SOME ART!!

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!

More of what made 2013 a great one!

As the sun rose on the first day of the New Year, I thought, "Why should 2014 be any different from 2013? Let's get painting!" So I headed directly to the studio and created the first layer of a new collage piece, shown here. Looking forward to a productive winter ahead!

ETA: Here is the resulting painting (not a great shot, but you get the idea):

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!

Morning has broken

A peaceful morning begins in my studio. The sun is gently rising over the open, green backyard. The birds are stirring, but not much else. I've just applied the first layers on a new canvas.



I'm starting a new series on larger-than-usual canvases; the one on my table is 56" high x 40" wide. I usually work on smaller surfaces, like 40" x 30", but I realize that size is too restrictive for me right now. With that realization, even the 56x40 seems small! In fact, I've applied for a grant that would cover the purchase of 72" x 60" canvases. We'll see what comes!

But right now, there is just ... right now. Me, this painting, and a new day.

Studio happenings in March

As I mentioned in this earlier blog post, my art career stuff has slowed down, and therefore I am using this as an opportunity to plunge in to a bunch of new series, ONLY with a care toward what I feel like doing rather than what I am obligated to do.

Interestingly enough, now that my mind is clear and not bogged down with any specific exhibition or application deadlines or expectations, definite creative steps are presenting themselves to me. I have four series going at once, all quite different, but they are all an important part of what I want to say right now.

First, I have just had a taste of the creme de la creme of spray paints, and now I can never go back! (It's like eating your first piece of Godiva chocolate, when you're used to M&Ms.) I usually use Krylon, but they have recently redesigned their caps so that it's hard to get any specific sized marks. Enter Montana Gold!! This brand of spray paint goes on much more smoothly and solidly, it's far more comfortable to work with (i.e. the nozzle depresses more easily, so I don't have to tape my fingers to avoid blisters), and it comes with a series of caps that produce lines in different widths. (Plus it's not as smelly.) Heavenly!

I bought one can in "Mustard" color, and started to try it out, as shown below, in a 20" square collage. But I like the possibilities of this painting so much that instead I am going to cover more fabric with spray paint lines and collage the cut pieces onto a 40" square canvas. Tomorrow, the garage becomes a spray paint booth again! :-)




Next, I've finished 6 paintings in the Tapestry series (example of one of them, below), and I wanted to created 6 more in a cool color version. I tried making the painting below but wasn't satisfied with the colors. So I worked out a better color scheme on paper, and am going to test that out on an actual canvas this weekend.








I've finished 5 in the Frosty series (example below), so now I have Lemon, Vanilla, Raspberry, Strawberry and Pistachio. Since they have a very reflective silver surface, they are going to need to head to the professional photographer's. They are all wrapped in their little plastic raincoats, ready for the trip.




I also have plans to expand the shoe drawings I've done so far into a more specific series of illustrations with a more conceptual twist. More on that to come.

I have to admit, it feels strange to be doing all this for no specific purpose. I think this is the first time since graduate school (1997!) that I have worked so diligently without any definite end purpose for the work, such as a planned show, sales opportunity, or invitation to apply for something. It's like taking steps in the dark, guided only by my creative muse. But creating with this kind of intensity is what I live for ... it's what I work at my day jobs for, it's what I have simplified my life for. I can't not do it, illogical as that may sound.

Grabbing the brush in 2011

I am excited about my studio plans for the New Year. There are five distinct directions I would like to explore, each represented by an older painting that I loved when I first made it, but didn't have a chance to develop into a series. Here are each of the directions, with an example of the painting that inspired it:

Series 1: The first direction I'd like to pursue is exemplified by the painting below, "Twist." I made this painting in 2002, by spray-painting lines on sheer white cloth, then cutting out shapes and gluing them onto a white canvas. Because both the cloth and the canvas are white, the color in the sprayed lines pops out and the lines seem to float.



The work below, "Shard," also from 2002, is one of the best paintings I've ever made. It was made with the same process, only this time the cloth and the canvas were brown, and the marks were made with white spray-paint. For some reason (which I hope I can remember, so I can duplicate the effect!), the lines cracked as they dried, making an interesting pattern. I also used smaller circles than in "Twist," so the individual lines didn't show as much.



I have new cans of spray paint, and yards of cheap curtain fabric from Savers, all ready to go.

Series 2: I loved the following painting, "Undersea 1," when I first made it in Fall 2009. I was very happy when it sold very quickly in February, but it meant I didn't really have a chance to develop a series like this. So I'd like to revisit the idea of a dark background with two layers of white lines and some washy layers applied on top, creating a sense of deep space, on a square format.



This time, rather than use blues, I'm going to use a series of yellows, oranges, and warm browns, as in "Desert 3," below, which I made last summer. I really love the color scheme here.



Series 3: I also loved the "Wintergreen" series of 3 paintings I made last year ("Wintergreen 2" is pictured below). This idea of horizontal bands of lines/stripes in contrasting colors and sharp edges really appeals to me, so I'll be making more like this but exploring different color schemes.



Series 4: I made the work below, "Waterways," for an invitational exhibit at the New Bedford Art Museum in 2006. Artists were asked to create a work inspired by an assigned artifact, which gave us a chance to try something different. I loved the result, but haven't had a chance to work it into a variety of directions: different colors, maybe four lines on a square format ... we'll see.



Series 5: And finally, I loved this painting I made for a benefit exhibit at the New Art Center in Newton last month, titled "Wine Lines." I like the format, the combination of materials, and the variation of dark on light and light on dark. I'd like to play more with this, using different colors.



So I'm looking forward to seeing where these ideas lead! If there's one thing I've learned about being an artist, it's that your work never turns out the way you expect it to ...