nurture your soul with art inspired by nature
Been working on lots of pieces for my upcoming “In the Woods” show at the Adamson Gallery (next month!) Today I spent some time on this 20″ x 60″ piece, coloring details with pencils on the photos that nearly fill it. Let me just say that 1200 square inches is a lot…
Leave a CommentI love wandering around in little wild spots, whether it’s on the coast, in the mountains or in the Valley where I’ve spent so much of my life – lately I got to spend time wandering in the desert and I loved that, too. (Wow, yeah, that was an unintended biblical reference, but I’ll leave it, read into it what you will…)
But one of my favorite places to wander is in wooded areas, and especially among the oaks here in the Valley and the nearby foothills. Maybe it’s because when the valley heat is like it is now, the woods offer cool respite, shelter and a sense of mystery. The trees can hide whatever development might exist just beyond and muffle traffic that would echo across an open field. And I’m blessed to live in an area where we have little pockets and swaths of wooded areas, often along creeks or rivers, right amongst our city and suburbs, always there for a quick retreat into nature.
So when I sat down to consider a theme for a two woman show with my dear friend Michelle MacKenzie, the woods were practically the first thing that popped into my head. From there, you might say I just led her “Into the Woods…” that became our theme, and even the title of our upcoming show this fall.
I’ve always photographed alot on my wandering in the woods, so I have lots of imagery and of course, I’ve been shooting even more over the past few months preparing for this work. And now I’ve finally starting putting work into a physical form, diving into the deep end, so to speak, with a large 3×5′ reclaimed canvas. (See the previous post for more on that.)
These things always happen in several stages, first with sorting through photographs, then starting to envision how things might come together, picking through papers and dried leaves and ephemera. Then adhering the first layer to the substrate, adding texture, starting to add color with pencils and wax pastels, all interspersed with general staring and mulling of the overall composition – this time said mulling included going through a two day cleaning fit – the creative process can be a funny thing.
At some point when I feel I’ve worked enough details with fine pointed things like pencils, I dive into the painting process, working again in layers – generally transparent – adding more collage layers as planned or inspired. At this point pencils and wax pastels can come into play as well, always after waiting for the last layer to dry.
At some magical moment it all starts to look right – I try not to envision too much before hand, because that’s when I really screw things up, but more I try to keep my ideas very general. With this piece I was keeping the color palette in my head (which I’ll try to keep for the whole show) and then follow the cues of light from the base photographs.
I’m calling this “New Day” but more about that another time…
Leave a CommentI’ve been looking at all the artworks I have in my possession with a critical eye lately. Sometimes pieces come back from galleries or exhibitions and they haven’t sold, they’ll get rotated from one gallery to the next, come back to the studio, go back out; it’s all part of how the business works. Sometimes a piece that doesn’t sell in one place sells right away in the next. Sometimes it takes a couple years for the right person to find it, and I’m ok with that.
But sometimes a piece has been around for while and I start to look at it and realize that maybe it wasn’t as wonderful as I first thought it was. (Or maybe I wasn’t sure but I put it out there anyway, see my last blog post on that…) And then I have a new question, what to do with it now? When I start looking at a piece of work that I really don’t feel good about putting out in public, then I have a couple of options, at least with the way I’m currently working.
First, maybe I can fix what’s bugging me about the piece. Maybe it just needs some minor tweaking to make it stronger. Or maybe it needs some major tweaking. I’m in the process of re-working a piece just like that right now. “Summer Song” was one of my first large mixed media artworks and I really liked it for a long time. But it didn’t quite seem to connect with anyone else. And then I started looking at it with a more critical eye and realized it didn’t seem quite right to me, either. After some more mulling, I decided I still really liked it, but I just hadn’t finished it yet. So I pulled it down off the wall and started working on it again. It’s almost finished, but I think it needs just a little more tweaking. And I’m really feeling much better about it now, so I’m happy and I’ll put it out somewhere again soon, I’m sure.
But sometimes there’s nothing that I like about a piece. Years have passed and it just bugs me more and more and I’m sure as heck not putting it out in a gallery. And then it starts getting in the way. We’re blessed to have a good sized house and I’ve got a great studio space, but it’s not like I have an unlimited warehouse to store stuff. And certainly not things I’m not happy with. And I start to eyeball the potential of a new substrate that I wouldn’t have to pay for, because it’s sitting right there in front of me and just needs a coat of gesso to start over again. And that’s the place I’m finding myself in when I’m looking a some older works around here right now.
Small things are somehow easier. Most of the time, my emotional investment is less with a smaller work and because they have lower price points, they’re more likely to find that right person. So if a smaller work hasn’t sold after a couple or three years, it’s most likely because it really wasn’t up to par. I recently gessoed over a couple of smaller pieces and they’ve become new vineyard works in the wine country. I have no doubt that they’ll find new homes and we’ll all live happily ever after.
But I have a couple larger pieces around that I’m feeling the same thing about and it’s not so easy. A large work generally entails much more work and effort and emotional investment. The higher price point means they sell much slower but I’m used to that, so I’m more patient. And then I start looking at it… I have a couple right now that there were things about them that I was never completely in love with but I put them out there anyway. Then the things that bugged me start bugging me more and today I gessoed over a large 3×5 foot piece.
It felt weird but okay, I think as I start to transform it into a whole new better work, it will feel better and hopefully cathartic. And it’s not on the wall buggin me anymore.
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I know this may come as a shock to some, but this isn’t always an easy job. Sure it’s glamorous sleeping in late and walking down the hallway for my commute to work, or taking a road trip to the desert (guess I should blog about that, too) but most of the time I’m a working fool like anyone else.
I’m driven by this insane idea that I was created to create and I know from experience that I can be pretty miserable if I don’t, but I have to temper all that with making money through sales and making sales means someone has to actually like what I make and here’s the worst part – I don’t even always like what I’ve made. Okay, that may be a bit hyperbolic; honestly I only love a small percent of what I create, but I know people only buy art they love, and I want all of my art to sell, except maybe the pieces I love the most… And the insanity creeps in again…
So here I am, working away in the studio, producing a baker’s dozen of artworks and I’m not loving them. I want to love them, I do, and I can find things I like about most of them, but really sometimes I’m just not feeling it.
Most of the time it’s just because I thought I knew how things were going to turn out, but then they don’t turn out that way. Another revelation: I can be as surprised as anyone about how a particular piece ends up. I guess there must be artists out there who know exactly what a piece will look like when they’re done, but I’m not one of them. And most of the time when I think I know, something else happens. I know, crazy woman acts like she doens’t know what she’s doing…
Yeah, that’s what I said, insanity. Before this blog post, maybe you thought I was at least sort of like the rest of the world but now I’ve gone and made it public. Please don’t report me to the authorities, because then they may lock me up and not let me play in the studio anymore and have crazy conversations with myself while I create.
At least my dogs don’t think I’m crazy.
Once upon a time I had three art related blogs – yes, three is a lot for one little artist to keep up with and I have fallen down on the job. But I’m getting back up. This will now be the place I will post, and the only place. Except Facebook. And Instagram. Okay, the only blog. If you want to delve more into my history, you’ll have to follow these links: Wanderings, Tree Stories, or Visions. I’ll leave those up, at least for now, because there’s apparently no easy way to import them here & it would be a shame to just delete them. Onward and upward…
So this is what things are looking like in the studio today – just finishing up three new pieces on life, death and heaven. I’ve been having some interesting discussions with different people about the use of dead bird imagery and have gotten various reactions.
Just for the record, I never kill birds. It shocked me to learn that some people might even ask. I love birds and I happen to think that they are quite lovely, even often in death. But I would never hurt one. It’s actually amazing to me how often I find dead birds, really – or now some of the people close to me will alert me when they find them. My mom even put one in her freezer for me, then brought it when it was more convenient. That’s how I know she loves me… or that’s why I am the way I am…
But back to the imagery – death is very much a fact of life and also a big part of my spiritual beliefs, which I can’t seem to keep out of my art, and I see no reason to keep them out of my art. But I’ll try not to hit you over the head with my faith, either. (Like that would help anyone, anyway.) The dead birds symbolize death, and also reference a Bible verse in Matthew that talks about how God knows when even a sparrow falls, so how much more he watches over each of us and cares for us. (That’s also why you’ll see so many little birds in my work in general.)
The nests are a home, and I look at Heaven as my final home. Death is the door to Heaven and that is the connection. Flowers and plants connote growth and the little sprout in this piece is new life. The other two pieces have similar imagery and I imagine I’ll get into them here at some later date. I created all three to submit to the annual art & faith juried exhibition at the White Stone Gallery in Philadelphia, which I entered last year but didn’t get into. Maybe this year…
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