Finding Peace

I need some color, some lightness, some vibrancy. The last couple of weeks have been very hard. In fact this year has been hard. A lot has been going on in my life since 2018 began, starting with my father's death in February. Just a week after the funeral I had to begin the process of refinancing my house so I was rewarded with 2 months of banking hell. Then not long after the closing my mom ended up in the hospital because of an accident- thankfully she's ok now. And of course we have the national news..... 

In a previous post I talked about being included in the Professional Artist magazine article called Get Inspired by Darkness. In it I talked about my Silent Voices series and painting through the grief of being a mother of adoption loss. Well, because of that loss and knowing what it's like to have a child taken from me I'm having a particularly hard time with what's happening to migrant children right now. I don't know what those families have been through to get here but I do know what they're experiencing after they arrived and their children were taken away. I know the terror and grief. Hearing the audio, the cries of little ones was too much. I found myself sobbing for the babies who need to be back with their mothers. I'm doing what I can to help the cause but I also need to do something to keep myself from sliding down into despair. I've toyed with some ideas for a concept piece about the situation but it's not coming together yet.

So, now what I'm doing is painting light, color, and things that remind me of life such as the bird nests. I did the first Color Dance painting a little while ago and decided I needed to do more so recently I did #'s 2 and 3. And, I have to admit, I love fall color because it reminds me that this Florida summer heat won't last forever.  :)

Color Dance

16x16

Color Dance 2

16x8

Color Dance 3

16x8

Below is the newest nest painting. This one along with 3 others just made their way to my gallery rep in Tallahassee- Signature Art Gallery. I think this one is my favorite so far. I want to do more with that format when I get some new canvases.

In the Shadows

6x12

And here, a new one in progress. This is what I need right now- life affirming images and a process that keeps me going. Getting immersed in playing with gold leaf, squishing paint around, throwing splatters of golden yellow, these things will keep my spirits up and keep me going and sane in what seems like an insane world. 

One other thing helps this summer... playing with grandbabies and going to the beach. Ah... salt air!

If you paint, keep doing that. If you sing or play an instrument, please make more music. We need inspiration. If you have grandbabies, make a play date because we also need more smiles right now.

Til next time... check out the rest of the nest and landscape paintings at my website.

Peace

Be brave, be bold, go paint!

Soooooo........ I'm excited about the June/July issue of Professional Artist magazine. Thea Fiore-Bloom is this wonderful writer who thought I should be included in her article about inspiration. I finally got a copy and I couldn't be happier! If you can, pick up a copy and read the article titled Draw Inspiration from Your Dark Side. In it she talks about finding inspiration in the hard times. Sometimes going through trauma can bring you to a new place in your art if you're willing to be vulnerable. For me, it's the Silent Voices series.You can see them by clicking on the tab above. That series then led to the bird nest series. You just never know where an idea will take you.

You can see some of the nests by clicking the Nest tab above or to see even more click here to go to my website. If you can't get to a bookstore you can order a copy here.

Questions. Answers?

A few days ago, Barney Davey from Art Marketing News, shared an article about NADA Miami Beach 2016. It was the author's pick of the best paintings from the fair. I scrolled through, saw a few things that intrigued me but for the most part they left me scratching my head- not only some of the work but the price tags on the work. My initial gut reaction and the words that went through my head were....

It's all about who you know....
It's who has the marketing and promotional bucks to spend....
It's not about good work anymore....
It's about who can get away with pulling the wool over people's eyes....
Of course art is subjective but what the hell happened to design and composition- the building blocks of good art? Abstract or non-representational art still requires the elements of design.

Then I thought..... is it just sour grapes on my part? Maybe I'm just jealous because I can't command $20,000 or more for a piece of my own work. Of course I wish I could get those prices and who knows, maybe someday I will. Maybe there was some sadness mixed in, thinking that so many people have been convinced that this is good art worthy of the hefty price tags.

Are the buyers buying because they can't live without it or have they been told it's a good investment? What do they see in the work that I don't?

Those were my first thoughts. Then my head took over. Yes, art is subjective and art does not have to be about making pretty pictures. Of course it can be but it doesn't have to be. It can be a political statement, a cry against an injustice, a statement about art and society or a painting that's just about color and texture that excites the artist while making it. Of course I know this because I also create work that's not about being a pretty picture such as my symbolic series Silent Voices. I also create work that's just about texture and color in my abstract series.

For a few of those works at the fair, my first inclination is to dismiss it as junk. And maybe some of it is. But maybe there's a backstory to it. Maybe there's a meaning behind it that I haven't learned. What was the artist's intention? As an artist I owe it to another artist to at least find out before relegating it to the trash heap in my mind. 

We end up with more questions than answers. Sometimes I think it's good to look backwards and revisit art history. Look at the evolution of an artist like Mondrian.

Houses on the Gein

1900

The Gray Tree

1912

Composition II in Red, Blue and Yellow

1930

His early works were beautifully rendered landscapes and scenes- soft, subtle and muted in tone. He then transitions to an abstracted version of nature in The Gray Tree. Then much later his work is bold, linear and colorful. It's taking nature's forms and colors to it's most basic and primary elements.

And why not?

My end thoughts.....

It's good to revisit art history

It's good to question

It's good to keep an open mind

It's good to let go of judgement

It's good to find out why.....

Take a look at the article about NADA Miami. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. And now, back to painting.

Shiny gold and a bird's nest

Birds have always fascinated me. If I believed in reincarnation I think I'd like to come back as a bird. The thought of being able to fly, soaring on the currents, looking down at earth, seems so amazing to me! I first started using the bird's nest image in my Silent Voices series about infant adoption. As a thematic element it works to represent the position of the first mother, the place where life begins. And because of my love of birds it just made sense for me to use the imagery of their handiwork. 

Since then I've been lucky enough to have wrens visit my home and build theirs inside my mailbox. So far I've collected 3 nests and keep them in my studio for inspiration and painting reference.

Here they are sitting on my big drawing table. 

When I paint my landscapes I frequently use gold leaf and texture- I love shiny, and I love the way a painting with gold changes when the light in a room changes. Lately I've been focused on some new gold sky paintings and decided I wanted to change things up a bit. A bird's nest is part of the landscape so why not? Why not combine the nest idea with the gold sky idea and do something a little bit different. So here's the first one......

And the second one (below) is in progress, still lots to do. I've noticed that when I painted the nests in the Silent Voices series they were more stylized. It just seemed better suited to the paintings that way. Now with these new ones I'm getting more realistic with them. They're not quite so neat- more messy and real. It just seems to work better with the texture and the looseness of the gold application.

I'm enjoying this little crossover in painting subjects between 2 different groups of work. Who knows where else it'll lead. 

Let me know what you think. I'd love to hear your thoughts- it would be a nice break from the chatter in my head. :)

The "catching up" post- painting, portraits, coloring books and censorship

Wow, almost a year to the day since the last post! That is way too long!
So what have I been up to- let's see.....

Painting, painting and more painting.
Did multiple portrait commissions.
Designed and published the Masterpeace Mandala coloring books- yes, my husband and I put our skills together and jumped on that bandwagon.
Had a solo exhibition at the 567 Center for Renewal in Macon GA.
Changed a few things around on the Etsy shop
Spent a week at the beach.
Spent a week in Ohio with daughter and grandkids.
Spent the holidays in Texas with my other daughter and grandson.
Spent 3 more weeks in Texas helping my daughter when she had baby #2.
In between those trips there was more painting and working on my website.
Teaching art classes on Mondays.

I think that's it. I don't think I left out anything major. And I think the traveling will slow down this year. Of course it would be a huge help if my daughters would just move to FL!

Ok, back to the work.....

The landscapes

Golden Edge

12x12

Gold Sky Woodland

12x6

Spring Pink

12x12

These are some of the newest paintings from my studio. I'm having fun with the gold leaf again- can you tell? :) Sales at the Signature Gallery in Tallahassee and the Macon Arts Alliance in GA have been picking up- yay! My next step will be to add another gallery to the list. I'm not sure which area I want to approach so if you have any ideas about where my work would fit in, feel free to share.

The solo exhibition

BFA

48x36

This is one of the pieces from the Silent Voices series. I have 16 paintings in this series so far, all the same size. This was the group of work for my solo exhibit in GA. It caused quite a commotion and 3 of the paintings were censored from the show!! Every weekend for the duration of the show the paintings had to come down and were rehung on Mondays- not kidding! If you want to see the pieces that were censored and why, check out the post I did on my other blog. To see the rest of the pieces in the show, go to the Symbolic page on my site. 

The portraits

I've done several portrait commissions but this one I did for myself. My granddaughter was hanging out at the house with us one night. She had wrapped a blanket around herself and was just being goofy and making faces. I grabbed the camera and took a lot of shots and decided to compile some of them into the 6 Faces of Maxine. It's colored pencil on red Canson MiTeintes and let me tell you.... skin tones on red paper is a challenge!

The coloring books

Coloring books?! Yep, we made coloring books. There are actually 3 coloring books and 3 coloring journals. We thought it would be fun to make mandala designs and patterns inspired by line drawings of the masters. So far we have Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Mucha. In the journals we have pages that are lined and some unlined and some that have coloring designs or edges. Since this kind of work is not something I normally do it was quite the learning curve for me. Getting to know the programs required to do the designs took some time but once I got it down it was a lot of fun.

I think this catches us up and hopefully I can get back to posting here on a regular basis now that life is getting a little more regular again. So in the meantime, check out the links, leave comments here or there.... let me know what you think. And Happy 4th of July! Hope it's a great weekend.

I'm Back!

Yep, I know..... it's been way too long since posting here. This last year has found me a little scattered and trying to do too many different things - not only in the studio but online also. Too many social media sites can suck you in so I'm narrowing my focus to posting here, my Facebook page and my Etsy shop. Ok, so I can't leave Pinterest out. I'll be there too. The stack of hats I've been wearing has gotten pretty tall so it's time to clear out some clutter. Maybe if I wear fewer of them I can work more on quality rather than quantity. I think the problem with a lot of us creative types is we like to do a variety of things and that can lead to overwhelming ourselves with choices and projects. So now I'm turning my focus to the things I love most. After all, why would I want to focus more on something I don't really want to do? Makes sense right?

In painting there are 2 topics I'm most passionate about - nature and adoption. My abstracts and landscapes are both about nature. The Silent Voices series is about adoption from an original mother's viewpoint.
You can tell from the tabs above that I like to work in series. I just added 7 new pieces to the abstract section and the landscapes are ongoing. In fact I'm getting ready for a new show in February '14 in Macon GA at The 567 Center for Renewal art gallery. I love working back and forth between these two series. After a long stretch of painting landscapes it's fun to loosen up with some textures and layers in the mixed media work.

Of course the Silent Voices series is near and dear to my heart. It's a very personal series about my own story so between shows I'll be adding to that group of work also. I'm constantly thinking about it, sketching and writing down lists of words that could be included on another canvas or the narrative poetry that goes with it.

This is where I am on this beautiful December day in Florida. I'm enjoying the warm weather and looking forward to a new creative year. I hope you've been well and will come back to visit, maybe leave a comment or two.

Silent Voices in a book

I've put together 11 paintings and accompanying poetry from the Silent Voices series to create a book. I've been working on this series for the last couple of years and decided it was time to start working on exhibition proposals. Since it can take a long time to get on a schedule I'll continue working on the series while submissions are going out. My idea was to produce a book that I could use as part of the proposal package. I tried a few print on demand sites and had some issues with template formatting or user friendliness. I spend a ton of time on the computer but that certainly doesn't qualify me for the Geek Squad. So anyway, I looked into Amazon - duh.... I love them and my Kindle. Now the series is in book form. Check it out - it's available here in paperback and here for Kindle. Of course it's in color so it would look best on a Kindle Fire and if you're a Prime member you can borrow it for free.

I'm almost done with painting #12 so I'm heading to the studio. Hope you're doing something creative today. Peace.