Setting My Intention

How I'd like the new year to be -  Glorious. In Harmony. That's how I'm setting my intention. By being in my studio this week; painting, feeling connected to nature, to creativity, to feeling, to joy. 

Glorious

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In Harmony

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Letting myself paint this week without the feeling of urgency, the need to sell, the pressure of work. I just wanted to feel the joy of painting intuitively and not care about anything else. Below are a few close ups of the next one on the easel. Bold color everywhere! I love the compositions of these little snippets. They might be the inspiration for some smaller canvases in the future. I'll share the finished painting in the next post. 

So with joyful color, I wish you a very Happy New Year!! I wish for all of us to have love, creativity, and prosperity in 2022.

A new version of Spring

I did the above painting last year. It's called Spring. I had it hanging at Gallery B for a bit but I took it down because I don't want to display work that I'm unhappy with. It just never sat right with me. It's been hanging around my studio ever since. I kept looking at it, trying to figure out what I wanted to do. Then it dawned on me.

I decided to give it the same treatment I gave the one below... Assembly Required

The background of Assembly Required bothered me at first because it was too bright and bold. I didn't like the direction it was going so I switched gears, glazed the background with a mixture of white and acrylic medium to tone it down and then I added elements from nests that I have in the studio.

For Spring, I did the same. I mixed a glaze of white plus medium and applied it so it left a ghost of the image. On top, I added twigs, moss and a leaf I found in the yard. I actually put these bits of nature right on the canvas after it was dry, arranging them until I liked the design. Then I took a photo and printed it to use for a reference. Now the result is a "new" Spring! 

Spring

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This new version says "Spring" to me much more than it did before. These are the building blocks that birds use every spring to build their nests. Now, how do I categorize it?? Is it a landscape? Is it a deconstructed nest? Is it abstract? Does it need a category? Really it only needs a category to figure out where to place it on my website so I guess for now, click to see it right here in the landscape category. 

Till next time.                                            

                                                                                                                                   

It has to be painted...

I haven't recorded myself painting in quite a while so I wanted to share a little clip I did this morning with the start of the newest nest painting. I got the reference for this nest from a friend of mine and I thought it was just gorgeous. It has the fine straw in the center, Spanish moss all around, twigs with leaves still attached and pieces of newspaper tucked in for good measure. It was begging to be painted. I hope I can do it justice.

I'll share a picture when it's finished. Until next time.....

C

Children, a Nest Evolution and SOS

I want to tell you about a new series I'm working on but first a little history... Some of you may be familiar with my Silent Voices series. If you look up top at the tabs you can find the series there. It's not complete but I will be adding more work there soon. To see the full series to date on my website click here. Anyway, that series is about infant adoption from my experience - the first/birth mother's point of view. In a few of those paintings I used the nest symbol as part of the work. From there I started exploring the bird nest as the main subject for my work and I LOVE doing them. If you go to my website you'll see a lot of them there. What does this have to do with the new series?

Don't Forget

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Over the last couple of years I've watched the stories about children at the border being held in detention camps or being taken from their families and flown to states far away to be put in foster homes with strangers. For many of us in the adoption community those stories are horrifying because we're all too familiar with the trauma of losing a child. First mothers know what it's like to have a child taken away. Adoptees and foster youth are too familiar with the loss of families.

I've watched year after year the stories of children dying in school shootings and nothing seems to stop them from happening. We see a story, shake our heads and scroll on to the next story. Just another day in the US. I recently saw an article saying that this past March was the first March without a school shooting since 2002. What a horrible statistic. And speaking of school, I've also seen articles about people debating whether or not children should be provided free meals at school. Why would anyone want a child to go hungry??

In the big business of domestic infant adoption, babies are only valued as commodities. Some people don't think children should get meals from the school system. School shootings don't seem to stop unless there's a pandemic keeping kids home from school. Why don't we value our children more? Why aren't we keeping them safer? Why have we forgotten the little ones at the border or the ones who were sent away? Why do so many live in poverty here?

I'm calling this series Don't Forget. It's my way of bringing attention to children. I'm including something related to babies and children with my nests as a reminder of children's needs. Too often they're the forgotten ones because the wants of adults end up overriding the needs of children. Money, egos, and adult desires get in the way of doing what's right for them.

For any paintings I sell from this series I'll donate 10% to Saving Our Sisters, an organization near and dear to my heart. Their focus is family preservation and saving vulnerable pregnant women from the predatory infant adoption industry. SOS and their "sisters on the ground" bring emotional and financial help to expectant moms so they can keep and raise their babies.

The piece above, Don't Forget, is the first painting in the series. Below are the next 2. I'll share more as I do them. I'd love to hear your thoughts about these and maybe even some suggestions for different items to include in future paintings.

Remembering

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Invisible

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The nature inspired nests and the adoption inspired nests are coming together in this new group. Working in a series can be a powerful way to evolve but that's a topic for another post.

Be safe, healthy and creative!

Love

C

A new landscape painting step by step

Hi folks. I hope February is treating you well. I thought I'd share the step by step process from painting my newest landscape. This one is a diptych done on 2- 20x20 canvases so the final size is 40x20. I love texture so before I started painting I prepped the canvas with crumpled tissue paper (you can see a close up below). I just use the white stuff that you use in gift bags, wad it up into a ball, open it up and apply it to the canvas with either a matt acrylic medium or matt Mod Podge. If you try this, be sure to use the matt version, not the gloss. You get better adhesion with the acrylic paint this way. Paint a layer of the adhesive on the canvas. Apply the tissue and then do another layer of adhesive on top. After the tissue is dry I painted both canvases with red acrylic.

As you can see I stacked the canvases on my easel. Of course this is the best way to get continuity when doing multiple panels. I sketched the design first with a white pastel pencil and then started blocking in color.

Once I knew where the basic elements were I started loosely putting in the greens. I use a large brush and keep the strokes mostly open and separate. I don't want to cover up too much of the red because there's still lots of layering to do and I like to leave a bit of red peeking through over the whole painting for interest and consistency.

Here, I'm working my way down the canvases with yellows and greens, still keeping things loose.

I added some purple on the ground area under the trees. Once all of the canvas is covered I go back and begin putting in more color, building layers. The colors I used were permanent sap green, permanent green light, cad yellow deep, arylamide yellow light, orange, purple, cobalt blue and white.

This gives you a better idea of what the texture is like. You can also tell that I don't cover all the red.

I added some purples to the tree trunks and then started adding leaves to the foreground to cover bits of the trunks.

Last layers were adding light to the foreground and brightening up the sky. So, there ya have it. I called this one Dappled. Have you tried adding texture to your canvases? If you do, I'd love to know what you use and how you do it so please share in the comments!

Ice Painting

Ice Storm

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Just thought I'd share the work I'm doing at the moment. I've been pretty busy with Painting Party stuff along with some other projects but I had to try something different. I've been looking for some new inspiration and my daughter sent me some photos that she took up in GA this winter. They had an ice storm up there and she got some fabulous pictures of trees and leaves caught in the ice. I wanted to see how this kind of scene would work with my usual technique of texturing the canvas and using a hot red underpainting. The painting above is the first one and the one below is in progress. They're a lot of fun but definitely a challenge, especially when trying to decide how much of the texture to enhance and how much of the red color to let peek through. Getting a smooth, even line on that texture isn't easy either!

Back to it. Hope you've been having a creative week. :)