what did I do all day?

I often chastise myself at the end of the day for not seeming to get anything accomplished. I started it today. Mostly because it's getting dark, and I don't seem to have a painting finished, I hardly even have one started. So I made myself stop and think...

Well I did put together a rough idea of a commission for approval. I like it, haven't heard if the client does though. Decided on the path for a new painting, complicated, but beautiful. That wasn't intended to be the title, but it may fit? This is the commission idea by the way...

Simple, pretty, but not too girlie.

Oh, and I attached a handful of photo transfers to a canvas, a new "4 eyes" is on the way.

Some arts council stuff came next, we have a small art festival going on in Jackson on May 7th. Scott and I are helping put that together, if you are in the area it is really going to be worth coming to. So that took a little time. Then errands in town...what a boring list, have you quit reading yet? But then I was distracted and wound up in the garden center. I was going to buy one tomato plant. $50+ later I was driving home.

Whoops, I actually got back to work, framed three large oil paintings. Then next thing I know I'm in the garden drinking a glass of wine with my neighbor. My neighbor has spray paint, and she let me rob her spray paint collection. Now my tomato cages are deep electric blue. And I've planted about half of what I bought, a bunch of different peppers, two tomatoes, cucumbers.

Hmm, and I'm blogging now, and when I actually walk away from this computer I'll walk out to the studio, and poke around a little longer. I guess that is a pretty good day.

Smart Cookie

Smart Cookie is a piece I finished last week during a major painting flurry. If you've been watching my work for any time now you'll recognise the numbers in the background as pi. I've used them before, and I'll use them again! The peanut butter cookies have no shadow, because they aren't really supposed to sit on the dress so much as rotate around it, which explains the little vapor trail of vintage mother of pearl buttons.

Smart Cookie is up in Illinois somewhere having her picture taken this week. So I don't have it in front of me to get all my facts straight. But I think it is 30" square.

There is another "Smart Cookie." It's a smaller one on a pink baby dress in my new gallery in Austin, TX. If you're in that neck of the woods, check out Haven Gallery, they are on 6th street. And they have a great collection of work available.

New challenge

Not that I really need a new one, I have plenty on my plate at the moment. But the painfully slow pace that I post on this blog is boring even me. So I'm going to blog about something every day for a week, starting tomorrow. Unless I chicken out, and I don't think I will.

My Husband's Work

It just dawned on me that some of you may not know that my husband is an artist. Introducing R. Scott Coleman, and his latest series of watercolor landscapes. He is painting a landscape a day and I post them on his blog. You can see the blog at www.thedailylandscape.blogspot.com

This is his second painting a day series, his first was www.scottscupcakes.blogspot.com Scott painted 365 cupcakes, very few are still available, but they are worth a look!

Later Gators!

An Oldie

As I'm sitting in my booth at an art festival I am often asked two simple questions. "Where are you from?" and "How long have you been doing these?" They seem like simple questions, but I'm never sure how to answer. I'm from Victoria, and Duncan, and Cowichan Bay, B.C. Canada, or at least I was. Now I'm from a little town in the middle of Georgia, halfway between Atlanta and Macon. Occasionally someone has heard of Jackson, because of the prison, the lake, or the famous Fresh Air Barbecue.

But the next question, "How long have you been doing these?" is slightly more complicated. I began these dress paintings sometime in the mid 1990's. I found the photo above in a catalogue from a show in 1994, I think this was the first time I exhibited a dress painting. The model is my sister, Cindy. I had her wear the dress that I later used in the painting. This piece sold, but I have lost track of where it is, Toronto I think, but I'm really not sure.

This piece, which I still have, is from 1995. Its title is "Don't Look Back"

This time I was the model, an awkward moment. My long hair is half wadded up on one side of my head and looking very odd. I wore the dress that is on the canvas just long enough to snap a few photos. (Just a side note, another comment I often hear is "Oh, so THIS is what you do with all your old clothes!" No, these paintings are not an alternative to the Salvation Army donation box, thank you very much.)

I think this is the first time that I used text in a piece. Although barely visible, those little black lines are letraset, six point type, rubbed down one letter at a time. It was the some of the small print from a separation agreement I signed a few years earlier. Before tongues get wagging, no I wasn't married, but I was living "common law" with a fellow in this house. I wanted out bad enough that I signed away. He still has the house, and I'm not looking back.

I think it was a year or so later that I had my first (and so far, only) museum show, The Sooke Regional Museum is a tiny space just outside of Victoria. This was a few months before I moved "down South."

It was when I moved to Georgia that I tucked the dress paintings away, onto the back burner so to speak. I wanted to take a real run at being a full time artist. That is, one without a real job, or a net for that matter. Lino block prints became my media of choice, and I later moved on to acrylic still life paintings. Both of these skills are now incorporated into my dress paintings.

So how long have I been doing these? Does the time they were hidden from view as I was working on new skills count? They still include photography, but I've added reasonably realistic painting, tons of text in many different forms, stitching, lino block prints, charcoal, graphite, pretty much whatever it takes to get the piece to sing.

Perhaps the answer should be "all my life?"

Little black dress

A quick word on artistic influences and my latest piece "Little Black Dress." 15-18 years ago I visited the Vancouver Art Gallery, to see the works of an icon. Andy Warhol. I could write for days about the things I find interesting about his work, but the one piece that wedged itself deep in my brain was his silkscreen of the Wicked Witch from the Wizard of Oz. It was black, on a silvery black that sparkled. I bought the full color catalogue, and this piece was in it, sort of, a black block with teeth was about all you can see.

As a color junkie, I was enchanted by the sheer guts it took to do that piece, not to mention the many other black on black pieces I have seen since. Toss aside the color wheel, all you really have to work with is value. Then forget about all those lighter values, all you need is everything between black, and almost black. This is what I came up with...

Just for the record, the pattern in the background is a repeated linoleum block print, and is much darker in real life than it appears here. The dress is covered in paint, charcoal, and acrylic transfers. It is layered, and wiped, scratched, and scribbled on. Here is a close up...


Now, to finish packing the van. You'll find me (and this brand spanking new painting) at Coconut Grove this weekend Booth #352

Finished?

The question of when a painting is finished is more of an issue than you might think. Standing in front of the easel the little voices in my head get quite chatty. One is shouting "quit now, less is more" another says, "you didn't spend nearly enough time on that." "You could push that a little further" is met with "Whoa, quit before you screw it up!"

This was an interesting piece in that respect, because I was happy with the background and was working on the china, a little highlight, a little glazing in shadows, a few dabs of magenta in the roses. I turned around and looked at the piece and WOW! I loved it.

But was it finished?

I'll back up a bit and tell you what is going on in this piece. The background (as I call it, or the parts around the dress) is a collage of ads from the late 50's. On top of that is a block print of a repeat pattern of circles. The circles are woven together, and sometimes they shift and turn into flowers. I was happy with this red pattern, and how the greys in the background gently move your eye around the piece.

I didn't actually have a plan of what to put on the dress at this point. But on my "bulletin board full of crap," (others have beautiful names for this, memory boards, idea boards, dream stations...whatever) I saw a catalogue cover with a painting by Peter Plamondon. It is a huge painting, of a collection of white bowls, some upside down, one filled with white eggs, it's a beauty.

As a side note I was in a Gallery in Chatham on Cape Cod this summer and saw a few of his original works, simply stunning, google him!

But what truly struck me was how that composition would carry the repeated pattern of the circles from the background onto the dress. But I didn't want to copy the idea to the point that I made it look like the piece I just saw. So I pulled out what I have, china. Lots of china.

Without digging too deeply into my head, I have decided that my china collection is becoming a metaphor. It is in a cabinet and in boxes, I have collected it since I was about 12. It has moved with me at least 12 different times, and sometimes not made it out of the boxes before it was moved again. The china has become a reminder that the future I thought I would have as a child is nothing like what actually is. Not necessarily a bad thing by the way!

So I laid out the cups and saucers, and photographed them from above. I painted from the photo. So this is where I was when I had the "holy smokes, this is looking great" moment. I dug through my button collection and laid out the hula hoop shape of buttons (yet another circle) and stitched them through the canvas.

Then I let it hang on the wall for a few days. It wasn't finished.

The only thing the finished piece has, that the earlier version didn't, is the shadows under the saucers. I liked how they floated on the red background, but once I stitched on the black buttons it became more obvious that I needed a little more black in the composition to pull it all together.

One of those push pull moments of a painting, everything you do means you may have to do something else. To balance it out, to make it work.

So this is it, finished. She is titled "Enough." 40"x40"

A week of experiments

I have to admit, I've been feeling a little "stuck" lately. New ideas have been slow to come, and I've found myself, more often than not, spinning my wheels and reworking past ideas. I couldn't manage to keep myself in the studio for any length of time. I needed a serious kick start, but wasn't sure how to begin.

So I started a little self analysis, always a dangerous thing.

One of the issues I discovered was that supplies were becoming scarce, tubes were wrung dry, and there were only a couple empty canvases around, big expensive canvases. It is a difficult thing to take a leap of faith and start something fresh when resources are low, what if I mess up one of those big canvases? So this all meant I needed to do a little shopping.

In the art supply store I told myself I was going to get at least one new thing that I hadn't tried before, or at least not in several years. I ended up checking out with a tub of powdered graphite, three inexpensive canvases, and replacements for some of those empty paint tubes. And some really pretty papers, those still haven't been touched!

Then I simply convinced myself that this was a week off, a week of experiments. I wasn't going to try to complete anything, just start mucking around and see what happens. I grabbed some paper and tried different transfer processes, using oil of wintergreen and lacquer thinner. The oil of wintergreen works much better, and is less flammable, a good thing. But being an oily process I wasn't so sure that water based acrylic paints were going to work well on top. So I picked up a canvas and started a different transfer process using acrylic. While that was drying I was in the powdered graphite, and chalk, and pastels, and pencil, simply making marks, with no thought of a finished product.

Papers were collaged, silver leaf was added, I found some stencils, and just kept going. I ended up with a canvas that was simply full, and thanks to the graphite, quite dark. So I started cutting back in with paint, highlighting favorite parts, blocking out the bits that didn't work, by the end of the day I had this...



Now I know some of you aren't going to be thrilled with this direction, but bear with me. I have always loved abstract work, and have dabbled with it from time to time. And this just felt so fresh, and full of life that I decided to keep going. But my next piece was started with a little more deliberation.

A few photo transfers, a little graphite, some mucky brushwork...

Then more photos, silver leaf, and you can see a rough pencil drawing of one of my latest studio finds, an old birdcage. Add to this some color, reworking the cage with a little more precision, map bits, old stamps, more, more more...

I was a little slower, this one took a couple days to complete, a little less experimenting, letting things dry properly before moving on. Learning from the process. I finally decided this one was done. Time to move on to the last canvas, and the week was coming to a close.

So the last one started like the others, with very little idea of where it was going (I am a planner, so this was a breakthrough and a relief in itself.) The nest was transferred to the right hand side. The "nest" on the left was collaged using old patterns. I like drawing parallels between humans and birds and our building abilities. Rubber stamps are repeated in the background, and the gauzy thin glove attached on top, I love how transparent it is, allowing the viewer to see what is going on underneath. The bird was painted, the three little eggs are stitched with little glass beads.

What I am enjoying about this process is how it started being so random, yet became more and more symmetrical. But still keeps the visual richness. And I know this week is going to influence my new work. I am looking forward to seeing where I go from here!

All three of these pieces are 20" square, I still have to fuss over them for a while to decide if I will bring them to shows. But I am happy to be on the other side of that case of "painters block" and looking forward to my next canvas!

Nest

All other issues aside, I think I have made one of my more difficult to photograph pieces to date! "Nest" really does shine in person, unlike this flat image. But please bear with me, and maybe you'll be able to see it at a show near you.

This is a triptych, meaning it is 3 separate canvases that fit together. It's overall size is about 36" wide x 60" tall. Working from the background forward I started with a soft antique kind of blue, leaning towards the turquoise side, but a little bit dirty. The repeated pattern was created by carving the damask sort of pattern into a sheet of linoleum, it was inked just like a block print would be, with a roller, only the medium was acrylic paint.

For those of you who have known my work for many years, this may sound somewhat familiar. Some of the first pieces I ever exhibited were lino block prints. Perhaps I'll show some older pieces in my next post. In any case, I still love to carve linoleum, a slow process as one little curl after another peels off the knife. And I love the smell of the linseed oil in the linoleum.

So the block was "inked up" with paint, deep gray at first, and stamped like a big rubber stamp. The process was repeated for each block, allowed to dry, then I repeated the process, this time in creamy white. The blocks don't register tightly on one another, the white ones wiggle a little allowing the gray to show.

The nest itself was found in a rose bush in our front yard, cardinals come and build a new one each year. I photographed it and had them enlarged to this size and used an acrylic transfer process to get them on the canvas. I was originally only intending to use one, but the painting begged for more.

The dress was laid down on top of all this background, a vintage 50's house dress with a Swiss dot texture that shows through the paint and a little floral lace trim. And painted the "starter home" plan on top. With all the "bonus rooms" and "media rooms" in today's house plans it was fun to look at how they were laid out in the '60's when two bathrooms was considered a little extravagant!

NEST was stitched through the top with embroidery floss, and filled in with a little translucent yellow paint. Sometimes I think of nest as a noun, other times as a command, it changes the flavor of the piece significantly.

So what is the point? Well I was brought up in an era of "hope chests" and "starter homes." My nesting instinct was encouraged from a very early age. And I'm really not all that sure how I feel about it. So I often come around and take a little poke at the issue. Is it instinctive, like birds building nests? Is it taught through china patterns and paint samples? Is it just brilliant marketing?

Creating a home, a place of my own, is like a constant art project mixed with a search for comfort and peace. But others seem to be much happier constantly migrating, or need little more than one room with a bed and a TV. How does this happen?

This piece I'm sure will wind up in the home of someone with a great nesting instinct, art collectors often are "nesters," and I hope it brings a little comfort and peace, and introspection on how and why it got there. Enjoy!

My Sketchbook

It was my first art teacher, in the eighth grade, who preached the importance of having a sketchbook. As a place to work on your drawing skills, and to work out ideas. And I have always had one, sometimes used every day, and sometimes not for months. But I always had one around somewhere. The only thing that has changed, is how I use it.

At first, as a teen, I would pour over every drawing in there, I couldn't stand to show my work to anybody if the whole book wasn't perfect. And of course it was never perfect. Blind and partially blind contour drawings were my favorite things to do. Watercolor or ink sketches wrinkled up the pages. But I always thought of my sketchbook had to be a series of finished works.

Not now.

Now I rarely sketch, the most I ever do is a reasonably accurate line drawing of how I envision a commission to come together for a client. Now my sketchbook is there mostly just to take visual notes. These quick little 3" or so square squiggles in ballpoint pen map out the little thoughts about how to put a painting together. Scrawled notes with arrows poke into the drawing with instructions that aren't apparent in the sketch..."soft warm gray background." Just to jog my memory. My sketchbook is full of these little blocks, often working out ideas for a painting over and over again in different forms. And eventually, as I flip through all the ideas looking for one to basically blossom, boom, there it is! That idea, and this one a few pages back, all of a sudden just fit together.

And the sketch usually gets me about 3/4 of the way through a painting, the last 1/4 is the hard part though. The discussions and negotiations with the painting directly in front of you. But that's another story.

My favorite thing about my sketchbook now is how it serves as a journal. I don't think about it at all when I'm drawing in it, or making a list of whatever. But when I occasionally come across an old sketchbook, from last year or the last decade, my memory is taken on a bit of a ride, without having specific references to the outside world. Try it, put what you want in it, and don't think you have to show it to anybody!

And just as a note, the two lino blocks peeking in at the top of the page are elements from a commission I am working on. "Queen Bee" I think she'll come together just fine!