Good Egg

Good Egg was a greedy, greedy painting. One of those you have to wrestle into submission. It took days longer than I had anticipated, all the while Scott is shaking his head. Why do I make it so difficult?

This piece is 36" square, the dress sits to the left, so what to do with the right side? Well, I knew she was to be "Good Egg." So I began collecting anything egg related. The first thing was to find egg related literature in a 50's vintage farmers almanac. These pages were made into acrylic transfers, a multi step process that transfers the printing ink into layers of acrylic medium. These transfers are applied to the primed canvas. Over this, I used text from a cookbook and painted the words using a negative painting technique, essentially painting around the letters, letting the first layer come through. The outline of the word "good" is lightly drawn on the canvas with pencil, and the stitching begins...



Once the stitching was finished it needed more, it just wasn't visible enough, so I painted the insides of the letters a similar yellow, just for definition. Buttons were sewn through the canvas to make this retro oval shape which helped tie all the different elements together.

This is a detail of the stitched egg cup, you can see the layers showing through. I used transparent and semi transparent layers of paint to add definition.

This is the finished result, the eggcups are transparent, allowing the original pattern of the dress to show through. This is the first time I've done this, and in this case I like the result. The eggs themselves have a wash of white over top. The new pattern of yellow dots is painted over the dress. And the deviled egg was painted in the top right hand side.

So why "Good Egg?" I guess this is really a painting about my relationship with my Grandmother. "You're a good egg" is one of her higher compliments, and boiled eggs in egg cups were one of her breakfast specialties when we stayed at her house... Strawberry shortcake was another, but that's a whole new story! My Grandma is weeks away from her 90th birthday, she will celebrate with my Grandpa who passed that landmark a couple of years ago.

Good Egg is available at $3000

Goody Two Shoes

Goody Two Shoes was finished just in time for the show at Boca Raton! The interesting thing about this piece is all the layers. The blocks in the background alternate, there are photos of vintage shoes cut in with opaque paint, then finished with a pattern in pencil. And the 2's are stenciled over photo transfers of pages from an etiquette book from the 1920's. The sailor dress sits on top, and "goody goody goody" is stitched through the top with bright green embroidery floss.

I am interested in looking at what the ideal of being "good" is all about, especially in the context of being a "good girl." How can you be good, without being so good as to be a goody two shoes? Who decides what the rules are? And how do we know when they change?

Goody Two Shoes is 30" square on canvas, and is sold.

A commission

Even though my main body of work is often cheeky, perhaps even a bit irreverent, my commission work is almost always sweet as pie! A baptismal dress was my beginning point, and we decided on robin egg blue should be included somehow. After that I was pretty much on my own. The dress itself has lots of pretty bits of embroidery throughout, so I decided to use a similar floral pattern in the background. Many layers of paint, often in alternating layers of glazing and dry brush are applied. The final touch is a hula hoop shape of embroidered nicknames. This piece was finished late yesterday, the client was thrilled, and the piece is already home!

Now I am up to my elbows in the next one...not quite so sweet! "Goody Two Shoes" is on the easel, I'll post again when she's done!

Paper Dress Collage

If you've ever seen my work at a show, you are familiar with these little paper dresses. But this one is a little different. I begin by collaging bits of vintage dress patterns in the background, then paint the shape of the dress. But rather than use paint this time, I've collaged a little piece of marbled paper. This is one of the last bits of paper I marbled myself at a workshop in Victoria many years ago, a tiny fraction of the u-haul truckload of "things" Scott and I drove across the country when I moved here...but clearly I digress. Once the collage elements are all glued down and have had a chance to dry, the dress shape is stitched. I punch the holes with an awl, and sew the dress by hand with embroidery floss. The little halo is a circle of white glass beads that are also stitched through the paper.

The backing paper I use for these is a soft rag or cotton printing paper from France, and they are all matted in an eight ply conservation quality matboard. Backed with acid free foam board, and shrink wrapped. The overall size is 9" square, with the art being about 5" square.

$145

The first post.

How do you start a blog? I mean your first post, it seems like it should be grand, or at least noteworthy. Well, the best thing I could come up with is to start with...

In The Beginning...but it's not really, it was a few years after the beginning, but let's start here, just for grins.

This little piece is, if my memory serves me correctly, (and often it does not), the first multi-colored lino block print I'd ever done. It is tiny, 3" x 4" I think. It is dated 1994, 16 whole years ago. It is also one of the first pieces I'd ever sold, it was an edition of 6, and this is the only one I have left. But as far as beginnings go, I think this is also the first time I used a dress for imagery, something which has turned into a full time obsession.

Why a dress? I am constantly asked this, why not a pair of bluejeans, or a man's shirt?

Because.

Because dresses are little wads of memories, they can be memories of the occasion it was worn to. Or of how it was purchased, it doesn't even have to have been worn to have a story to tell. The dress hanging in the closet unworn to a canceled date has power.

So the dress is where I begin my story, the first piece in the puzzle of building a character. And the best part is when you look at the painting and see yourself.