Black Betty (without the shine!)

It's pretty amazing the difference a decent photo makes, compare this image of Black Betty with the one a couple of posts down and you'll see what I mean. That's all I've got for you right now though. I'm pretty excited about "Birdbrain" on the easel, and I should go out there and see where she's headed!

The Arm Wrestle Ho Down.

That time has come again, the arm wrestle.

That's the time after I've given myself a break from the studio, but before I actually start painting again. I need a little break after a big push for a show. I have to clean the house, because it's usually been completely neglected, work in the yard a bit, catch up on all those errands I put off. I might even put stuff on etsy like I did a week or so ago. ( You can see the etsy shop at : http://www.etsy.com/shop/TheSpringGallery?ref=si_shop )

But now it's time to get back to work, it's been time to get back to work for a week or so. But instead, I have started the dance...the Arm Wrestle Ho Down.

Oh sure, I'll get a couple hours of work in a day, this week I've carved two little bird lino blocks, and printed about 50 of the little boogers on pattern paper last night. But really, that is about one day's work stretched into a week.

But, it's been sunny, and beautiful, and my garden has been weedy, and there is bread to bake and dog bellies to scratch. Oh, and a mosaic wall to fiddle with, but somehow that is too close to actually "getting something done" and has only been worked on in fits and starts. And naps to take.

But that annoying bitch in the back of my head is starting to mutter, and moan. She is loudest as I am trying to get to sleep at night. Chastising me for going to bed at a decent hour when I had a nap, and I really didn't get much done today. "You do have another show coming you know, you might want to have, oh I don't know...some inventory? A painting or two perhaps?" She is very sarcastic.

And of course, once I get the motor going, shake off the spring fever, and get immersed in making new work. I find a great rhythm. Scott knows to fend for himself, and I find this great peace. I think I am almost there. Boxes of canvases are coming in a few days, I am scratching down new ideas on scraps of paper everywhere.

But the tomatoes, I need to plant tomatoes.

Black Betty

This is not the greatest photo in the world, shot in the studio leaning back against the wall. Please pardon the blinding shine, I will try again. But until then, here is "Black Betty." She is the same size as "Queen B." With the same number of canvases, just arranged slightly differently. The top three canvases are tree branches in an inky teal. The next one down features photo transfers of a repeated martini glass over silver leaf. "Black" is stitched through this canvas. Then the panel with the top of the dress, bulls eyes repeat in the background, and a damask pattern covers the dress. The original beading is shiny black, with beautiful texture. Then we are down to the glove, which is also dotted with bulls eyes, "betty" is painted in her palm. Finally the bottom canvas is also the bottom of the dress, the lining showing up the slit is covered in silver leaf and dotted with little photo transfers of flies.

She is a bit of a mystery isn't she? Black Betty will be heading to Main St. Fort Worth Arts Festival next month!

Queen B

I have started on a new piece, as I am waiting for it to dry, I suppose I'll write about this one.

"Queen B" is made of 7 canvases framed together to make a whole. In addition to the dress and glove, the only other materials used were acrylic paint and linoblock prints on rice paper. Three different linoblocks were carved for this piece. The damask pattern, which shows up on the top canvas, as well as the second from the bottom, the bee, and the crown. The apples were sketched and painted on black gesso. The little swarm of b's on the glove is mostly lines and text from sewing patterns. You can see a close up from that panel in my last blog post. One part you may not be able to see well is the pale bullseye in the palm of the glove. Visually connected to the swarm, it is a reminder that the Queen can hurt you. The lines swooshing around in the main background between the crowns are intended to mirror the lines in the swarm.

The next piece, currently all gooey and mucky in the studio is "Black Betty". She will be the same size as this one, 24" wide x about 74" high. Hopefully BB will be done in time to take a trip to The Gasparilla Festival of the Arts, next weekend in Tampa, FL. If all the linoleum block prints in this piece make you happy, take a look at my (elle)ements on website, www.thespringgallery.com Now, it's time for me to get back out there...

A quickie

Honestly, I have no idea why I am taking a minute to blog when I am in the final stretch for the first show of the year. I am working on "Queen B." She is 24 inches wide, and somewhere around 6 1/2 ft tall. Made up of 6 different canvases. This is one of them, it is 24" wide. I had a rough idea of how I wanted this to go when I started on it this morning, but I'm kinda tickled with how it's come out.

If you click on it you can probably see a larger version. I am hoping the dark area on the right reads as a swarm of bees...kinda tricky that. But the issue of the moment is that I like this part of the whole enough that it's about to dictate a palette shift for the entire piece. All part of the magic of not having a plan and letting each brush stroke inform the next move. And hey, I have a whole 60 or so hours left before I want it to be finished and ready to pack in the van. If I don't sleep.

A confession

My name is Kathrine Allen-Coleman, and I am a serial brush abuser. These are not the grungiest brushes I could find, these are just a few currently sitting in the water bucket. You see, if you leave brushes in water, the wooden handles swell up. This causes the varnish to chip, and the little metal band that holds the bristles in will even stretch, unually just enough to make it wobble a bit. And, if you leave the brushes in water, the bristles will also swell, and permanently bend, and split into multiple directions. I have convinced myself that this makes for a nice if not somewhat unpredicatble line.

Now if you are working with acrylic paint and you choose not to leave your brushes in water, you'll get an even more irritating alternative. A brush that has all the softness and flexibility of a stick. This is because acrylic needs to stay wet, because it dries to a nice hard plastic.

Yes I could try harder to be a good brush steward. I could run in to the house and wash my brushes every hour or so, (yeah right.) I even try really hard to make this happen, I have that little conversation in my head whenever I find a "virgin-ish" brush, especially a little tiny one that still has a point. "I will clean this, just use it for this little bit, and then clean it." Plop, into the water bucket, and I find it in a week or so. Dead as a doornail, or at least all bent to one side.

Now my husband, Scott, is a watercolor painter. And watercolorists are borderline fanatical about their brushes. They buy these $50 brushes made of very small animals, and treat them very kindly. The first time I met Scott (he was teaching a watercolor workshop in Southern France) he scolded me for leaving my brushes soaking in water beside me as I painted. I couldn't bear to tell him that not only are these brushes sitting in water, but about 6000 miles away in my studio at home, there are other brushes sitting in water too. They had developed a rather fetid odor by the time I returned home, in case you wanted that information.

There really is no point to this, no lesson to learn. I deal with this handicap by buying packs of brushes, the crappy kind. Just one step above those horrible plastic things they put in paint by numbers kits. (What kind of cosmic joke is that anyway?) And if I need a reliable little point, I look for a good one, sacrafice it to the water jug and move on.

Thanks for listening, I feel much better.

(Elle)ements

Holy smokes, here she goes again. Kathrine is half cocked and running around chasing rainbows, and mail delivery trucks, her tail, and well, you get the idea! If you've been reading this blog for any time at all you know that I've been working on a bunch of new pieces for my dress painting series. I have three biggies, just on-the-brink of being done. They are each 24" wide by 56" high.

But, (and this is a big one) along the way these little bitties came up...

Isn't interesting what happens when you aren't really paying attention? These little pieces are all 4" square. They are all little original mixed media pieces, each one is one of a kind, on small stretched canvases. And the best part of these is how versatile they are, here is some of the same group rearranged in a different setting...

So, as these are all little bits, or fragments of the big dresses I've been working on, I've decided to call this group (Elle)ements. I'm just warming up a new blog for them, and they are already on the Spring Gallery web site. You can see them all here!http://thespringgallery.com/section/281207_elle_ements.html

I have a mere 45 available to start, but boxes of new canvases on the way. They are all $25 each, shipping to anywhere in the US will be $6 whether you buy one or one hundred.

These will be coming with me on the road to shows, but I'd also like to start finding some wholesale opportunities. If you have any bright ideas, please pass them along. That's it for now, time to get busy!

f i n a l l y !

It doesn't matter what you call it, painter's block, a creative slump, dragging yourself around in that personal pity party, it is an irritating place to be. So I say this, knocking on wood with my fingers crossed and all that, I think I am on the other side of it.

I have been busying myself, getting the odd piece done, preparing for that mental thaw. And finally, it came. It was almost like a damn bursting. Ideas would pop like lightning. One night I just kept scratching them down so they wouldn't evaporate the next day.

What changed? Well, I told myself that the time I spend in the studio is not called "working" anymore. Working is saying "Welcome to Walmart." Working is getting up before dawn, walking to the bus stop, and not getting home until it's dark again. Hanging in a warm studio in a robe, drinking tea, and painting, although not always easy, is what I have always wanted to do. I should be thanking my lucky stars that I can manage to do this. So now, I'll be in the studio painting, not working.

And one more thing, I have convinced myself to trust my hand again. For some reason I was getting tighter and tighter. At one point I looked down and realized I was working on a 2'x3' canvas with a tiny brush that had all of 10 hairs in it. Clinging to a photograph. It was like I had lost my damn mind. The first painting that I worked on after that I had to coach myself through. It was like having a little cheerleader in my head. "You can paint, make a mark, just do it. Loose, Fresh. Rahrahrah! Well it wasn't really like that, but sort of. And amazingly enough it did work.

So just like that, a rush of ideas. Three pieces in various stages of completion, and another on the way. The first one, below will be a new version of Wallflower. Still a long way to go, but she is coming along nicely...



And this one is a close up of a new "Plain Jane" This one is pretty much done, just a little "Assembly Required".


And this is a section of a piece called "Four Eyes" There are three other canvases that hang with it. Perhaps her name will make more sense when you see the whole group. But I love how the dress in this piece pretty much disappears. And it felt so good to paint this.

So now my plan is to finish these up and let you see them all in a few days. My only question to myself is why am I taking cool snowy blue paintings to Florida? Perhaps I have lost my mind! Come back in a few days and see what I'll be taking to Coconut Grove!

A night's work

I've been a little quiet lately. The dessert blog takes more energy than you'd expect, and I have a thousand excuses just like that one if you have time. But the thing is, I've had a lot of time off between shows, and I'm working towards building a new body of work. Nothing like that is simple. I've been sketching, and scribbling, making models. Having brilliant ideas and hating them the next day. And a for few days I've just settled down and done a little work. Tonight I carved a funky damask pattern into linoleum so I can use it stamp-like in an upcoming painting. Assembling the elements, getting ready for a big push. And I don't think I will know I can do it until it's done.

Distracted.

I have never been so distracted by the trees. Red light floods into my studio, burgundy reflecting the morning sun. The sky is so blue that it looks fake. I keep finding myself drawn outdoors, usually taking one more photo. It is supposed to freeze tomorrow night, and whatever chunk of landscape I miss today may be totally different in a few days. The colors of the trees have even found their way into my paintings. I wonder if this will fade in the winter. I hope not. This is probably why I am taking so many photos, trying to hoard the color.