simmered

One of the luxuries of being able  to work on my art every day, is that I can let a painting simmer, until I’m ready to get back to it.   This landscape7-6-11 has been bugging me, just one little part.  I hung it in our living room, and I knew I would have to do more work.  Now I’m not afraid of “destroying” a painting.  I hear deKooning say “kill it, and bring it back to life.”  To me it’s like kids and dogs, you can’t let them or YOUR painting win.

Unease-redux

I’ve added more collage elements.  The pupil of her right eye is a disc from a computer drive.  On the detail you can see my reflection.  The blue in her hat is from some heavy paper I found here in the gym.  I looked up polymer resin.  I wonder if it would preserve the charcoal marks, or just make a big mess.  Too expensive to experiment.7-1-11a7-1-11b

Tiny painting

Last year I did some really big paintings.  This year I’m going the other 6-25-11adirection.  This painting is 5″x5″.  I’ve done a series of six, the smallest is 1″x2″.

Christmas in July

If I’m going to use a painting for my Christmas cards, I have to start working on it now.  I have a holly bush, and thought it was sufficiently festive.

Holly
Holly

smaller and smaller

Jen gave me a bunch of small canvases.  I usually work large, and I’ve been looking at these little things since Christmas.  I’m going to paint each one from the image of a red daylily.  Here’s 12″ and 5″.

12"x12"
12"x12"
5"x5"
5"x5"

New series

I have an assortment of small canvases.  I usually work large, but I’m going to do the same image on each of them.  This is the largest, at 12″x12″.  I continue to pursue a place between representation and abstraction.

Daylily 1
Daylily 1

Holly, too.

I worked on Holly again.  This morning it looked like an abstract from the 40’s.  Not exactly what I had in mind.  I want to balance between representational and abstract.  Hopefully that isn’t just a boring place.6-14-11

Holly

I’m trying to do abstract botanicals, as a way to actually look closely at the pattern of plants.  Most botanicals are extremely accurate, but we don’t see plants that way.  They are in a jumble w/ others, in nature.6-13-11

Tai Chi helped

We went outside to do Tai Chi today.  Then I went into my studio, and had a productive day!

Mountain Magnolia One
Mountain Magnolia One
Dandelions
Dandelions
Daylily and Plate
Daylily and Plate

tag team

Karen Case suggested that doing two paintings on the same subject was a way to keep one from being “precious”.  This is one of the  Huechera.  The other one must have moved, because the photo was blurry!6-7-11