"Fall Gesture"

($40.00.....6" x 6".....Acrylics on Gessobord)

"Fall is a gesture in color." Fall and spring seem to be the best times to enjoy an explosion of color. Because the fall is a transition for trees and plants going dormant, any color in the landscape looks spectacular amidst all of the neutrals. Enjoy the fall!

This piece was inspired by a photo I took in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. There was a hugh display of pumpkins, gourds, and flowers sitting in piles of hay. And as you can plainly see, I did not choose to go with realism, but "wet into wet" with gestural strokes done with a palette knife. These types of paintings can fall in the category of an "agony and an ecstasy", but the success comes with much practice. I'm feeling small measures of success and totally enjoy the process, but have many visions in my head of where I want to go with this.

The unfortunate thing about spontaneous techniques is that there are exactly that...spontaneous. It is quite impossible to predict outcomes and if the goal is to show energy and freedom of the stroke, then it becomes counter productive to keep "fussing" with it for more than a nano second. And even if you have no desire whatsoever to paint an image, I highly recommend simply playing around with the textures and perhaps some interesting divisions of space on a gessobord just to learn what can be done with a palette knife and paint. It's a wonderful way to experiment with color and create some interesting backgrounds.

This piece was painted with acrylics mixed with "retarder" to extend the drying time. As in "pouring medium" pieces or any other acrylic work, the surface can be prepared for lettering. I did use an automatic pen to write the quote in the wet paint and then I decided to "deconstruct" it by running lines through the hay color area as well as a palette knife to break up the surface tension. If you are one of my friends who also create kiln formed glass, many of these same techniques with a palette knife can be created with Glassline Paint on glass and then fired. And there you have it...just a few more things to think about. 

Please contact me personally to inquire about this piece.

"Private Chapel"

(unavailable)

"The heart is a private chapel." Joys and sorrows are deeply felt and worked out in the private chapel of the heart. That's where the conversations with God take place through prayer.

Black, red, white, and gold are a time honored combination going back to the time of monks. It was in the monasteries that they labored over their writing and illuminated capitals to preserve the scriptures. A very interesting fact is that paper had been invented in China long before it ever reached the shores of Europe. Consequently, vellum was the preferred writing surface and that's a good thing since paper would have deteriorated. We now can view hand written Bibles in many museums around the world because they were written on calf skin vellum.

This piece (like yesterday's posting) consists of the leftover cropped portions of a larger piece. This is a great exercise in design. Any scraps from any of your work can be cut up, rearranged into a totally different piece. You will discover divisions of space and odd combinations you would never have thought of on your own. So I would definitely place this technique in the spontaneous category. I will admit that I added the three bits of black and gold (in three different sizes) to give strength to the piece. And there you have it...just a few more things to think about.

"Stress Reliever"

(unavailable)

"Thanksgiving is a stress reliever." Anyone who has learned to give thanks in all things has ushered themselves into the presence of God.

It may not seem like it, but the techniques used to create this collage involved three that are spontaneous. To quote myself from another posting...it takes a spontaneous technique to create a spontaneous result.

The first spontaneous technique was the mono printing of the rice paper. When making large gestural and erratic marks into the Speedball Printing Ink, the very free marks are going to add movement to the final piece. The key is to place those types of pieces in contrast with the plain white rice paper over the text, with other mono printed papers that are almost solid color, and some of the black of the support showing through.

The second spontaneous technique is the cropping of the rice paper and the eventual cropping of the collage. Cropping remains my single most favorite thing to do since it gives the most options for the final outcome.

The third technique was the improvisational writing of the quote which echoes some of the erratic lines in the background. This is an exciting way to work, but does involve several steps. It is the type of thing you can work on a little bit each day and keep coming back to. Just be prepared for little bits of old book pages and rice paper to be all over your studio. And there you have it...just a few more things to think about.

"Words"

($40.00.....6" x 6".....mounted on a 1/8" depth gesso board)

"Words have the power to set people's hair on fire or be the arms of hope." This is my contemporary rewording of a proverb from the Bible. That verse reads..."Words have the power of life and death." It's something worth thinking about.

This piece is a classic case of letting the piece tell me what I need to do next. I liked the flourishing in "Words" at the bottom because it "echoed some of the movement of lines in the piece. So as I began to think about a quote base on words, I let the colors tell me the rest of the story. The red and blue stand for the two opposites in the quote.

By adding even more flourishing to the piece, I was symbolizing the continual flow of words that seem to be everywhere these days. With radio and television or being in a work environment with others, you could literally not have more than 30 min. a day (or less) without hearing words.

I am becoming more convinced by the day that it is much more powerful to begin a piece of artwork with spontaneous techniques and allow the textures, unplanned shapes, and colors dictate the final outcome. Certainly decisions can be made about color and textural choices in advance, but the use of spontaneous techniques will allow for many unexpected "jewels" to take place. Some of the spontaneous techniques I like are mono printing, pouring medium, gestural writing, mark making, applying color with a brayer, and the best of all is cropping. And there you have it...just a few more things to think about.

Please contact me personally to inquire about this piece.