"A Peaceful State"

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"Music has the power to bring the soul to a peaceful state." Isn't it surprising how quickly a sad mood can disappear when music fills the air. We all need to remember how powerful it is and let the music play when stress and sadness come.

This is another 4 x 6 give away for an upcoming exhibit. It has been interesting to work in a format that isn't square. I would like to say a few words about some of the design issues in this piece.

It began with a blank sheet of 140 lb HP. I adhered a fragment of a concert program from 1935. You can actually read the date in some of the translucent black area. It was adhered with gel matte medium right out of the jar and dried with a hair dryer so I could immediately do the pouring medium.

What can happen when using black is that it can do what some people can do....suck up all of the oxygen in the room. In this case, I ended up with more black than I really wanted. The solution to this problem is to select another collage item (preferably something opaque rather than silk tissue prints) and place it somewhere in that block of color. This will break up the surface tension and then the black color block acts as a frame around the collage. The selection of the collage is very important and needs to echo the colors and theme of the piece. In this case I referenced a piece of music from medieval times where the music notation was a lot different from what we have to do.

Another more complex part of this piece is the idea of placing collage on the paper before the pouring medium to create a semi "veiled" effect. That effect combined with the transparent and opaque collage on top of the pouring medium creates a lot of depth and interest. And there you have it...just a few more things to think about.

"Neutral"

($40.00....6" x 6".....mounted on a 1/8" depth clayboard panel)


"Put your life in neutral to calm chaos." There is a contrast in this piece between neutral colors and chaotic texture. In life we must all find ways to put our life in neutral in order to stay sane and keep from spinning out of control. Whether it's taking a walk, sitting with a friend, or reading a book, we all need to put our life in neutral for part of the day.

This piece was created much the same way yesterday's posting was created. I simply chose to use neutrals. After the solid acrylic color is placed over the entire surface of textured gesso, it is important to start thinking about creating shapes.

All of the other layers of colors after the dark turquoise were Speedball Printing Inks. They were applied in this order...white...brown + black....orange + brown + lots of white and a bit of turquoise. The very last color was turquoise added to the peach mixture.

what makes this and all other types of layering work is the ability to break up the surface tension in a convincing way. Thinking in shapes will help, but then you must break up the surface in some way to reveal the previous layer. In this piece, I used a pointed pen, a ruling pen, and water, followed by blotting.  The initial raised texture of the gesso and several places where glass bead gel was applied also helped achieve the revealing of a previous color. The shapes give it the structure and without that structure, the human eye does not know where to look.

Other ways of breaking up surface tension could be sanding, gouging, transparent paint or collage elements, blotting, etc. The most obvious way is simply to leave a portion of the previous layer untouched. However, this is not as subtle or convincing and may create too many hard edges and if all your edges are hard, your work will be very difficult for people to view. So there you have it...a few more things to think about.


Please contact me personally to inquire about this piece.