"Abundance" (unfinished)

(unfinished piece....acrylics on 300 lb. HP)

"I have come that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance." (Amplified Version) This piece does not yet have the scripture inclusion because it is not finished. This is acrylic with a very heavy application with a palette knife and now needs a day or two to dry. I will post the finished piece sometime next week.

It is often quite nice to see the progression of work rather than the finished piece. Because time is of the essence, this works for me this particular week since an Easter Exhibit is right around the corner. However, the past several postings of gestural writing and versals will come into play again as I come closer to the finish line. 

Nothing shows that art is a process like seeing things in steps. It is very instructive to take photographs of your work in progress so as not to forget how you actually did the piece (6) months from now. I guarantee you will not remember what you did unless you record the process with your digital camera and also save actual cropped off piece of the actual paint with notes.  

This is a 12" x 12" painted on 300 lb. HP with acrylic paint and a palette knife. It is simply too late in the game to do oils which have such a long drying and curing process...especially if you paint heavier and with a palette knife. However, for any of you on my art team who have waited to the last hour to work in oils, you will need to go get some Krylon Quick Dry for oil paints and spray your piece every day all this next week with a fan blowing on it 24/7. The Quick Dry allows the painting to continue to dry through the layering of spray.

Since my primary artistic voice includes gestural marks and lettering, the acrylic paint will give me a better opportunity to include any kind of lettering with pen, ink or gouache that I want by preparing the surface for lettering after the acrylic paint has dried. The "take away" from today is to photograph or record your process if you truly want to gain ground with every piece. The quote...."A picture is worth a thousand words."....hold very true in this process of creating art. And there you have it...just a few more things to think about.

"Emotional Range"

(unavailable...acrylics with retarder)

"Nature has a range of emotions." In light of the severe weather on the East Coast contrasted with the beauty of a fall landscape, this quote was born. It is an abstract landscape with the deliberate intention of focusing on texture and shapes rather than a realistic interpretation.

It is very exciting to take an ordinary photo and use that as a jumping off point to lay down the shapes and colors in an abstract way. As I have been saying, it is much easier to get out of the comfort zone of trying to paint every leaf on the tree by using a palette knife.  You then have no choice, but to paint the broader shapes and leave out the detail.

I am definitely in a transitional stage with this and trying to accomplish several things at once. My first intention is simply to observe and see the minimal characteristics of a given image and try to translate that into as few shapes as possible. Another word for it could be "visual shorthand". But that is only the first goal.

My second goal is to see which type of media will best accomplish the goal. I have been experimenting with oils, acrylics plus retarder, and open acrylics. Each piece completed adds to my knowledge of these three approaches.

The third goal and one which is suffering a bit until I get the first two resolved is how to include lettering in the piece. I already know that lettering is going to look best with a very abstract and abbreviated image, but I'm not quite there yet. And I do emphasize the "yet" because art is a process. For instance, I had to use a Prismacolor .005 Pen because the paint was still tacky and I could never have pressed down on a pen into this surface at this stage. 

My encouragement is to ask yourself how and what you want to communicate and then chart out a plan to achieve that goal. It does take time and patience, but is well worth the effort. And there you have it...just a few more things to think about.

"Chaotic Beauty"

(unavailalbe.....acrylics with retarder)

"Chaotic beauty is found in the dried up corn stalk." I thought I had better identify what I was trying to paint in the quote just in case you were wondering. It's all about the texture and the essence of the image. Even the lettering was severely deconstructed to fit in.

Believe it or not, I really do have a vision of where I'm going, but I will readily admit it can be a "bumpy" ride. I really do like the texture of the corn stalk, but also feel like the piece as a whole could be better integrated. And since process is so important, I want you to share in my process so you can see that when learning new techniques and a new direction, it can take some time and lots of practice to get there.

One of the things that I think will help is drawing the gesture of a particular image before painting it so that the muscle memory is there. Another thing that helped in this piece was doing an underpainting of the cornstalk color first and drying that first coat before painting wet into wet with the rest of the painting. It also helps to allow enough time to have some things dry before moving on, but also blending some of the edges.

I did write the quote with a pointed pen and acryl gouache. The paint was not totally set up, but that actually worked to achieve my objective of allowing the lettering to be textural rather than totally readable. Because the pen dug into the paint and revealed the base color, I smoothed it out a bit by dabbing alcohol over it. And so the thing I took away from today's painting is that alcohol, once again, can be a hugh assist in the deconstruction of surface tension. And there you have it...just a few more things to think about.

"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.

"Abbreviated Orange"

(unavailable)

"Orange is the color of fall." Orange is beginning to permeate yards and landscapes with pumpkins, but very soon (hopefully), we will see leaves begin to turn and many of them will cycle through yellow, orange, and red, and then brown. The title and inspiration for this quote came from the fact that this piece is entirely created with the color "orange" in all of its tints and shades.

I attended an oil workshop this year and when any student in the class asked how to mix a particular color, the instructor would always say...red, yellow, and blue. And she was right! Of course, white is also needed, but that's what this piece is all about. The very dark brown in the background is the color orange with a less yellow and a lot more red and blue. The light foreground color that is the color of hay is a small bit of "grayed down" orange with lots of white. And of course, the pumpkin is what we would normally identify as orange. 

When looking up the word abstract...some of the other words that describe it are words like abbreviate and summary. I like those words because they perfectly describe what happens when an image is abstracted. In this case, I am giving the viewer an abbreviated image or a summary with many details left out. For instance, the orange in this piece is definitely a pumpkin, but the "ribbing" and minute shadings in the pumpkin are absent. The stem helps to differentiate it from an orange, but even there, the details are left out. 

The foreground color represents hay by its color and value changes, but every straw in the hay bale is absent. This is an exciting approach and hope you will try it sometime. The palette knife is the perfect tool for this because it creates the erratic edges that happen, especially when painting "wet into wet". This piece was done in acrylics with retarder added to the paint. I love oils, but it is very difficult to include lettering in oils. I also have plans to make an extended return to "Open Acrylics" which stay wet for a long time, but will also enable me to write on it with water soluble media. And there you have it...just a few more things to think about.