Three small paintings...

Click on images to enlarge detail...

Lavender Fields, 10 x 10, acrylic on panel, $125.

It's been a busy - and good week! Sold three pieces at the Sautee-Nacoochee Gallery within the first couple of days. None of them were among the three here, but these are also in that show.

Deep Dusk, 10 x 12 (framed), acrylic on panel, $125.

Each of these captures a certain mood - a time and place less of this world than that of the dreamer. In Deep Dusk, I left the panel as a "mat" around the very small painting. I liked the tones of the wood grain with the background's gold and purple tones. I happened to have the perfect frame in my stash - and voila!

Deep Dusk, sans "mat" and frame...

Heading Downstream, 7 x 12, acrylic on painted door panel, $85.

I received a new commission - a cat portrait for an artist friend's family. He saw the large one I just finished for a client and thought it would make a neat and unique Christmas gift. Hoo-rah. I'll do that one this week.

Here's a photo of the commission I finished and delivered last week. That's Tippy on the Windowsill, 36 x 48, acrylic on canvas. The client will be placing this above a large bookcase on a windowless wall, thus a faux window, complete with cat and everlasting plants. I have two more commissions from the same client: her two dogs, and then a portrait of their three horses. I really enjoy doing animal portraits - as opposed to those of the human variety... unless of course I can paint the sitter as I please - rather than to please...

Assemblage: Making things from other things...

... a few of my recent collage/assemblages...

I'm still producing as many small works as I can. Artwork priced under $100 is still selling slowly, but steadily. I price these between $38 and $90, depending upon size, treasured items, and (heh) effort required.

Emile, 8 x 10, mixed media and drawing
click to enlarge for detail

For some time (years!) I've been collecting stuff. Bits of metal, pieces of wood, odd little toys, broken jewelry, bones, hardware, wire, keys - a treasure trove (at least by my standards) of fabulous found objects. This stuff is my flotsam and jetsam collection, raw materials for recreation and recombination into images, allegorical, mythological, enigmatic, personal - and yet - only recently have I dedicated a room for doing the actual assemblage.

Most of my assemblages have one or more concurrent themes (my thoughts as I worked). I often write little ditties to accompany each.

The Flight of Apollo Friday the Thirteenth, 7 x 10, mixed media
Apollo's uplifted - left his blues behind.
Laughing and twisting, he's blooming on high.
Crazy with sanity

It makes all the difference to have a space where I can surround myself with all the choices within reach, and be able to close the door on unfinished works. The door is important, as it prevents all those little pieces from becoming cat toys!

Absolute Contrasts, 10 x 10, mixed media assemblage

A Pony For Me, 10 x 10, collage

I have always been fascinated with the work of Joseph Cornell, an artist who made "boxes" filled with objects that confound and inspire due the juxtapositions of objects inside. There's a fun site for admirers of his work here, and another with many of his collages and assembled boxes here.

Below are some of my favorite Cornell assemblages:

bebe-Marie

1942, untitled

Solar Set

Untitled (soap bubble set)

Untitled (Cockatoo and Corks)

A sideways glance...

If you've ever raised chickens, no doubt you've seen how they cock their heads from one side to the other. Perhaps their eyes don't allow the best view straight on; after all, their faces are so pointy, they end in a beak! Or maybe - like me - they have a "good" eye and a "bad" eye (without corrective lenses, my vision is 20/400 in my legally blind left eye). So, perhaps chickens check things out with a far-away eye and a close-up eye, just like me - but unlike me - they must roll their entire head from side to side to size things up. Now I know a chicken has a tiny little head and a tiny little brain perhaps the size of a pea. My brain has to switch from the right lobe (eye) to the left lobe (eye)to "decide" which image to process. Do chicken brains have lobes? Split-pea takes on a whole new meaning.

Giving 'em the eye, 16 x 20, acrylic on canvas

My two disparate eyes send wildly different images to my brain - one much more in focus than the other, depending upon distance. I can almost feel my brain switching eyes much as one shift gears: pause, shift, go. Most of the time this happens subconsciously, but there are times when this becomes uncomfortable - as when one's focus shifts from an entire room, to friends across the table, to the small print on a menu. Because the lenses in my glasses are so different, the size of the corrected images differs enough so that once again my brain must choose the best (sharpest, clearest, most meaningful) image. I usually just remove my glasses, thus eliminating distance vision - and making the near (left eye view) world of friends and menus the only options available .

I read with my (bad) left eye, too. Even though I am distance blind in that eye, my close focus is superb - vastly better than that of my astigmatic right eye. So whenever I read, or do closeup work on a painting, I'm lenses free. But if I need to walk about or look out of the windows, I must grab my glasses once again.

Sometimes I think my extreme visual orientation is precisely because of my impaired vision. I value that which I can see more than anything, because I know that without corrective lenses, I would be severely handicapped. I don't want to miss out on the world around me, so I look and look and look until I can see clearly...

Meta-painting...

Someone once told me that bloggers who blog about blogging are meta-blogging. I'm borrowing that term to describe my process of re-painting The Poplar Line in an alternate style. So to me, it's a painting about painting.

Poplar Jazz, 24 x 24, acrylic on deep cradle panel

Though this version (below) eventually grew on me, I needed a more expressionistic version - more about color and movement - and, well, - paint.

The Classical Poplar Line

And because the gallery was organizing a show themed Music, Music, Music, I titled them to suit: The Classical Poplar Line and Poplar Jazz.
This is how they are hung in the show - with Changes Coming above. I like how the placement of Changes Coming above and "behind" the others works with its view of the poplars off in the distance. Kinda surreal.

Sometimes I feel so close to something I make or paint, that I don't want to part with it. That was true of this painted chair harp. This actually was the first one I did a few months ago. I needed something to trade at an artists' gift exchange so I did this quickly the day of the event, wrapped it and watched it go to someone who clearly was less than thrilled. I was miffed as I'd like to have kept it. I later learned the recipient thought the imagery disturbing to her fundamentalist beliefs. (!!!???) Another artist (unbeknownst to me at the time) -

loved it so much that she proposed to custom-make and trade one of her fabulous stained glass pieces for this one. I recently attended an all-girl poker party at her house and voila! - there was Crow Madam hanging on the wall! I apologize for the quality of the photos - after all, it was a party!

It meant a great deal to me for someone to appreciate and want something I made enough to go to so much trouble. It means even more that a piece I feel so connected to resides with someone I like and admire - and who appreciates the work.

Funky Leghorn Strut...

Funky Leghorn Strut, 11-1/2 x 13, acrylic on panel

This matronly hen will go on sale at the Heritage Center this week unless she struts right out of the picture.
It's been a pretty good week. I sold When Trees Bleed, and Poised, and the two little Tuxedo Cats painted on tin - and - A Bear Board; literally two bear cubs painted onto a wonderful old weathered board that was 12" wide.

It was fun painting this. My goal was to keep as much of the natural texture and color of the board itself. I painted only the parts that weren't part of the "tree" or bears. I love the fractured ends and the actual holes left were knots fell out. I don't know how old the board actually was, but it will endure yet as another form of "tree." Size is approximately 42 x 12. Tres rustic...

Clouds - and Appreciation...

I sent a few images to The Cloud Appreciation Society yesterday. Imagine my surprise when I received an email this morning that they were already posted!

They do such a wonderful job there of featuring artists' works that are based upon - or related to - clouds and cloud formations. They also post the most amazing photographs of weather as well as the most up to date information about the weather on our blue planet . Weather isn't the least bit droll or boring when one is talking to someone wise in the ways of meteorology.

Due to my fascination with storms, cloud formations, tornadoes and atmosphere, this has been a favorite - and inspiring -site for me to visit. Take a look!

And a work in progress...

The Poplar Line... 24x 24 . acrylic on deep cradle panel

This is the painting Elvis was so critical of in a recent post. After much agonizing and looking and looking and looking, I decided to finish it - and go right on to repaint the image on another panel. A sort of before and after critique, if you will - and if there is such a thing as a series about "meta-painting" (painting about painting), I guess that's what I'm doing. I need to do this again, less "real" and more true. I like the asymmetry of the trees and the hint of the winds that have shaped them, and I want to emphasize this in the next version.











As for Elvis... He passed out on the printer from exhaustion after all his efforts to have me paint this one out failed. I mean really; he hasn't any credentials, he's all about instinct - and his are quite primitive.

I think he's trying to send me another message - when he grows tired of my surfing, typing and emailing - and of his attempts to edit same, perhaps it's time to retire !

Black Croad Langshan Rooster

Black Croad Langshan, 15 x 20, acrylic on panel

This is the one I painted for another Heritage artist. Lucky for me he left it to hang in the gallery for a bit so I was able to photograph it. The Black Croad Langshan is an endangered livestock breed. Originating in China, this feather-footed fellow is entirely black with iridescence in the hackles and tail feathers.

Painting chickens is pure recreation!