Finished Commission - and Thoughts

I was reminded yesterday by an online friend that my blog is suffering from neglect!  Yes, it's true.  As I have worked to get a presence on FB, Etsy, Artstack and Saatchi, I have run out of internet posting patience.  It can be exhausting all this sitting and typing on a flickering screen - and with my particular visual problems - painful.I often end up in bed with a powerful headache, too drained to blog. 

And yet Blogspot is where I feel most comfortable; where those who stop by are more like to look closely, read and interact in more than just a superficial manner (as on FB).  I've met some wonderful people here over the years and I want to maintain those relationships and continue to meet new folks.

So even though I am a visual artist by trade, writing helps me to work out what I really think.  It forces me to organize my thoughts and understand the "whys" of things and thoughts and opinions, not just the "whats." And finally, here on Blogspot (and WordPress) there is such a wealth of talented people who write, paint, photograph, or perform and whose creativity inspires and delights.  I love that we are each others audience.

Commission:  Lady Godiva -Triumphant . 60 x 36 acrylic on canvas

This commission occupied me on and off for the past several months; researching, drawing, making changes and finally completing this large ode to classicism and symbolism.  No head bowed and posture cowed Godiva here.  She sits relaxed and confident upon her powerful steed, her scepter symbolizing her great heart and love of life.  In her left hand she clutches a rose, her representation of rebirth.

Installed in client's home.

The background depicts landmarks from the client's home region: a rushing river, a particular mountain, distant vineyards and vegetation - all meaningful to her.  I loved painting the prancing free rein horse and doing a figure study was quite a change of pace for me!  I really hated covering up the wonderful job I did painting the left breast - ah well - propriety won out... 

No post is complete without a cat picture... so here is my latest foster failure, Stratton, aka Bratty Stratty.  She is actually very sweet except she's at that stage where feets under the sheets are wa-ay too tempting.  She's half Siamese, has one slightly crossed eye and chronic sinusitis - which is why she's ended up staying with me,  

Ch- ch - ch - ch - changes... And an Altar that is a series within a series...

Recently I posted this 24 x 24 landscape that I had finished quickly for an event.  Bringing it home and living with it a bit, I found it lacked something.   A friend suggested horses, and at first I couldn't see them.  But like the figures in a Harry Potter photograph or painting, they entered the frame and moved across the surface until I found them lolling there.  There was a Dylan song with the line: All the tired horses in the sun, how'm I s'posed to get any riding done...   Yes, these could be Dylan's horses, basking in the sunny golden grasses.

Fields of Gold - 24 x 24 acrylic on deep cradle panel - now at Sautee Gallery for the Fall show.. 

I also softened the tree's foliage.  It looks complete to me now.  I do love those "empty" spaces in landscape, though.  I'll prolly be doing another version of this - sans equine - until I get it right, or the horses move in again.

Original version. 

Still painting!

A couple of photographs of Where Horses Go, acrylic on mahogany headboard.  48 x 24.  I posted both of these as the color is more accurate in the first one, but the focus is better in the second.  I'm having a lot of focusing trouble with my little Panasonic digital.  Painting is currently being shown at the Sautee-Nacoochee Galleries.

The writing at top is this quote:  
"Somewhere... somewhere in times' own space, there must be some sweet pasture space,
where creeks sing on and tall trees grow -some paradise where horses go.      - Stanley Harrison

Where Horses Go

What Lies Beyond

What Lies Beyond, 24 x 24, acrylic on deep cradle panel

I painted this one a couple of weeks ago for a theme show entitled "Magical Mystery Tours." If I am working on a series, I don't like to jump away to indulge a thematic whim, but I've learned that one can usually find a way to work within a theme by keeping an open mind and not becoming too literal in interpretation. Literal is often so banal, anyway.

For me, the painting sets a certain mood as did Standing Stillness - and the next in the series which I will try to get posted later today.

Blue Velvet Bay

I'd come across this horse in a pen at the side of the highway and I was so taken with the amazing color of the horse and the brilliant red tin of the building, that I had to get some photos. Even then, I was picturing this horse with his glorious color and the red building in the background as a future painting. I posted one of the photos on my sidebar labeled (ha ha) Blue Roan? - making all the horsey people wince - and I wrote this about the photographs I'd taken.

I've been letting this painting percolate until this past week. On my Wednesday "demo day" I did two mock-ups (pictured left) neither of which pleased me compositionally. I felt the hues of the foreground were about right, but I wanted a more abstracted painterly look, not a classic landscape. In the mock-up, the red building was taking over - and for me this painting was all about the horse. I came up with the final layout while drawing on the panel in chalk, as I did not want to be doing a paint-over this close to show time.

I thought I'd finished - and even took photographs. And looking at the photos on my computer realized the eye, muzzle and head were too detailed and fussy, so I went back and changed them to the version seen here. It's another large one: 30 x 34, on deep cradle panel.

This is the last painting for the March show at the Heritage Center Gallery. The show will open Monday, March 1 and run through the 31st. Here's the original look at the horse and red shed.

The blue roan photo... explained...

I photographed that comely steed a few months back, but didn't download the photos until recently. I was quite taken with the blue-black sheen of the horses coat against the red, red, red of the freshly painted tin - and I immediately wanted to capture the image for a future painting.

At the time the photos were taken, I couldn't get very close to the fence or the horse because he was penned adjacent to a bridge reconstruction. Heavy equipment had rendered the road and berm impassable so I took the shots from my vehicle window using the maximum range of a telephoto lens. When I finally looked at the photos on my computer, I was distressed to see the very tight halter that I had failed to notice in my excitement over colors and compositional factors.

A halter should never fit tightly. In this case you can easily tell this horse would have great difficulty chewing his feed as the halter would make it nearly impossible for him to open his jaws! A halter should not be left on a horse in pasture in any case as it can snag on a tree, fence or another horse.

The location is thirty or thirty-five miles from my home - or I'd have driven right there to remove that thing. Instead I called the animal control for that town who referred me to the "livestock agent" for that county who referred me to "the equine guy" who referred me to an Atlanta office! Four phone calls later, I was assured someone would "look into it".

I think I'll take a drive tomorrow...