Artistic voice

The piece above is entitled "What if?" It came about because I wondered what would happen if I painted across my blocks before they were assembled. This is a typical situation I often find myself in.

Kim Ritter asked about artistic voices and suggested we share about our own. hmmm. Since I am in the midst of a stylistic transition this might be a good time to address the subject. First of all, for me, the inital tickle I usually feel for a new work is almost always based on a supposed color grouping. I just love to see what happens when certain colors are combined. Occasionally I am surprised because the colors I imagined being combined I "saw" with vastly different proportions than I executed. Those proportions can make a huge difference.

Currently, I am exploring more drawing skills. My paternal grandmother was an exquisite watercolor painter of botanicals. She didn't even start painting until she was at least 65. Her work looks like illustrations from a field guide of wildflowers. But she drew from collected specimens. While I find I have little desire to create artwork that simply replicates nature- I do find that I am drawn to botanicals as a subject matter for increasing my drawing skills. I don't want to get terrbly detailed. I find I am more interested in capturing the essence or gesture rather than the exactness.

I just bought a sumi painting book and materials and hope to play with that as a means for exploring gesture. I would love to find a local life drawing group-- although here in my small town the chances are rather remote. My interest in drawing figures is in defining long curves and sweeps.

What keeps me going from one piece to the next is the tickle-- the itch. I'll wonder... what would happen if? and off I go!

Bass Ackwards: Poppy

Here is the version I did in Black and White. You'll see the poppy image later as I add images that include the painting on the back.

On Bass Ackwards: Sunflower ( the one in greens)I painted the back with stamps I created to make a large sunflower arrangement.. But I painted it entirely in Black- because the colors of the backing fabric hid all the other colors I tried to paint them. So it is a silhouette. Such a tease. I'll try to shoot photos tomorrow so you can see what I am talking about.

Wednesday is a big day for me. I am finally bringing my work to my new gallery in Hot Springs. Blue Moon Art Gallery. I'm adding a link from here as well as from my website.

My work has just been returned from the MADI Museum in Dallas. I THINK a review has been wirtten. I am awaiting final word on that. Fingers crossed.

Since I am no longer going to be on the road, I have been redoing the front portion of my studio space to include a small gallery of my work. I just want to be comfortable bringing in a potential collector---instead of experienceing excruciating embarrassment at such a trashed out studio. It is coming along. My part-time assistant and I have painted one room and will do the 2nd one as soon as we've removed ll extraneous furniture. Don't worry-- as soon as it is done I'll shoot photos. I've made use of my track lighting from my booth set-up and am using the same chain/ shower curtain hanging mechanism I used in my booth. It works quite well. I have a REAL challenge in using my space. All the walls up front are paneling glued to glazed ceramic bricks. So I can't hang directly from the walls. Then, I have only the ceiling frm which to mount my pipes/ hanging devices.... I KNOW... images, images images. Patience dear ones.

Bass Ackwards: Bee Balm

Whew! big deadline came and went. I've been knee deep in this project for over three weeks now--non stop. I especially wanted to have this work done in time to enter it in an exhibition that has a particular juror who I wanted to see my work.

This first piece you saw as a quilt top - well here it is quilted. I used the bee balm imagery blown WAY up. The colors are primarly reds, oranges and blacks/ grays. The flowers are in various shades of pinks and lavendars.

This piece is Bass Ackwards: Sunflower. the colors are deep greens, citreons and eggplant. What you can't see the sunflower quilting? I'll give a detail on my followup post.

I have also done this in simply black and white. The flower that is quilted into it is a poppy. It'll be in a followup post.

Right now I am zombie. The last 2 days I put in over 13 hours a day and previous to the 4th I was at it for about 8 hours a day for many, many days. I took off on the 4th because we had our annual 4th of July bash-- which is always a lot of fun, but poorly timed this year. I've promised my husband for days that I would be more available for household participation after this deadline. I wonder what he has planned for me?

Next week I'll be working on making the front part of my studio more of a gallery space. Since I am not going on the road any more for art festivals I'll use my lights etc. to make my gallery show off my work. Since I got it cleaned up last week-- I didn't personally do it-- I was workiing on deadline, remember?-- I'll get it painted and then hang the lights. I'll hang a picture rail as well to simplify hanging. oh yeah-- and I'll finally be getting down to my new gallery in Hot Springs to deliver work...then to Dallas to pick up what remains from the MADI Museum show.

Then maybe I'll finally get around to income tax...ugh