Sunday, September 30, 2012

September Round-Up

Today I dropped off a bunch of paintings to Plum Gallery, located on 9 Aviles Street in St. Augustine. I am excited to have new work there for the next six months, with the first of many ArtWalks taking place this Friday. If you can come by on Friday between 5-9pm, I will see you there. 

Below are cleaned up images of the paintings you have seen in various states of creation in the recent past. Taking stock of the work today, made me realize how much darker my palette has become over the past year. I have changed my painting medium, and really tried to push layering transparency. Often I think the work has a life of its own, and I am just along for the ride.

Easter, 5" x 7", oil on panel
Floating Feet, 7" x 5", oil on panel
Nap in the Orange Chair, 5" x 7", oil on panel
Ocean Waves, 7" x 5", oil on panel
Potluck, 5" x 7", oil on panel
Sand Fort, 5" x 7", oil on panel
Turn Around, 7" x 5", oil on panel
4H Farm for Chase's 6th, 20" x 24", oil on canvas


Brown Dog, 12" x 9", oil on canvas

Ode to Bummer, 9" x 12", oil on canvas

Birthday Cake Parade, 36" x 24", oil on canvas


 




Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Tuesday to Tuesday

This week.....

Friday Night: I attended an artist talk at Plum Gallery with Laura Mongiovi, a wonderful colleague and fellow artist.  Images of her visually supple and amazing work can be found here. Listening to Laura discuss her background and process made me really excited to get into the studio, and very thankful to work with such talented individuals. 


This Weekend: I spent family time celebrating my husband's birthday, we watched football and ate borsch. Below is an adorable photo of our nephew with our dog at the in-laws!


And then some paintings:

This is the painting that I can't quite seem to finish. Every time I think it's done, it's not. I have left this painting in the studio declaring victory too many times! I know it has the best of me at this point, but I am stubborn. I am hoping to loosen up the marks and trick it into something cohesive. We will see. I mostly hate everything but the girl bending over in the creek. Of course she is the figure I have touched the least, I really need to leave things alone more.


A new start on a small 9" x 12" painting, based on a single source photo. This painting features my mother, myself, our dog "bummer" (great name, thanks mom), and my brother's hands. I am most excited about my brother's hands, floating arms are really in this season with my paintings!





Finally, I am working on a group of 7" x 5" paintings. I posted two last week. Here is a shot of the four recently completed, followed by two close-ups made this week.  You can tell the time of day changes, because my carpet color shifts.




Wednesday, September 12, 2012

(school)work

With the fall semester fully in swing, it can be very challenging to keep up with creating new work. Luckily I have several deadlines that are forcing me to stay on top of working (at making art, not teaching it)! Next month my work goes back up at Plum Gallery, located on Aviles St. in St. Augustine. At the end of October-November, the collaborative works between Liz Robbins and myself will be on display at Flagler's CEAM (Crisp Ellert Art Museum). In January, I have a solo show scheduled at Florida School of the Arts in Palatka.

Point being, outside of teaching, I still have a lot of work to do. I left my house at 8:45am this morning and am just stopping now to sit down and write this post (with the exception of my 45 minute dinner break). With all of this said, I would like to point out that I am not complaining because I throughly love every minute of the whirlwind that is my life. I recognize how lucky I am to be in this position.

So on to the work...I promised my Exhibit Portfolio class that I would post weekly, since I am asking them to do the same thing...so hopefully I will be able to keep up the bargain. This is what I have been up to.

To double check the feasibility and outcome of a drawing one assignment here is a 45 minute blind contour self-portrait. It is pretty entertaining!


On to the birthday cake painting, which I'm pretty confident will be titled Birthday Cake Parade. At this point I think the painting is finished, but nothing is safe until it has left my house, so who knows. On a side note, this photo is terrible and I promise a better on in the near future.


The next painting has really shifted significantly in the past couple of painting sessions. At first, I realized that my brother's head (the little boy on the right) was too small, then too big, then the figures were all too orange...etc. Long story short, the painting has really changed dramatically, while appearing to stay almost exactly the same. I think the title for this one, will be taken from the back of one of the photographs, "At the 4H Farm for Chase's 6th Birthday Party". Since taking the last image, my mom's mouth has already changed a little, but overall I am a lot happier with the painting. 







Finally, I am working on 4 tiny-small commissions that I will share upon completion. Outside of that, I have two more small paintings to share, both are 7"x 5" and feature my most adorable nieces. On a tangental note, my BFF is also visiting her parent's condo this week and I took several photos of her amazingly adorable daughters on the beach (which will hopefully make their way into a couple of paintings). My oldest niece is officially the age I was when I first met my friend Kari, and the painting of her and her sister in the ocean makes me think of being in eighth grade again.





Thursday, September 6, 2012

+2 to online

So this past week I dove off the deep end and started a Facebook Page so you can follow/like me there in addition to reading about my work here. Pretty soon this will just turn into a never ending loop. In that spirit, I am including the Portlandia clip that I previously posted on my personal Facebook Page to introduce my "public artist page". Following the completion of this post on the blog, I will probably link it to both FB pages...that's right folks I'm truly in the "technology loop" (the Portlandia reference is not a joke)!

So on that note...here is the progress made on my recent long painting with a birthday cake. Not sure what the title will be. It's 36" x 24". Please pardon the glare, I am mostly painting at night now, so the surface is much more difficult to capture with my iphone.
Additionally, here are two new tiny-smalls...
and finally 2 new drawings from poems. Both drawings are graphite and white acrylic paint on 9" x 12".