Good Vibes

Louise with Vibes
2022. Acrylic and collage on canvas. 14 x 18 in.

The Wonder Valley Friends show is now hung and waiting to open on Thursday at the 29 Palms Art Gallery, with reception on Saturday from 5-7.   There were five of us there but the process went smoothly; too many cooks did not spoil the broth, I’m happy to say.  The task was to integrate work from six different artists in one not overly large gallery, and we ended up mixing everything in together rather than creating sections for each artist.  The room is idiosyncratic, as it is the old adobe section of the historic gallery and has a fireplace and several niche-like alcoves that must be worked around.  But using group “spontaneous insight”, as organizer Joe Chaplain likes to put it, it all came together quite nicely.

It’s always a particularly arresting moment when your work comes out of the studio and is hung out in public for the first time.  The new context can cause its lifeforce to suddenly expand or even contract.  And I felt these small, brightly colored pieces gained dimension next to large abstracts by Adrian Field and Olive Toscani, gleaming photographs on metal by Perry Hoffman, a whimsical armchair by Doug Smith, and deeply subtle photographs by Joe Chaplain.  Joe also created a bottle tree sculpture, a sophisticated and artful version of a typical desert yard decoration.  The bottles were beautifully colored, and he decoupaged each with a “label” that was a modified photo of the various “friends” participating in the show.

Louise with Vibes is the largest of these collages that I’ve done so far.  The base color is a transparent iron oxide yellow.  I was not expecting to bring in primaries with the earth tones and neutrals, but that’s what the painting wanted.  So that’s what it got.  It’s one of seven collages that will be in the show.

Eve Swings

Eve Swings
2022. Acrylic, charcoal, collage on canvas. 12 x 12 in.

Got the paintings back from the framers, and I’m very happy with them.  No surprise there; Plaza always does a super job.  So I just need to make some labels and they’ll be ready for hanging the show on Monday.  Relieved!  That’s one thing I can check off the list.

And I can’t complain, the studio is very close to checking off, as well.  The painter will finish tomorrow and, gotta say, it looks nice!  It may not have looked this good even when it was new – and that was a very, very long time ago.  What it’s lost in vintage authenticity and ramshackle charm it’s made up in simple, clean freshness.  It looks veritably sprightly!  I did use shingles that are in line with the original look, and a slightly cool gray color not far off from where the cabin started.  So, in sum, it looks almost like a dream version of the old cabin, renewed. A few minor items remain but those may be completed over the weekend, we’ll see.  Tomorrow I start taking old shingles and other debris to the dump.

The above painting, Eve Swings, had a twisting (okay, tortured) path to completion.  I loved the big olive-y green shape with the pink base color, the torn white piece, and the smaller red square-ish, but things went through a lot of changes from there.  There were a couple more pieces intended, but once I got this far I changed my mind and left it in this simpler state.  The orange and red rod shapes retained their edges, conveying the halo effect I noted in my last post.  I don’t think this photograph gives the colors their due; their cool but juicy interplay in the original is a big part of the “swing”.  LOVE reds; the infinity of reds gives me an infinity of pleasures.

Scrambling

For Juana
2022.  Acrylic, charcoal, collage on canvas. 14 x 11 in.

Life has been generous with the curveballs lately, and I’m a little stressed out with trying to both keep up and keep from getting hit.  I think the only reason I’m able to settle down and write a post today is that yesterday I finally got my paintings safely deposited with the framer and feel secure they will be ready for the “Wonder Valley Friends” exhibition opening two weeks from today at the 29 Palms Art Gallery.  When last I posted I had expected I would be getting them in to the framers the next day, and I was much surprised on that visit to learn my venerable long-time framers don’t deal in the particular frames I wanted to use.  Yikes!  Not what I expected to hear!  So then the scramble was on, the mad details of which I’ll spare you, but I did eventually find what I wanted on-line, the two suppliers were surprisingly prompt and well-packaged in their shipping, and yesterday the batch of seven paintings and their intended frames were delivered for assembly to my regular framers.

But that little drama pales beside the larger disruptions, the greatest of which is the construction happening on my studio.  It’s needed re-siding since…well, since before I even bought the place, but I loved the original look and didn’t want to change it.  But my property insurer was less enamored of the vintage look and demanded I replace the ancient disintegrating shingles or lose coverage.  The journey from there has involved all the distresses familiar to our current climate such as shortage of skilled ready labor, shortage of supplies, lost materials, late deliveries, etc., plus some associated wild-card mishaps such as motorcycle accidents (not mine), failing septic systems, and vehicle breakdowns.  The last couple months have been an adventure, and not a fun one.

Be all that as it may, at this moment the old shingles are off the studio, new windows are installed, plywood sheathing and black paper wrap are in place, and half the new shingles are up. The yard is a jumble of materials and tools and the interior of the studio a mess, but progress is now swift and in a few weeks I believe all will be back to rights.  I can’t wait.

Above is another of the new collages, this one also featuring charcoal.  I got a similar speckled result from the main color layer that had also occurred on the preceding piece, “Karma”.  Once again, I rather liked it.  Notably in this painting I retained the translucent edges of the collage pieces rather than trimming them off.  The combination of slight reflectivity and cloudy translucence bestows a kind of aura around the shapes that appeals to me.  So this piece marks a distinct development in my handling of the edges of my collage bits, a development that has continued in following works.  Counting the days until I can get back in the studio and do some more.

Karma

Karma
2022.  Acrylic, charcoal, collage on canvas. 12 x 12 in.

Karma.  One of the new collages I’ll be featuring in the “Wonder Valley Friends” group show at the 29 Palms Art Gallery in April.  I’ve been working on these steadily but just finally got some more photos last week.  I’ll be taking maybe half a dozen of the paintings to the framer’s on Wednesday, which should be fun.

The camera had a challenge capturing the finely spotted appearance of the phthalo turquoise pigment.  I’m not sure why the paint separated as it did.  Perhaps it was the airbrush medium I used to thin it, or perhaps it was the preparatory layers of fixative I sprayed on the charcoal causing the paint to kind of bead up.  Anyway, I liked it!  Chance, rather than control, governs the initial stages of these collages.

It’s not generally advisable to have a big bright red shape almost in the middle of your painting.  Common principles of composition oppose it.  But as soon as I placed this collage shape there, I accepted it.  That’s probably when the name – Karma – came to me, as well.  An asymmetrical wheel of life.

I haven’t been posting much lately.  It’s a combination of changing feelings about the work and a period of naturally arising silence.  Although, as always, my mind never stops, I don’t feel like sharing the insights.  They seem either depressing or inconsequential, in the grand scheme of things.  People don’t need more depressing thoughts just now, right?  And there are sooo many words and images drowning us every day, I recoil at the idea of adding more.

But nevertheless I continue working happily and steadily in the studio, fully engaged, and generally pleased with the results although not always, of course.  Experiments sometimes flat-out fail, or take us on a troublesome journey before resolving.  It’s the nature of the beast.  The nature of adventure.

Adventure

snapshot of work in progress

You think you’ve seen this before, but you haven’t.  You’ve seen an earlier study of the same subject – what I’m thinking of as Time, Vodka, Mandarins.  Again, acrylic and pastel on paper.  If you saw it in real life you’d see it was stapled to a piece of foamboard and bordered with white tape.  There’s a few more changes I want to make to this; we’ll see if I actually get to them.  I’m already working on a third study.  

I’ve been pondering why I’m so averse to portraying form, as in three-dimensional perspective.   I’m quite capable of doing it; in fact, I have to work to not do it. Instead, I like a flattened surface that, if it has depth, it is only depth created with texture or such design elements as color or temperature or scale.  Abstraction and the deconstruction of perspective are other ways to avoid it, as in how I handled the homestead cabins in the Additional Dimensions series.  

Every time a piece veers towards modeling I quickly get irritated – literally hot under the collar – and bored.  Resentful, even.  The feeling that happens is that of a shift to the other part of my brain – the part that analyzes and makes calculations.  There’s a time and a place for that, of course, but it feels like work.  And I’m not painting to feel like I have a job.  I’m painting to have an adventure.  

On another note:  I hung some paintings today at the one-and-only Glass Outhouse Art Gallery in Wonder Valley as part of “Buh-Bye to 2021“, a group show curated by Suzanne Ross.  The show runs Dec 1-26 (including Christmas Day), with opening reception this Saturday 1-5 pm.  For the display I elected to bring several of my Bell Poems.  I thought they might be a quiet spot in the blizzard of works on view, not to mention the general chaotic conditions of this year soon ending. 

The Blue Pot

The Blue Pot
2019.  Acrylic on canvas. 14 x 14 in.

I have a heavy (very heavy) blue ceramic pot that I picked up second-hand a few years ago.  It’s square in shape but with the sides slightly rounded and an unusual, wavy, multi-level lip around the top edge.  I’ve actually never planted anything in it, although plants get temporarily placed in it sometimes.  It’s pretty groovy.

I wanted to make a painting with it, and did some sketches a couple years ago.  It was tricky finding an approach that caught the aspects of it that interested me.  But I found this close-cropped, straight-on angle satisfying.  I was also at the time particularly interested in how Matisse handled pattern, and how often it showed up in his work.  So a little patterning got added to the sketch.  The palette was very simple, just raw sienna, phthalo blue, and a yellow, probably cadmium.  The drawing was brushed on the canvas very loosely, and my main interest was the intensity and weight of the blue.  I was not quite satisfied with the block of raw sienna in the upper right, and added the blue discs.

I liked the painting well enough but didn’t see where it fit in with the rest of my work.  I didn’t expect to show it at Open Studio Art Tours.  But on a whim I hung it up to replace another work that had sold, and it was quickly bought by a younger fellow who was furnishing his Mid-Century Modern mobile home.  He showed me some photos of the trailer and I must say it was pretty cool.  I was intrigued at the idea of this work in there.

When he and his friends were leaving they spotted the original blue pot on top of a low wall in my yard.  They were pretty excited to see it.  I’m kind of surprised they recognized it from this painting.  Says something, I guess.

Granite and the National Park Art Expo

snapshot of Granite VIII in new frame

When I dropped off my painting at the 29 Palms Art Gallery yesterday, more entries were arriving by the moment to join those already leaning against the wall.  They’ll be hung before next Thursday, when the 9th Annual Joshua Tree National Park Juried Art Exhibition officially opens.  I must say, I was impressed by the other entries (now viewable on-line at the JTNPArts website).  Some really inspired works this year, from all over California and the nation.  I am honored to be showing among them. 

You can see in the snapshot above what my entry looks like in its frame.  I happened to already have this frame in the studio, and I thought that it went well with the painting.  Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while may recognize this piece from the Granite series I was working on last year.  I set it aside as I thought it might be a good fit for the JTNP show, and I was really pleased when it was accepted.    

But now my attention is back on P-A-I-N-T-I-N-G.  Finally!  Open Studio Art Tours was a major interruption in my work process, and I can’t wait to get back to it.  (I’m not nearly as nice a person when I can’t work, let me tell you!)  Yesterday I finished turning the studio back into a studio, instead of a gallery, and life feels normal again.  So look for more new work soon!  🙂 

Bond

Carbon 7
2021. Acrylic and graphite on canvas. 14 x 18 in.

It’s interesting to witness someone bonding with a piece of art.  As the creator of the work, it can be very exciting to watch the viewer see in the work something that you put in there.  It may not be exactly what most excites you about the work; the response always relies to some degree on what the viewer themselves bring to it.  But in the best situations, the two of you connect through something in the work that you both share, something you both can see and feel and may never have had another way to express.  A connection that the artwork allows you, together, to discover. 

The Open Studio Art Tours gives me a unique opportunity to witness that bond develop, right in my studio, in my world, where I create it.  There are no intermediaries.  No distance.  No separation. 

The above work, Carbon 7, marked a departure in the Carbon series in that I introduced graphite as well as a deliberate gray shape.  Because of that, it took me a while to decide if it belonged in the collection.  I made another piece around the same time that included graphite, and ultimately I excluded that one from the series.  But Carbon 7 made it in.  I liked the expansion it signaled.  It felt right. 

The person who bought it has purchased my work in the past and, as with this one, seems invariably drawn to the slight outlier, the work that in its difference reveals the heart of a collection.  She sees something that I see.  It is a wonderful, and very special, connection.  

Mop Up

Satellite Beach
2021. Acrylic on canvas. 16 x 12 in.

Whoosh!  Hwy 62 OSAT 2021 is over (for me – there is another weekend to come for many artists), and I’m exhausted but really glad I did it.  OF NOTE:  I will be leaving my work up in the studio through next weekend if anyone who did not have a chance to come by would like to see it.  Contact me and we’ll set up a time.

I’ll have more to say in other posts about the experience, but right now I’ll just note that everything went smoothly, all our preparations served us well, paintings went to new homes, and many wonderful art conversations were had.  Thanks to everyone who came by!  It was so satisfying to finally be seeing friends again, both old and new.

And now I can start obsessing about my artwork again, hah!  Satellite Beach, above, started at the same time and in the same way as Lighthearted, early in the year, but this one took much longer to declare complete.  It was a different process than I’ve been using lately, with an emphasis on mixing and balancing the colors – yellow iron oxide, Indian yellow, phthalo turquoise, and violet oxide, plus of course black and white.  The textured canvas gives the colors extra depth and the transparent colors more strength.  I hope to do more in the vein of Satellite Beach and Lighthearted.  I’m happy to say both of these paintings have found folks who love them.

I have lots to reflect upon in terms of the responses I observed to the work I had up.  Almost every collection got at least some love, and odd pieces did as well.  I must say it was encouraging.

If you want to see the show for yourself this week let me know and we’ll set something up!

A Beautiful Weekend

Snapshot of wall of mandalas – OSAT 2021

I survived, my friends, and actually had a great time!  The first weekend of Hwy 62 Open Studio Art Tours was stunningly beautiful and only a little breezy; I couldn’t have asked for better.  It was so wonderful to see in actual person many old friends and also to meet new neighbors – just like the old days.  (Wasn’t sure we’d ever feel that again…)  

Miss B.’s signs were perfect and so far as I know no one got lost.  Okay, one visitor did get stuck in the sand but it was nowhere near us so I’m blaming Google Maps.  Remember, friends:  Don’t rely on the app or Google maps!  Follow the directions in the catalog!

The mandalas fairly flew off the wall and half are now gone.  You can see them as they were hung above, with the Aquaria spread across the bookcase below.   

And – my favorite thing – there were plenty of conversations about art, and excuses for me to talk about my paintings which, as readers of this blog know, I can do at infinite length.  

We’ll do it all again next weekend, of course, but for anyone who can’t make the weekend I’m happy to set up an appointment if you want to come by sometime this week.  Just send me a message. 

None of it would have happened without the skilled and untiring efforts of Miss B., who made an inviting courtyard for those arriving and those who wished to linger. 

And of course, there were cookies.  Thanks to Richard for baking and bringing by oatmeal-coconut-apricot delectables in his traditional contribution to kick things off, and to Valerie for even more cookies!