Steps and Stages

I'm honored to be invited once again to be the guest artist at the Ursuline College Art Therapy and Counseling Department /Cuyahoga Community College Pre-Art Therapy Dept. Tenth Annual Exhibit, Lecture and workshop. This year the theme is Simplicity: Creating a Vision of Doing More with Less.

This is 72 x 44" unstretched canvas tapestry is in process. It can be seen in an earlier stage in the last post...included here are a few details.

Lately I've been inspired, in my work, to pare things down. Simplicity and simplifying are concepts that I have embraced, in terms of this artist's lifestyle, for many decades.

Even so I have not often applied the idea to my use of color. I suppose more than anything else I am a colorist. I am intoxicated by rich and layered hues. So I'm experimenting and simplifying the colors within this painting. First using a customary riot of color and then applying layers of glazes to 'fog' or quiet down the color range.

I enjoyed realizing that the planet Neptune, which is often thought of as 'a fog' is coming to kiss my sun for the one and only time in my life and, perhaps as a result, I find myself particularly enamoured these days by all things natural... when seen through a veil of mist...the idea of being cocooned and contained within fog simply thrills me.

There are two other canvas that will be traveling along with this one and hopefully they will be posted in the next few days...in bold contrast.

Thank you so much for any comments you may have regarding this unfolding.
Happy day.

Egrets post for Sharmon

click on image to enlarge

Sharmon made a request and so here...

are the three paintings posted yesterday from the series 'Bird Watching'.

Titled: 'Lake Smith #1', 'Lake Smith #2' and 'Daybreak'.

Each work is on canvas 20 x 24" and in each I'm playing with my customary layers and scratchings. In #1 and #2 the flower centers are filled with glitter glue and just to play with the surface a bit more I've varnished all three in combinations of flat and gloss to give the impression of water reflecting juxtaposed with the dull quality of the early morning fog.

Thanks and enjoy Sharmon!

Bird's Eye

As 'Memoir in Two Chapters' unfolded from June 8-September 11 this little trio of new paintings took their place at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia for the Faculty Exhibit.

They're from the current series 'Birdwatching'. I've been a bird watcher all my life. Recently I've been enjoying the elegant and focused beauty of watching Egrets move about in the cove. I can see them from my kitchen window or my garden. They are highly independent and most often solitary and yet from time to time they will consent to sharing the shoreline, particularly when the Cormorants are herding fish beneath the surface waters...a great ballet, a wonderful sight.

A college student recently reviewed one of the Egret paintings in this series titled 'Still Point' .

And for those interested in a lovely artist newsletter visit Heron Dance. A recent quote:

The most demanding part of living a lifetime as an artist is the strict discipline of forcing oneself to work along the nerve of one's own most intimate sensitivity. -Anne Truitt sculptor.

In the Studio

I've been considering the current economic climate, the environment and the state of the world. I've been wandering in the woods and remembering a story about a famous scientist, who when threatened with a debilitating illness, sent his care giver out to retrieve a bucket of mud from the river. The scientist thrust his hands into the warm river mud and began to replay the most pleasant scenes of his childhood...mornings spent at the river as his mother washed the clothes. While she worked she told him stories as he played in the warm river mud. Now all these years later he heals himself by reliving those happiest of times.

I feel inspired by this idea and endeavor to recreate for myself similar memories of times when I feel most at home in the world. From this approach there are new paintings arriving, and to honor my joy I'm calling this series 'Bird Watching'. All my life I've been drawing the 'winged ones'. I've always been inspired and uplifted by birds and their ability to maneuver between earth and sky.

Do you have your 'bucket of mud' at the ready? Plunge your hands into the element(s) that help to bring you back into harmony...we deserve to remember our way back home.