New Collages

                                                                          "Hubble"

                                                                     "About Time"

                                                                   "Strange Breed"

                                                                        "Vacation"

                                                                       "Godiva 3"

                                                         "Self Portrait As A Sunflower"

                                                                       "Dr Caligari"

                                                                      "Dandylion"

Color Studies

With a firm grounding in Josef Albers theory, for many years I've expanded my understanding of color with painted studies.

The study above uses various yellows and reds, several with the same color name but from different brands. These have been painted over black stripes to show variations in transparency. Towards the top of the canvas, white has been mixed with each color. Towards the bottom, each color has been mixed with black.

My paintings have almost always been highly saturated. Recently, I've been attracted to more subtle hues, but find them a challenge.

The next two studies are investigations into these low key colors, attempts to combine tans and grays with bright colors. Perhaps my next study will eliminate the fully saturated hues completely.

One of my challenges will be to create an exciting, yet non-illusionistic space with these grayed tones. Another may be the elimination of the complimentary color combinations that I often use as a way of adding excitement and emotional content.

The stripes in the next canvas play with the contrast between flat and textured color areas, contrasts of light and dark values, and near compliments which aren't adjacent.

The balance of warm to cool is in an opposite proportion to my usual one, which would be mostly cool to a lesser amount of warm.

I've also tried to include some colors that I normally find unpleasant, using a balance in the amount of each color and adjacent value relationships to make the colors integral to the whole.

Following the stripe painting is an entire canvas painted with transparencies, glazes of color layered one on the other.

First, horizontal stripes were painted, about 3/4 inch apart. Then more substantial (in the amount of pigment) stripes were painted, 3/4 inch apart, vertically.

The white spaces between the overlapping stripes were painted black, to increase the illusion of transparency. I was surprised at the intensity and drama of the "stained glass"effect.

My original intention of understanding the colors created by the overlapping transparencies offered me some pleasant surprises too.

In the last image, shown below, hard and soft edges and seemingly random color selections create interesting spatial relationships.

Tea Wrappers and Painting

A rather abstract waterscape seemed compositionally complete, but totally unsatisfying. It said nothing that I wanted to communicate, nothing unique to me. So it sat in my studio, face to the wall, waiting.

Simultaneously, I was working on some collages, and also spending some time on acrylic color studies about transparency and space. My friend Denise had recently visited, and she had purchased a collage called "Tea Party". I had also been collecting the wrappers from tea bags, intrigued by their colors.

My friend Bill had commented during another studio visit that the painting shamefully facing the wall needed a geometric element, and voila! I knew the solution.

My 24" X 60" painting, with a collaged grid of superimposed tea bag wrappers, can be seen to the right.Weird spacial connections occurred at the junction of organic and geometric images with colors appearing and disappearing depending on their similarity or difference to what was behind or adjacent. I suppose other connections could be made to the friends who donated their tea bags, or to the ritual cup of tea my husband and I have each evening. My life outer and inner lives colliding.

Two More Weeks/ Cabbage

OK, I promise to only write about this again when the cabbages are ready for harvest, but I feel as if I'm watching Jack's (from the beanstalk) garden grow. When will the giant show up? These gorgeous leaves, which belong to the most mundane of vegetables, compel me to check in several times a day, and seem to have grown each time I visit.

When painting foliage in the past, I have often remarked that it seemed much easier to paint plants than to grow them. I'm re-thinking my position, with the possible exception of okra.

Two Weeks to Giant Cabbages

June 13, 2011 Giant leaves of purple cabbage.
May 31, 2011 purple cabbages.
June 13, 2011 Amazing growth in two weeks for my purple cabbages. That story about Jack and the Giant - was it about beans or cabbages? Notice the beans growing in the upper left of the photo, and the arugula right behind the cabbage. That much growth was unexpected, too.

I'm amazed at this growth. But even more amazed that, after about 20 years of not having a vegetable garden due to lack of a sunny location, I'm so excited every morning to water my vegetables, to do research about dealing with leafminers, and watch as seeds germinate and tiny plants poke out of the ground.

This growth process seems so magical, not unlike the process of watching a painting emerge on my canvas, take form and struggle through its adolescent phase before being a fully formed, satisfying expression.

Demo And Dialog- ASLD at Whole Foods

May 21, representing the Art Students League of Denver, I did a Demo and Dialog at the Whole Foods Market in Capitol Hill, Denver, for an audience of about 30 people.

It was my first outdoor painting experience of the season - sort of a "warm-up for my Plein Air class that begins June 1 through the ASLD.

Demonstrating , to me, is always fraught with anxiety. It's not that I'm shy about speaking to groups - I'm not. And I enjoy showing my set up for Plein Air, because it's a bit different than that used by most artists. A Feather-Lite easel, a Pac-Seat stool, a small Masterson palette with a sponge. etc. But each time I begin a painting, I try to forget all that I know and begin a-fresh, seeking some connection with my subject unlike my previous work. I don't have rules. I don't have a standard way to begin - things I do first, or after. I enjoy the freshness a struggle often imparts to my work, and an occasional discovery of a new way of working. But I do look for something that moves me, and occasionally try to clarify what that "something" is. No surrounding city-scape, visible from my painting location and which was supposed to be the subject of my demo on the Whole Foods patio, inspired me.

So I just dove into a painting of the vegetable plants, and soon was as lost as my students frequently seem. The drawing kept changing, the colors wouldn't work spatially, the air was dry and my paints kept drying too. I had two hours, an audience, and an ego that wanted to produce a recognizable, balanced, well composed image.

My solution was to do a new painted line drawing in a dark color over my unstructured mess. The results, which pleased me, are above.

My Fibonacci Garden, Almost

Our backyard is surrounded by trees, creating shade so complete that to grow anything , I need to beg and plead. Even hostas think this deep shade too unwelcoming, and refuse to grow. Painting vegetables and flowers is so much easier than growing them!

So when the grass next to our driveway (in the front of our home) died from too much sun and a lack of water, I began to plan our container vegetable garden.

I found concrete planter blocks at a garden supply store which I used to create raised containers, hoping that passing canine friends would leave their messages elsewhere. These were placed directly on the soil, and surrounded by rocks. I chose a pattern of fibonacci numbers, placing the blocks in groups of 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8 - although the store ran out of my blocks and I'll need to wait a few more weeks to complete the "8" group.

Fibonacci numeric sequences are found in so many growing things, from cactae, artichokes and sunflowers to the human body. The golden ratio of 1 to 1.618, from which the fibonacci sequence derives, is the beauty defining ratio in the history of art, and both have frequently inspired my paintings. What better design inspiration for my first vegetable growing endeavor in many years?

So now the plants are in the ground, the seeds sewn, and I'm crossing my fingers that all is not washed away by the rain that has been a constant all day.