Open Studio(s)

Studio E will be open on Sunday December 20 from 10a.m. to 3p.m. for an end-of-the-year sale.  Refreshments and snacks provided!  I may also convince a few of the other artists in the collective to open their doors, too!  Please stop by, look at some work in progress and find a great deal on local art.  See you there! 

New work in progress

Some nice things are happening here on this much larger piece.  A little experimentation can go a long way.  Very wet pigments, plenty of dripping paint and multiple glazes are all coming together to create a nice surface.

I'm also rediscovering a source of inspiration I had misplaced.  My parents were stained glass artists and it's no exaggeration to say I grew up in beams of intensely colored Arizona sunlight that filtered through the windows my father constructed for the house.  The glass studio-- itself a room in the house --had an incredible variety of art glass manufactured by Bullseye, Spectrum, and others, and a few sheets were simply too beautiful to cut into.  While I was bringing down the blue from the top of this painting, the effect and color created as it began flirting with the reds below suddenly reminded me of a particular sheet of glass in the studio.  From that small memory came a wellspring of other memories and the rest of the day I spent thinking about the possibility of working in glass myself at some point.

For now I guess I'll focus on the painting.

Here's a detail from a very similar piece.

 

Be sure to visit the studio on October 10 & 11, from 10 am to 5pm, for the Whatcom Artist Studio Tour.  I think this one ought to be just about finished by then.  

You know that kind of light....

This small piece is one of a series of small paintings I'm working on between the larger paintings.  I like the small pieces because they are cheap to frame and I can let them go for a song.  Additionally, not everyone has room for a larger piece.  These also look really fantastic in groups of two or three with the gilded frames.  It's like having a minuature museum wall.   

Whatcom Artist Studio Tour

While not part of the official tour, Studio E will be open for the 15th annual Whatcom Artist Studio Tour October 10-11, from 10am to 5pm. Fellow painter and studio neighbor Todd Horton is on the tour and it is the single best time of year to see a majority of his work and to pick up some great deals on art. I look forward to seeing you there!

New work and new work in progress will be posted soon!

A Prize!

Well, I've really done it this time. In the absence of pigment and something to paint upon, I used words. I subsequently submitted those words to the 4th annual Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest and, well, won! So my poem, along with nine other linguistic paintings, will be engraved and put on display for a whole year at the Bellingham Public Library's "Poetry Walk", right outside the library. The poem will also be printed up and displayed inside WTA buses for the same time period. There will be an awards ceremony and a public reading of the winning poems on Wednesday, May 13, 2009 in the Whatcom Museum of History and Art's Rotunda Room at 7:00pm sharp. It would be swell to see most of you.

Comparison

The finished painting above began with warmer tones groping for imagery:

When the painting arrived at this stage, elements of landscape could be recognized, so I began to bring down the sky and work some cooler greens on the horizon (using thin blue glazes over the orange and yellow) , yet the overall paining was still fairly abstract. I enjoy working in this gray area immensely-- the place where representation and abstraction come together-- but it can also cause frustration, especially when the abstraction does not yield.

Here is an example of an "unyielding" abstraction:


I still don't know what this is supposed to 'be', if anything. And I know that's part of the problem, sometimes: trying to force something to be what it really has no intention of being. Sometimes things are beautiful as they are. This painting isn't quite there yet, though.

New paintings

There are many paintings in progress at Studio E! This one is nearing a point where I'm ready to consider it finished. I am a fussy painter. It is very difficult for me to call a painting "finished"; in general, I don't consider a piece finished until one of two things happen: a) it is sold and leaves the studio, and/or b) I have lived with it hanging on a wall for at least six months without feeling like it needed more paint.

Every single painting, including the one above, has been a minimum of two other paintings during its stay in Studio E. For example, the texture at the bottom of the above painting used to represent a cloudy sky, right side up. The two horizontal lines above and below the trees were old horizon lines, one of which sat a crisply-defined waterline under the aforementioned clouds. Turn it upside down and it's a new painting altogether. A rich history exists here, and portions of the painting's past, along with the minutiae of brushstrokes and broken bristles, emerge with careful study.

The intention herein is to track the progression (and often, regression) of these creations. How in the world does this...


...emerge from nothing but a white expanse? What a fascinating process painting is! It will be a treat to share with you, dear readers, the process, progress, the frustrations and the unexpected discoveries.

Don't forget to come out to the Bellingham First Friday Art Walks and stop by the studio. 6-10pm. We'll have treats and refreshments and usually some great live bluegrass!