The next one is a two person exhibit, Texas Women with Brushes,  at Jack Meier Gallery, 2310 Bissonnet, Houston, TX on May 4, 2013. The artists reception will be 6-8 pm on May 4, with the exhibit continuing through May 25. Please come by and say hello if you are in the vicinity.

Between the two of us you will see a different perspective on the land of Texas. LaNell Arndt lives on a farm in the hill country, and I live on a ranch/farm in the northeastern part of the state. She is a realist and I am committed to abstraction. It will be interesting to see the juxtaposition of the differing views of the land.

The largest painting I will be exhibiting is titled, Renewal, 48 x 96 inches, acrylic on two canvases.

For my purposes in this painting I used the color green and a coppery hue sine I remember reading that was a metal associated with the number 7.  My style of painting usually has a land or landscape feeling so I wanted incorporate the land/landscape and symbols of time, numbers, etc.

I used the previously mentioned colors on a 24 x 24 x 2 inch cradled panel and used encaustic paint, medium and some oil paint sticks. Since in the megalithic times, time has been counted by using stones and tally marks used as stones, etc. to mark periods of time (day, month, year). The 7 small rectangles represent 7 of these time periods and the tally marks also the same.

Of course, no one needs to know this information about the symbols in this painting, they might just appreciate it for an abstracted landscape. Apologies…this image is a little too blue but the other one was a little too pink…it’s just too cloudy today and this is a photo from my phone. It also has a haze over it that is not there in person…maybe needs more scraping and polishing and a brighter day.

Counting Time  encaustic/oil 24 x 24x 2″

We explored how an artist can screen print into waxed surfaces, make collagraphs to use in waxed paintings or all on their own. I don’t know if I will use the collagraph process that much since it is one that needs a press and I don’t have one. I do plan to see if I can gather my own materials to use the screen printing process into my work…….whether in acrylic or encaustic. I think his methods will work well for my own personal art/painting personality.

Jeff processed some line drawings/images for us before the workshop from our own work………..and showed and gave us instructions to do this on our own in our own studios in the future.

Here are images of some of my work from the workshop………….The ones with the green are 12 x 12 inch squares on wood panel…others are small panels or paper.

Today the work had set up some so I set out to add more paint…. same old, same old….. you add paint, you make marks, you cover them up and you make more. If you aren’t careful (and even if you are) you make mud. Well……….there is good mud, beautiful mud and just mud.

I was afraid I had the ‘just mud’ without enough contrast or spark there. SO it is time to take a photo with the handy i-phone and go back to the house. These are the pics I took without any lighting on them…just the light from the windows coming in but not strongly….. the full painting and a top and bottom detail shot.

36 x 24 x 2 inch oil on wood panel

That said…….I did set up of this idea up on a small 12 x 24 panel. Within 30 minutes I could tell, this just was not going to work for me although I had some of it all drawn out on two panels.

I just started mixing paint and before I knew it, I had the 12 x 24 covered with my landscape oriented work again. The encaustic really slows me down. That has it’s good points and bad points. By the end of the day, I decided that next session I would just add a bottom to a multiple panel or diptych piece 24 x 24 and see how that went.

It’s a nice painting….fresh and not over-worked. I’m still looking for something to challenge me but not in such a way as it is not my work. I want the slower evolution of my work to become better and better.

If I come up with something for the ’7′ show to enter, I’d love it, but if I don’t I will at least have a whole lot of new encaustic paintings in the studio.

This is the untitled diptych painting (taken with i-phone camera)………36 x 24x 2 inches on wood panel, encaustic

While these are considered fairly large for work with encaustic, they are not large compared to my other work. SO, this was also a goal of mine to make larger paintings. It is not as quick a process as with application of acrylic or oil since you are working with heavy panels and a medium that will run all over everything if you pour it on………I ended up not doing any pouring. I do think I will continue to use India and Sumi ink in some of my work. It lends a watercolor like quality to the work that I like. I think I need to go see if there are other colors of India ink though as not always will I want it to be this black.

There is something to be said for the slowing down of the process. You can get really lost in the process. Although you can get lost in other media as well, this is somewhat different in that I am mostly painting horizontally and having to put the panel up at the end of the session on the wall to come back later to see what I have. Working between the two panels therefore took a good bit of time. A LOT of viewing and determining if there was a need to add or  subtract more. I’m hoping that I have edited out enough. When I got to the point where I didn’t want to take anything out, soften something or add something then the painting is done.

With my next paintings I plan to use the hot pen to see where it will take me mixed in with the ink and wax………Stay tuned.

The titles are not set yet………. These remind me of my work called “Johnson Creek Summer” but they also make me think of the one called “Beneath The Surface”.

UPDATE:   I am considering the title “Efflorescence”, although efflorescence is more of a white or pale growth…for my purposes, black and gray can do……………

I’m having second thoughts on all these blacks, whites, grays………..but I am continuing.

I have to face the fact like usual at some point that I am going to have to quit making lots of little nuances and just negative paint the hell out of the painting. When that time comes it will work or it won’t.

I think I may have to go find some small sauce pans so I can pour some large amounts of paint.

So, far, I have not used anything else but encaustic paint and medium. I have limited my palette to grays, whites, black………but ended up with some areas of warmth in some of the whites. Due to the coolness of the other color, it almost looks ochre. Amazing what relationships will do with color.

I drug my convertible BEST easel into the encaustic room to get a little closer to the hot medium and paint. So far, I have gotten a good amount of paint layers on this work……..and a good bit of scraping back. I think I am going to have to go looking for a lot of small pans with handles so I can haul the hot paint to the panel instead of trying to get so close to the paint.

I am now going to put it aside and work on the other panel so I can get them both to a similar stage of finish before going in to work more.

There are two details and one of the whole panel shown here. I posted another detail on FB yesterday.

Still in the back of my mind were those two 30 x 40 x 2 inch wood panels over in the corner waiting for me to come and work on them. I had been considering oil with cold wax medium or encaustic. One day I just decided I would prep for encaustic since I had an idea for something I wanted to do with them. Not a real ordinary thing for me…ideas ahead of painting even one brushstroke. I do now and then though and have had to give in to the idea that sometimes ideas just don’t live up to your expectations. I find that just letting the painting go where it wants is good, whether or not I really have a firm idea or not.

What you say is the idea?  Those gesture ‘drawings I did back some time ago as just fun exercises on some large paper I had……..they are 30 x 44 inches………I used black and white paint and a little pencil, ink, and even some pastel……..One night I thought they might be just the thing to try out on the wood panels with encaustic. It would definitely be a challenge as encaustic paint just does not move like acrylic and liquid mediums generally speaking.

SO… right after the kids were gone from the holidays and I had rested up a little and got some errands and appointments over…………into the studio.

I now have two 30 x 40 panels with sumi and india ink brush drawings on them………..added pencil and any other thing I thought would be compatible under encaustic………….they were first coated with encaustic gesso (Holy Grail) from EvansEncaustics. There are other companies out there but Hylla made the first and I love using it.

I also have a layer of clear medium over the surface of both of these pieces and fused in………..ready for the next layer in the next session.

Below are just the photos of the beginning drawings……..

Back to the studio for me today. First thing is I have to finish a painting that I keep looking at across the studio. I finally just had to bite the bullet as the old saying goes and start painting on it. I didn’t like it the way it was… it was dead and the design was static and felt contrived to me. The only way out of that is to paint it all out or just get in there and put in a huge brush load of paint in some color that might work for the painting.

That was the way I went……. a huge brush load of paint right in the middle of the whole 40 x 60 x 2 inch acrylic on canvas. My husband who says he knows nothing of paintings just walked in and I showed him the painting and he said, “I’ve seen a lot of other ones with all the green, blue and yellow…….like the one you brought home from Mississippi.”  LOL…. it IS the one I brought home but now it looks a lot different now than that under-painting did. SO, he might have an eye after all. AND, yes I have been painting a lot of green or green and blue or yellow/ochre paintings. What else can I do when I am surrounded by the farm?

This picture is only an I-phone photo but it will suffice for the blog. I still have to paint the sides some more and haul it down to photograph it for my documentation but I think this is it… finished, Meander 23.

Meander 23, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 60 x 2 inches