Boxes and more boxes
I only have a few minutes….3 grandkids, granddog, and 11 boxes of paintings coming to my doorway some time today. My NC gallery is closing their brick and mortar storefront until such time as they find another suitable space……so home all the work has to come. Hopefully, they will find another as the owner has been a joy to work with and she sells my work, too.
Ooops…..the boxes have arrived……not a pretty addition to the decor I’m afraid. I’ll unpack and check off the list as the day goes by. One was not in good shape but the small works were okay.
I’ve put that darn 48 x 48 Brown/Black away to stop looking at it. Sometimes you get bogged down with one work that just doesn’t work and it keeps you from doing anything else. So off to the closet it goes……hum, well maybe as with all that work coming home every nook and cranny of closets, walls and hallways may be filled.
I’ve started looking for another gallery as I only have two now and I figure 3-4 is about what I need. If possible, maybe closer to home to keep from shipping but not if something good comes along. I had one Dallas gallery ask me to send a CD of my work and since I was doing that I also made up another for another gallery there I’ve always enjoyed visiting and think my work would fit. Now for the wait around that goes with gallery submissions.
I’m excited to have my work in a mixed media museum show opening on July 15 here at my local art museum LMFA. As all artists know, it’s hard as heck to be recognized in your own home town by museums. This is a really great little museum that has a small permanent collection, an educational collection and also changes rotating exhibits about every six weeks. Best of all for people who appreciate art, it’s free to the public. If anyone is around Longview, TX on July 15…7pm come on by the museum (105 E. Tyler St.)and say hello and view the 44th Invitational Exhibit.
I’m happy to say that things must be going well on the rebuilding front in some areas of southern Louisiana…….as I just sold two painting there to a hospital. Much is yet to be done and will be for a long time in all those areas Katrina and Rita hit but renovation and rebuilding is coming along or they wouldn’t be buying art.
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Brown/Black paintings progress or not
Time has flown by since my last entry. I added a touch more to the last paintings (2 small ones) I was working on ….and painted and re-painted and I still don’t know what to do with the big one……….. The Brown/Black title is all I have for the moment and doesn’t totally fit the big one now as it has so much amber/gold coloration in it at the moment. This one may never see the light of day in a gallery or outside this blog. BUT, who knows, I may change my mind next month.
Brown/Black 1
Brown/Black 2
Wow….something is up with the image loading again……all I can see is the html except in preview mode. I’m leaving the big 48 x 48″ one on my website since I’m not so sure it’s finished and to conserve space here.
I’m also going to try to put a few links in the side bar and see what happens with that….crossing fingers..XXX
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Continuing the Process
Well……I went and said stay tuned and didn’t come back. I promise, I was working on these paintings off and on….and still have more work to come, especially on the large 48 x 48″ one. It only has the canvas toned, various color combinations I’m trying with the brown, black, mustard yellow, and white combinations. I will have to keep adding layers and layers until I decide I like it.
I note this photo is a mite blurry, too.
Brown/Black #1 is not too bad now that I look at it more. …#2 could use some “zing” somewhere. And since i told myself this is supposed to be white, I need to go back and un-subdue some of the places I toned it down. White just looks so white even though it was mixed with other color. Gotta watch the chalkiness (is that a word?).
Brown/Black #1
Brown/Black #2
Guess y’all will have to stay tuned for the finished pieces.
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Studio time vs. grand kids
Well………..that was some hiatus from blogging and painting. And it may continue intermittently throughout the summer. I have two grand kids who come to visit during the daytime M-F for the summer. It will take a little bit more dedication on my part to get in the studio. What I really need is a BIG push, like a gallery saying they have to have work soon or a commission that will bring in some bucks.
I did have an idea, as they do keep popping up now and then…..although so many go unrealized.
Last month one of my friends who hasn’t been doing any work on canvas in some time brought me some canvas she finally decided she was never going to use….two of the small ones are the nice, two inch deep canvases and one large one that would have to be framed. SO.. I decided the next play around time would use these gifts and I’ve determined I really need to do some work with a heavy emphasis on value. I can never get away from using some strong color, however, as it is a great love of mine. The plan was to underpaint/tone the canvases with a color like mustard yellow……….then paint with black, brown and white non-objective paintings on top of the yellow.
I’ll have to see what happens as I just mixed up the paints and already toned the canvases last week while the kids were here.
Stay tuned!
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On A Roll ..I don’t know!
Any time I can get two paintings finished in two days, I consider I’m on a roll. Well……I must admit that they weren’t started and finishes all in the same day but just finishing one on one day and the other the next is good enough. Especially if you haven’t been getting a heck of a lot of work done in some time.
……Lac Montbel 2 is today’s finished painting. Although it was the first one of the two paintings I started, it was the last to be completed.
I worked over and over and then photographed it….decided it had too much of a dark inverted “v” shape almost in the center of the foreground….so back to the painting table to work on that….and more photographing………finally, I think it’s done.
I’ve been working so much on paper lately…that I think I must drag some canvas out of the closet next………..hum, and what size do I want that canvas to be???
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What comes first?
What comes first???………sometimes I wonder if titles for paintings just jump into your mind because you’ve experienced something……..or if the same painting would come and be titled something else without the experience.
Before I left for France I had two very large pieces of paper on my painting wall…..both what you call elephant size 30 x 44″. I struggled with them, just playing around….I decided what the heck, just pour paint and splash and blot. I did all that and then put them up on the wall to look at. Darn, if I didn’t just get out my brushes and palette knives and paint right over all that experimental pouring. Finally, I decided both of them were kinda coming along but needed a lot more attention than I had to give at that time. So I left them and went off to France for a month, praying for inspiration to come from my time away.
So………what did I do today but paint on one of those pieces (although I did tear it apart into 22 x 30″ pieces first). I thought, “these colors remind me of a place in France”………so one piece has turned into Lac Montbel 1. I’ll work on the other one tomorrow and see if it’s going to work out as well. This photo is a little light and washed out from too much sun beaming down and I am considering cropping off some of the sides….can’t get away from squares it seems….but maybe not.
Lac Montbel near Ste. Colombe, France has the most amazing turquoise water.
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What Fun!
What fun…….I got an unexpected package in the mail today. It contained copies of the new chapbook, A Unified Theory of Light, by Theodore Worozbyt*. It was published by Dream Horse Press .
Bear wrote and asked me last year if I would allow one of my paintings to be used as the cover art……….I said yes, of course. I did this another time with a poetry magazine, The National Poetry Review.
I went to the Dream Horse site to see if it was showing up yet……but no, however, I did find that it won the 2005 poetry chapbook prize (should have noticed that on the front of the book) . I’ll keep a watch out for the cover to be shown later.
In the meantime, although this doesn’t really show my work well, here is the cover. I’ll link this image to the painting image when clicked. Hum..that might not work out so I’ll just include a link here to the image on my website. Antica7 This painting was purchased last year by a women’s clothing store in the Dallas metroplex area.
*Theodore Worozbyt…a native of Atlanta, Theodore Worozbyt has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Arts Councils of Alabama and Georgia. He holds an MFA and PhD from the University of Alabama, where he teaches writing and literature.
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Rediscovery
All week I’ve been bogged down with getting ready for two new doors to be installed………and after, that we have to prep and paint them. Not my idea of good painting days but it’s about finished. I’m still waiting for the last coat to the trim around the front but it’s 90 degrees out there.
While all this is going on I went into the studio to look around for some information for paintings to present to a design gallery in NY I’ve worked with in the past and found a painting I did after my trip to France in 2004…….heck, it had never even been inventoried. I did have a title on the back…..Near Esperaza. And thinking about it, I think I was reliving some of the feeling from the afternoon up at Rennes Le Chateau that day. We didn’t make the trip over there to that area this trip. Maybe all this hulabaloo about the DaVinci Code made me remember this painting.
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Symbols
I’ve been thinking about my quick statement about selling the collage to a friend here……..that it was my favorite of all the pieces I did. And it is……….but why is that? The main reason is that it summed up or symbolized the trip and what I saw and felt there.
Every day we wandered the little curving roads in this area of the Aude and Ariege departments of France. Wandering slightly south, you were always amazed at the sun lighting up the Pyrenees at some times of the day or their cloaking by the clouds at other times. However, their presence was always felt. One other presence was the corridors of plane trees everywhere in the region (and others, of course) of France. Both of these presences are not something I run across in northeastern Texas.
When I set up to do work in the studio, I had to work for several days just to paint and prepare papers to use in a collage. Hum…how could I have forgotten it would take some time to collect stuff for adding to mixed media? In the interim, I painted. So one morning I finally had to start making something and started with a 15 inch square with dark blues for a background. I started tearing from some of the other papers and low and behold, I suddenly saw those mountain ranges………..as I kept on adding small bits and pieces, I suddenly realized there were the trunks of the plane trees ……or what I think symbolized the rows of plane trees. None of the colors are colors I think of when I think of April in the Languedoc (green is THE color at this time) but for me, this collage symbolized what I had been seeing and internalizing……..and I actually saw it as I worked. This isn’t something that happens often for me. I usually only see this later when the work is finished. The link for the image was in the previous post. I’ve got to figure out why some of my images are rotating and not coming up correctly……..in the interim, just check the link.
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Visit from a Collector
One of my favorite people came to see the work I did at Cat’Art this morning. She said she’d been saving a place for one of my works…and she chose one of my favorites from the trip…Cat’Art 11. ……..and with all the work in her collection, she didn’t have any collage.
(the image files continue to upload turned in the wrong direction so I just had to link to my site.)
It’s somehow reassuring to find that the one you gravitate to most is also the one such a knowledgeable person also likes enough to buy.
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Cat’Art Informal Exposition
I’m doing a little experimenting with using the Microsoft Photo Story 3 program. I uploaded some pictures of the day we all set up our work informally and talked about what we did during the month at Cat’Art. I didn’t have a picture of myself (unfortunately, ha-ha) since I took these pictures. Just click on this expo link to download my video. And please don’t laugh at my Texas accent. It will take some downloading so be patient even with broadband. Also, MAC users may not be able to bring it up in their version of Windows Media Player. I hope to remedy this problem later, if possible.
I just adlibbed this commentary so I’m sure some of it leaves something to be desired. As far as my work, I did quite a few small collages and paintings, but am most looking forward to seeing what will happen with my work in the future from all the time we were exposed to these new experiences and a different environment.
…………….thanks to Karen Jacobs for this picture of me and my work……….
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Back from a month at Cat’Art
I haven’t written in the blog since Wednesday when we left for Toulouse. The hotel wasn’t as hard to find as the one we stayed in last time and due to some clues from Robin on finding the Avis rental return, we got past that a lot faster than two years ago as well.
We checked in to the Ibis Blagnac, had a glass of wine. Then decided to take the car on back that afternoon and use the shuttle to the airport the next morning……..that turned out to be a great way to do the auto rental return.
The hotel had wi-fi (hum is is wi or we-fee as pronounced there??) Anyway, at a price of 8 Euro you could use Orange for 2 hours. I didn’t think about the fact it might only be on the Ibis network so didn’t get to use the last 45 minutes at the airport waiting to depart as planned. Oh well……….I tried. France Telecom or Orange should sell weekly unlimited access for people traveling…….
The dinner at the hotel was satisfactory and we turned in early knowing 4 am would come before we knew it.
The trip was as uneventful as you can make it when you have so far to travel…….about 1 1/2 hours to London and 9 1/2 to Dallas…almost 3 hours on the layover so I was able to get the two grandsons a souvenir ball cap each…already had my girls something.
We left Dallas early Friday morning heading home. I’ve been unpacking, checking snail and email, grocery shopping and now even cooking ever since…..well, except for lots of long naps, afternoon and night. Good news from my Louisiana gallery that 4 paintings were sold and the check was here for my return. It’s been hard on sales since Katrina…………..
I can’t say enough good things about all the people at Cat’Art. They went out of their way every day to make our art residency pleasant………we’ve made new friends in France. How happy we are that Ellie Clemens mentioned the art center in Ste. Colombe sur ‘lHers, Aude, France.
Hum…maybe a nap is a good idea right now as well.
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