Open Studio

Just a quick post to show a newly finished piece.  This is the 28″x28″ panel I’ve been working on.  It took some different turns than the other, small white pieces.  It had different needs and challenges that demanded different problem solving.  This picture looks blurry to me (though the original did not), but if it were sharper, you’d be able to see the texture of the opaque white paint that is on the surface.  I used a tiny brush, with small, dabbing strokes to produce the halos around the roses, and fill in others.  It was very slow, and I thought it might be a bit like working in fresco would be.  Painstaking.  I also experimented more with my white ink pen, and like the fine line drawing that can be achieved in the wax.  Again, very slow, but worth it.  This painting pushed me in some new directions, and I am enjoying discovering different ways of handling the wax, and making marks.  It is a mysterious and infuriating medium to work in…. one must keep her sense of humor and adventure intact!

Okay, so It’s not all beeswax and canvas and painting around here.  My kids and some friends went to an anime convention this weekend in San Jose, and we spent some quality time sculpting with- hairspray!  They dressed up as characters from a favorite video game, in all of their dramatic, weird glory….. we had a lot of fun.  

My daughter, Allie, is devoted to her own drawing, so it was great to visit the “artist’s alley” at the convention, and see artists sketching, and look through the sketchbooks that they often had out on the tables.  I was extremely impressed with some of the work I saw there.  So much talent.  

Ian and I also went to the San Jose Museum of Art and saw the “Robots” show, which I wasn’t expecting to enjoy nearly as much as I did.  I especially enjoyed the work of Thomas Zummer, Michael Mew, and Jeff Soto.  

So, after much over stimulation, we are settling in for an evening of watching Juno in our PJs and eating decompression food- aka ice cream.  mmmmmm……….

Working large in beeswax is a different animal, altogether.  I’ve been working on this piece for days now, and I’m just amazed at how different the process is when I scale up.  I guess I thought it would be a lot like doubling or tripling a recipe- just add more of everything and get more cookies!- but it’s not. The largest I’ve worked before in wax has been 16 x 16 inches.  This baby is 28 x 28.  Almost four times the size, and more than four times the work.  It’s exponential, I think.  But what is curious is the way the techniques actually behave and work differently. 

   Take fusing for example.  I usually fuse with a heat gun, and occasionally a travel iron that I picked up at a yard sale.  Fusing with a heat gun on a large piece of encaustic is really different- the wax behaves differently, with the pooling becoming more apparent than on smaller pieces.  Also, the pitting that looks interesting on a small piece suddenly becomes overwhelming on a bigger surface.  So I’ve been adjusting my technique as I go, scraping with a razor blade in between fusings with the heat gun to smooth out the surface, and smoothing the excess pitting with the travel iron.  I’ve been also using my light that is mounted on a stand to lightly fuse thin layers.  It has a 150 watt bulb, and does a good job of warming the surface and fusing delicate areas.  Also, laying down layers of beeswax is more difficult, because the wax starts setting about 10 inches into the stroke.  I can’t make it all the way across the panel in one brushstroke!

    It is so much more challenging, but I am figuring out some things, and learning a lot.  I think that in order to be happy with this medium (encaustic), I have to be willing to embrace it’s limitations and abilities, and keep working with what it is, rather than trying to force it to be something it is not.  When I just go with what it is, the rewards are so great. It always forces me to think of painting in completely new ways.  I’m really liking the way this larger piece is coming out.  I’ve just tried to emphasize translucency, and let the medium speak for itself.

As I was cleaning up in the yard the other day, getting ready to mow the lawn, I saw this….

I didn’t even know right away what it was, and I think I stepped on it.  It is a hummingbird nest, about the size of a golf ball.  You can’t see in this photo, but it still has tiny egg shards in it.  The lining is some really soft fiber, like a cotton ball.  I am starting to think my studio is a nest magnet.

I love the way each bird chooses completely different materials, carefully constructing and arranging.  This one used redwood from our mulch, and some of the moss that grows on the dead pine trees in my neighbors yard.  

Have I mentioned that encaustic painting is addictive?

So is working so small.  It’s like bite size art.  

I am painting, painting, painting for….a show in August, at Enso Gallery, here in Half Moon Bay.  I’m very excited to have a local show.  I’ll be showing these encaustics, and some new nest paintings.  Enso is a little gem of a gallery here on the coast, and they are great about supporting local artists.  They also have a wonderful yoga studio there, where I take classes sometimes…..I’m so pleased that I’ll be hanging this work there.

My sweetie back from Thailand and China…I love the tiny Buddah he brought back.

Finishing a sweater for my son…finally.  I haven’t been knitting much, so this has only taken me…uh….8 or 9 months.  Incredibly patient, that’s what Ian is.

Banana bread….

And my new encaustic panels.  I just made two new ones- 28″x28″- out of a hollow core door.  They seem expansive after all of my little 8 inch squares I’ve been doing.  It has been quite a project, just preparing these.  I am trying to work out how to attach a hanging wire to the back .  Since they are made from hollow doors, they are incredibly light and smooth.  I can’t wait to get going on these.

At least for me it is.  I resisted this for a long time, though.  I think I was afraid that if I let it be too personal, it would not be taken seriously.  So I detached myself from it, instead focusing on experimental landscapes that felt safe.  I was a young woman, trying to be taken seriously (and trying to take myself seriously) while having babies and generally being overwhelmed.  I love a lot of the work that came out of that time period (my mid twenties to early thirties)….. it’s just that it didn’t have that much to do with what was actually going on in my life.  I was full time with kids, and all of the craziness and immediacy that ensues, and didn’t have time to be out photographing and sketching for afternoons, or to come back home and create the large landscapes that I longed to continue with.  Finally, as Julia Cameron would say, the well went dry.  My paintings felt empty and overworked….. the painter’s equivalent of writer’s block.  It was like chewing on cardboard.  

Then I stumbled on a book that tripped me out.  It was Spilling Open by Sabrina Ward Harrison.

 She’s written/painted a few books since then, but that first one is still my favorite.  It is artistically and visually stunning, but what really got me was how personal it is.  It just shot right through me.  This was new to me- the idea that good art could be personal and feminine, and raw,  and just plain tell the truth.  That I didn’t need to distance myself from my experience, and add several layers of hazy intellectualism, in order to make a painting.  It was a new concept, that when I come to the canvas, I am enough.

So then I started asking myself new questions… like if I could paint anything, what would I paint?  If I could use any medium I wanted, what would I use?  I know this sounds silly- like why in the world wouldn’t I be asking myself those questions before?  But I had not let myself think this way in a long time, and it was new.  It has really changed my painting.  And my attitude. Nowadays, I can’t wait to paint.  The resistance I used to feel (you know- that gut churning feeling that procrastination brings on) just isn’t there.

And so much work has flowed from those questions.  The dress series, to begin with, and the nests, and this blog. And I’m finding that if I let my life and desires lead me, the complexity of meaning is still there. Really, so much of desire is universal. And even a dogged kind of intellectualism tags along behind, offering explanations for the symbolism in my paintings.  I like that the explanations don’t come first, though.  The painting comes first. 

I started with dresses.  I think I’ll end with them, too…..

For more about my dress series visit my website.

Some new work…..

I’ve really been enjoying working in this small format (8 x 8 inches) in such an open ended subject area.  The only criteria for them is the dominant color must be white, and that the subject involves repetition.  I’ve been playing with different ways of layering the wax, and applying it.  I also discovered that paint pens do just fine layered in with the wax, and am experimenting with a fine point white paint pen.  I got it for journaling, but it’s opened up another world with the encaustic, being one more way to create precise lines and imagery.  Encaustic is difficult to control, and generally takes a lot of deep breathing and letting go from me, because, well, I can be a control freak like that.  But that is also what I love so much about this medium- it keeps me on my toes, keeps me loose and open to possibility as I work, and it is such a rapidly evolving medium right now, with artists finding new ways to work with it all the time.  Each piece is a wild card.  

Here is another piece I finished the other night- sorry this photo is not sharper.  It is difficult to see the texture here- one of it’s assets, I think. The embroidered circles are doing a lot for these nest paintings, adding some unusual texture and relief to the image.  This, by the way, is the nest I wrote about a couple of posts ago. This is also a small piece.  I have been warming up to this painting small business.  It used to be that any painting under 3×4 feet seemed like a waste of time, but there is something so satisfying about being able to finish a painting in a relatively short period of time, and then being able to hold it in my hands and look at it….. instead of having to stand back 8 feet just to see it properly.  The small pieces are more intimate that way.  

Well, I’m off to make more tea, go to a friend’s baby shower in San Francisco, and then come home and paint sets for the play.  And maybe embroider more paintings…….Whew!