Open Studio

Here are two newly finished nest paintings that I’ve previously shown in earlier stages of development….

Both 24 x 24 inches, mixed media and acrylic on canvas.  I just finished the embroidery on these this morning, while drinking my coffee.  The top image was painted from a nest that my husband’s parents found in their wood pile.  The second, from the nest found outside my studio. I’ve been working so much in encaustic lately that these two poor things have been sitting, forlorn, in a corner, waiting to be finished for a few weeks now.  Sometimes I think I enjoy paintings more after not looking at them for a while.  It was nice to come back to these after a break, and see that they held up.  A little space can be a good thing.

However, sometimes a little space can turn into too much space…. that has been the case lately with my husband traveling for work….. (sigh).  Can you tell that I miss him?  It’s been several weeks, this trip, but I am very happy to say that his company is flying me to spend some time with him in……Thailand.  Yes, that’s where he’s been working, and that’s where I’m going, for two weeks.  I’ve never been to Thailand, but it looks like a lovely, wonderful country, and I’m taking my sketchbook, two blank art journals, and my camera and anticipating lots and lots of inspiration.  Not to mention my sweetie, and our 15th anniversary.  I’m hoping I’ll be able to keep up with my blog while I’m away, and share some of this with you all, so stay tuned!

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!

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.

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!

It’s that time of year again!

I’m afraid that painting in the studio will have to take a back seat to this…….

and this….

and this…..

Set painting for the Young Actors play here on the coast.  My son is in the group- it’s an improvisational acting group for kids, and every year they all brainstorm a wacky play and all the parents pitch in to help make it happen.  They are led by an amazing and inspiring teacher, Auri Naggar, and they somehow pull together these plays that are so silly and magical that only children, in all of their uninhibited enthusiasm, could make them possible. When people ask me about it, I always describe it as like one of those plays that your kids and their friends think up on a rainy afternoon of raiding the dress-up box and reading too many books, and want to perform in the living room for the grown ups…and they end up embellishing as they go along….only this time, they are given months to work on it, a big stage to perform it on, with lights and a sound system, and live music!  What a dream.  And there is cake afterwards.  What is there not to love??

It’s a privilege to be a part of it, really.  If you are in the area, the play is the weekend of May 16 - 18, at the high school here in Half Moon Bay.