Doodling around...

A found painting at the bottom of an iron kettle...

   This was so darn pretty...on Thanksgiving day I had water with a cinnamon stick simmering in it on the stove...this old kettle has been a dear old friend for years...we've cooked many a chili in it over camp fires and wood stove fires...so seeing this amazing pattern this morning, I had to photograph it before I cleaned it up...

I've been a little busy...creatively coming along, doodling and looking, making plans for the future, but for now, laying low...I have hung up most of everything that came back from the gallery, or tucked them away if they're of the right size to tuck away...

Wall of a few paintings

 

I treated myself to an early Christmas present...

The price was right, so I got the big starter kit with all the goodies to do encaustics...I haven't done this since college...or the immediate weeks following graduation when I was melting wax in an electric frying pan I bought at a garage sale...so it's been awhile. Not sure when I'll start playing with this...it will need a designated work space where kitties can't get into it...as kitties are likely to do...

A work in progress...

 I've been working steadily along with The Sketchbook Project project...thought I'd share a couple of shots...

The back cover...oops, some stray blue paint...I'm working out how I'm going to decorate the outside...

Yellow in the middle...

A drawing in progress

I've been doing a lot of looking...my camera is building up an archive of images...I can barely keep up with the digital sketchbook...thought I'd share a few things I've seen lately...

A found painting in a grape leaf

I'm coming out of a period of very bad FMS flare ups, I've had a devil of a time with pain management, but it seems the worst part has passed on, and now I'm at a more tolerable level, the usual day-to-day aches and such...the muscle spasms were so bad I felt like I had run a marathon...
it's over with, that's all that matters now... 

Just looking through the lens of the camera, I find the things I like...

The next group of photos is a story about a kitty...

"Popeye" arrived on 10/28/2011

This little kitty has quite the tale to tell...most of it we will never know...we suspect he had an altercation with a car a few weeks ago, we found him hiding underneath our porch on October 28th, half-starved and with an eye injury that was quite gruesome (poor little guy did not need a mask for Halloween, he was quite the scary sight to see!) There was no way to save the eye, but the kitty could be saved...I'll admit, I cringed a bit having to take in one more stray cat, but I couldn't turn my back on him.

One Eyed Popeye, pre-op

 "Popeye" is doing well, recovering from surgery to remove his damaged eye quite nicely...he gets the stitches out on Monday...

Post-Op Popeye...24 hours after surgery

After several days on antibiotics to fight a bad blood infection, he had surgery to remove what was left of the eye on November 15th, and has been recovering nicely ever since...the sweet wee boy has made himself at home...

Popeye can't wait to get out of his fancy collar!

Such a sweet little fellow, we're happy to have him in our family!

Vacation...

Found objects collage, grape vine coils on canvas, digital photo, 6/2/2011

Found object collage, grape vine coils on canvas, digital photo, 6/2/2011

 I've been fooling around with my camera again...see what happens when I have time on my hands? (I've had a lovely week off!) I wanted to do this for years, I would look at the little coils on the grape vines and they reminded me so much of the lines I make in my drawings that I thought it might be fun to gather a bunch together and make a "drawing" with them...so I started collecting some this spring (I have quite a few), then I pulled a piece of canvas out of my scrap bag of saved scraps from pieces trimmed off of stretched canvases that I made (ironed it to get the wrinkles out) and made a few swipes of white paint on one of my monotype plates and printed a background for my little bits to lie on...once that dried and I got the lighting set up to my liking, I snapped dozens of photos...first I tried being "neat" about it, lining them up in rows, making them look like Chinese characters...that was cool, but it's been done...then I connected them like my random drawing lines (first image), and then at the end, I jumbled them up and let them fall in a heap (second image, I liked that best of all!) I'll continue playing with this and see what else I can make...I do have some fancy paper to print the photos on when I'm done...might frame up a few for Moonlighting...

Amber Dawn, 5/22/2011, acrylic wash, monotype and rice paper on canvas, 16 x 8 inches

 I kept this one simple, that gold color is just so juicy I am enjoying it...I have a fascination with yellow, partly because it's pretty, but also, it's a difficult color to paint with, keeping it "clean" without it turning green is always a challenge...shoot...why not do yellow-on-yellow paintings? (I'm currently reading about Robert Ryman's white-on-white paintings, which is giving me more ideas...like I need more ideas!)

Saffron Sun Scroll, acrylic wash and monotype on rice paper approx. 8 feet long x 12 inches (with a grape vine twig at top.)

 We hung the show last Thursday night and I put the scroll up on the purple wall near the door, it was quite the "oooo-ahhh" of the show as the yellow and purple absolutely glowed...we joked that whoever bought the piece would have to hire Suzanne to paint their wall (it didn't sell, yet)...but I think I should come up with a special panel to go with them (since I can't take Suzanne's pretty purple wall with me), possibly a canvas, and a tube for rolling and storage. I'm still working it out...I might have some canvas kicking around somewhere...

June Dawn, 6/1/2011, acrylic wash monotype and rice paper on canvas, 16 x 8 inches

detail of June Dawn

 I worked on this little bit the other day, setting up the portable studio table on the porch, we had such fine summer-like weather earlier in the week, reaching high 80's and nigh 90, perfect! This canvas has layers of bright cerulean blue below the pale greens and blues...it's a sweet little piece...I love this size canvas. (After my art school days where everyone painted BIG paintings and ever since I started working in an art collection, I promised myself that I won't paint anything bigger than I can move by myself, so I have a special appreciation for small paintings.)

My "coloring book" started 5/31/2011

I bound this book with scrap paper ages ago and have been planning to do something with it...well, I got busy with it at long last and decided to make it my "coloring book" to just splash around, play, scribble and enjoy... this is just the first pages...I think next time, I'll paint the paper first and then bind it...but maybe that would be too much like planning...

Three more days left of my long time off, I'm going to keep making new art, work on filling up my coloring book, and I have several canvases to prep for future paintings.

Work in progress...one from the back log of things to finish...

Bones of the Earth, Encrusted with Lichen 3/13/2011

It's been a long time since I started this painting, it was from the summer of 2009, I liked it, but there was more I wanted to do with it, but I didn't know what...well, I took it down from the wall on Sunday morning and started slathering my bits of mat board and paper shapes with earthy tones and started splattering...it's hanging in the dining room where I can visit with it, ponder what I've done, and dream of other things to do...

My Fred and I have finished the work on our art book Elemental: Abstract Art from Two Perspectives, and set it up through Blurb on Sunday night, we're waiting for the 'proof copy' to come, as soon as we're satisfied with how it looks, I will post the link to it, get a widget up for online browsing of the little beautiful thing we've made...it is a magical time for us, so much coming together... our little gallery has another opening coming up on the 25th, there's the fundraiser, CNY Art Showcase, Rotary Club of Eastwood, Syracuse, on April 8th, to raise money for St. Joseph's Hospital and we've been selected to be on TV to promote the event! April 4th, Channel 9 WSYR, the morning program "Bridge Street"! We're going to be painting live and interviewed about what we do, how we do it, and that sort of good stuff, it's all very exciting and it feels good!

My Conversation with Georgia, 2010 (Featured on the cover!)

Lumina #2, 2008

Finished it (finally!)

I added the children's moon at the top...I had to cut one out of paper for the size I wanted, and it went on perfect the first time~

Blue Sky Series, "There's more than blue going on in that sky..."

A detail, in the middle left, canvas and sumi paper visible

detail, lower right edge

detail of the middle, lots of yellow showing through

my latest pencil drawing in my sketchbook, I really love this one a lot!

A found painting... a pallet with some spray paint...I couldn't resist photographing it!

There are times I begin to become afraid that I've run out of steam and worry...What if I can't paint anymore? Usually, when I feel that way, I go back to my sketchbooks and draw those stream of consciousness drawings, cranking them out one after another...and then I feel better about everything again...so I've been going through this uncertainty... kind of rough few weeks, mostly because I haven't been feeling all that well, and I've been focusing on writing more since that's quieter...so it's a combination of things...


I've spent time on the porch today, sunning myself, storing up sunshine for the winter... staring up at that pristine blue sky and thinking about what I'm going to paint next... I painted over a group of canvases that were not working for me, and laid down some colors to work with for the Blue Sky series... and I have taken some scrap paper and scumbled acrylic washes on them for future collages... it's been a creatively busy weekend, and I'm quite content...