Posts Tagged ‘abstract painting’

Painting About How I Felt on My Birthday

May 25, 2012

This is the beginning of a painting started yesterday celebrating  my new birthday, one year after cancer surgery. I am one happy camper. Now I have a few paintings I’ve started. That is the easy part. I have to go back in and adjust or take care of areas that don’t work. This gets tricky because each stroke I make changes the whole painting, so I have more problems to solve. As, Henry J. Kaiser used to say, “Problems are opportunities in work clothes.”

Art Helps Painter Through a Challenging Year

May 24, 2012

This is Not a Flower  Pencil and watercolor

Unfinished Blue Painting  acrylic on canvas 52″ x 36″

Try double clicking on image to see detail

One year ago today, I was operated on for cancer at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. During my stay at the hospital, I made little paintings in a moleskine sketchbook. The whole time I was there, I was surrounded by an extensive collection of art. There was a volunteer who brought a cart full of paintings into my room each day. Patients could choose a painting to be hung in their room. Today, I’m going to work on a larger painting started yesterday. A lot can happen in a year. Art heals.

I Came Home a Better Painter

May 21, 2012

click on image to see detail

May 18th  acrylic on canvas  42″ x 29″

I just got back from an intensive ten day painting workshop. I came back a better painter. When I went back to the studio and started painting, I had a new vocabulary. The old favorite colors came back in a new context. I knew what I wanted to say. This brought me back to my familiar warm palette, but the variation of color and shapes changed. It’s now very exciting and intriguing for me to paint. I have given myself so much more to work with. May 18th was painted on Friday. It might be finished or it may tell me, hey, where did you go? You need to work with me. What do you think? Is the painting finished?

Lifting the Veil – Morocco

May 10, 2012

click to enlarge image

Lifting the Veil 50″ x 40″ oil on canvas 1998

Abstract Five

April 5, 2012

Click on image

Mixed media on paper 6″ x 8″

Guess I’m into pink this week. This one looks pretty tame compared to yesterdays post.

Wind Horse Scroll – Bhutan

February 22, 2012

Using the Bhutanese woodblock as my inspiration, I made a scroll about the Wind Horse.

I use a wood box-like form to hold the paper off the floor before I apply the hot wax. When I first started experimenting with wax I painted right on the floor. Not a good thing. The hot wax and paper adhered firmly to the floor! This scroll is about 60 inches long. The materials I used were watercolor, gold fluid acrylic, bleached beeswax 100% pure domestic imported from Germany, sumi ink, and pastels on mulberry paper. The ‘Precious horse’ and linear areas around it was done first, using hot wax. When the paper was dry I applied  watercolor which filled up all the untouched paper – the wax stopped the pigment creating a batik. (click on image to see it larger)

Wind Horse – Woodblock with Print – Bhutan

February 21, 2012

The Wind Horse, shown on the the imprint of a prayer flag is a luck-bringing symbol. This horse can bring good luck, life force, health, influence and merit. On his back is the Flaming Jewel, a spiritual warrior, capable of fulfilling all wishes. The spiritual warrior is carried past the many obstacles leading into the sacred world. The word for Wind Horse (Lungta) has come to mean luck.

I found the wood block in Thimpu, when I was snooping around the shops near the contemporary art school. Using printers ink, and stamps on mulberry paper I made up some small pieces. I started to make an limited edition of five Artist’s Books on mulberry paper. They are scrolls about 62″ high. Now there are only four.  I tore up one last week while working on an idea. The torn pieces may be incorporated in the finished product. This print shown above may be added to one of the scrolls. It’s a work in progress.  (As usual click on the image to see it bigger)

Moushrabiya – Morocco

January 26, 2012

In Morocco, moushrabiyas or geometrical screens

keep Muslim women hidden from view.

These screens allow women to observe

their surroundings without themselves being seen.

Painting About The Three Gorges Dam – China

January 23, 2012

Fragments, Fadings and Feelings

Mills College Art Museum

When I was in China the abstract beauty of calligraphy intrigued me. I bought some children’s textbooks on how to write Chinese script. For centuries the children have learned how to write by copying characters within boxes in order to understand their structure and proportions.

I started to copy the lessons.  Soon my strokes freed themselves from the grid. The “correct” version of the letters was replaced by the “wrong” solution.  Using sumi ink, wax and acrylic paint on xuan paper I put down marks. The shapes and colors mixed and spread into new compositions and brushstrokes. The biomorphic forms of nature took over.

As I painted I thought of the world’s largest hydroelectric dam on the Yangtze River. The Three Gorges Dam transformed the river into a deep reservoir flooding farmland, cities, villages and archaeological sites. People were relocated to new structures of mass produced design, buildings with slick, cold, white tile.

Today’s mass production and permanency of materials is replacing an intuitive expression of life. These paintings are made of materials that are vulnerable to the effects of weathering and our touch. The sun will fade some of the brilliant colors into muddy earth tones.  Fragile paper will tear. But the way xuan paper transmits light, the way people carried out their everyday life on the Yangtze. These memories will stay in my heart.

Druk Yul 2001 – Bhutan

January 11, 2012

A prayer flag wraps the woodblock print I made of the wishing horse. A young man saw me sketching and took me to a secret meeting place where artists were making non-traditional art. We all painted together on handmade paper given to me by my new friends.

Painting at the  Teshu  festival in Paro  with drippy nosed litle boys hugging my knees.

Druk Yul  2001

“Land of the Dragon” Name of Bhutan in Bhutanese

Paintings on handmade paper from Bhutan, Saunders Waterford, Arches 90wt., rice paper

Gouache, watercolor, pen and ink, Caran d’ache crayons, bamboo, prayer pages,

Collage, postage stamps, Xerox from traditional school of art in Thimpu,

Woodblock print, silver rubbing wax, graphite, fabric, color Xerox, transfer prints

10 x 8 inches

 


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