Vermont Residency: Plan A

When I decided that I would be going to Vermont Studio Center again this year (I was supposed to go in 2009, but delayed it a year for financial reasons) I realized that I ought to have a better plan in place concerning the work I wanted to do during my month there. Last time my big plan consisted of 'doing some portraits'. I had no back up plan in case I began to flounder with the portraits and since that is exactly what happened (I floundered!), I had to scramble to find some other things to do while I tried to figure out which direction to take with the portraits. I don't want to say that my time at VSC was wasted last time, because by the end of the session I had found an interesting path to the work that eventually became the 'People You Know' series. However, I certainly would have liked to have been more productive during that month.

So, keeping that in mind, I put together a few plans; A, B,C,D, and even an E just in case. My slacker days needed to be over and I wanted to really kick some painting butt while I had the chance! At first I considered the People You Know series to be Plan A, the plan I wanted to focus on. But when I got there I started to work on these abstracted paintings right away, they were bubbling right at the surface for me; images I had been thinking about for awhile, a step back into landscape elements, yet also looking ahead to the more abstract images that I am interested in as well.

I took a few small paintings along with me that I did several months earlier and thought were a good starting point:


but despite having those to refer to, I panicked slightly on the first morning in my studio. After seeing things in my head for so long, I wasn't sure I could translate them into something outside my mind. So I spent that morning doing some sketches just to block out some shapes and edges. I do not normally sketch before I begin a painting as I tend to lose my enthusiasm and spontaneity when I get to the actual paintings, however it was the opposite this time. I did a few sketches and immediately got to work on the first four underpaintings:

I was pretty excited about them, but of course my crazy process makes me have to wait for the next step, so while the paint dried on those for the next few days I began work on Plan B (more on Plan B in the next post) and then started three more underpaintings:

While THOSE were drying I went back to the first ones and added the color glazes. The first two were similar (to me anyway) to the paintings I had brought from home which I used as a touchstone throughout my time working on these. So the first two:


seemed just a few steps away from my Horizon Line series, although later on I would learn that others saw them as very abstract and one of the visiting artists said that she didn't even view them as landscapes at all until I mentioned the influence.

Anyway, the next few had borders:



which as I mentioned in a previous post, seemed window-like to me, I was thinking of the views OUT of the barns I paint, or out of my home and studio windows. Dark inside, looking out to the bright day. But as I did the last one in that group:

I used a lighter color in the border and then I thought of the landscape as an image on a wall, or in a frame. So I tried to push that theme in the last group that I did:



One visitor mentioned that the space seemed to either recede or come forward depending on the color of the borders but then was flattened because of the surface marks when viewed at a closer range. I am not sure if that was meant as a compliment but I chose to take it as one. Heh. And I have decided now that I really, really like that element.

The other border pieces seem to fall somewhere in between indoor and outdoor and I think they became more about color:


And with a few others, I decided to toy with placing the landscapes in the border and indicating the interior as a window referring back to the dark windows of my barns:


Not quite sure that I like these as much but it was interesting to try them and I think there is something there to pursue at some point.

And one last landscape:

Well, at least it looks like a landscape to me, heh.

I did these all on gessoed paper and after masking off a one inch border, the actual paintings are 28x22. I viewed these as fairly experimental so that is why I did them on paper and is also why they are now all tucked away in one of my flat file drawers. It also accounts for my amazing lack of creativity in naming them, untitled with numbers were all I could come up with here! But after I finished these pieces in Vermont, I felt pretty excited about the direction as a whole and so I decided to do a few on some smaller sized panels that I had also brought "just in case". Painting on panel always feels better to me than on paper, and working on a smaller scale was an interesting challenge with these as well. So these are 12x6 and 10x8:





and while they have less 'presence' than the large ones, they have a more intimate feeling, not unlike what happens in my landscape/barn paintings when I change the scale.

I am pretty excited to continue on with this series and am planning to do some more, on panel and in some more mid range sizes although Doug says they should just be big! I think he may be right......

Oh and PS. I did a LOT of scratching in the surface of these paintings too. Just so you know;)

Crazy December

Good Bones, 2009, Oil on Birch Panel, 16x16

Crazy, wacky, insanely busy week (and month) here. I am really feeling the show deadline looming and am freaking out about whether I will have enough work ready. Three weeks seems like a long time but we all know how fast that is going to spin by.

I am also thinking a lot about my upcoming residency at the Vermont Studio Center in January. The show opens on Saturday, January 2 and then I will be driving to Vermont the next day. Some very precise military-style logistical planning may be necessary for that weekend........

Like the last time I went (almost two years ago) I am planning to work on painting things that are NOT landscapes! I want to focus on the 'People You Know' series, the abstracts, and will maybe make some collages while the paint is drying.

Unlike last time, I have few concerns about sharing a bathroom, meeting people, making friends or finding someone to sit with at dinner. Turns out I am still quite sociable in the right environment and certainly being around other real live artists will help facilitate my chattiness! I still have occasional contact with a few people who work there and I also look forward to meeting fellow artist/blogger J.T. Kirkland, who will be doing a residency as well.

So currently the plan for the rest of December is to have a birthday, paintpaintpaint, have Christmas, deliver paintings for the show, prep all the panels I need for the residency, pack up a month's worth of art supplies and clothing, have a kiss or two with Doug on New Year's Eve, and attend the show's opening reception before leaving for a month.

And that list does not make me feel tired at all. Heh.

A Few of My Favorite Things

The ever so famous Anonymous left a comment on a recent post a few weeks ago. I started to write a response but naturally it got long and I decided I should just save it for a post. So this is the comment:

What is your favorite entity to paint - as in abstract, people, landscape, other - keep in mind that IDKS ;-)

Is painting (water color, acrylic) your favorite medium, or do you prefer, for example, charcoal drawing?

It seems relevant to talk about this a bit right now, since my work has been going through some pretty big shifts in the last year or so. I have had to really had to think about what to focus on and when, whereas previously I just allowed the art to just burst right out of me without too much thought and planning. I think that was a reaction to not having had the chance to paint for so long.

Anyhoo. Favorite subject matter. Back in college, and even before that, I liked painting a variety of things; still lifes and other objects, portraits, cityscapes. I think the subject matter that I logged the most hours on though, was the figure, both clothed and unclothed. I would say that the figure was my most favorite and least favorite.

Interestingly, the images that I NEVER worked on before 2003, was abstract or landscapes, and definitely no barns. I was a city girl through and through in college and ick! barns? No way!

But life happens, I moved away from the city, and I grew and changed as a person (I hope) and when we moved to the country I finally relaxed my ridiculous mindset and began painting landscapes AND barns. And while that work has thus far been my most successful work, and I feel at peace while creating it, I couldn't help but wonder if I would be able to get to those feelings with subject matter that I felt that I was better at. So a thousand landscapes later and circling burn out on them, I decided to try some new things, which were actually the old things mostly. Tried to do some still lifes, but found no real connection there, did a few cityscapes and although the results there were better, I just felt kinda bleh about them. Kept meaning to go back and do more but just didn't have the interest. All of this was just going around what is probably my favorite subject (to finally answer Anonymous's first question).

The figure.

And like in college, it has been something that I feel like I have to do, I love to do but it also just kills me, it's so hard. So still, it is my favorite, but kinda my least favorite too.

I am not sure where the abstracts fall. I am enjoying them, they are fun and challenging and I am learning to see things differently and I appreciate being able to do that. I don't see where they are headed, but I plan to keep going with them. And right now I think I envision them as the calm between the storms of painting figures and portraits.

Favorite medium? My favorite medium is oil, hands down, no question. It used to be acrylic until I tried oils in college and I have been in love with oils ever since. I despise watercolor, mostly because I am not good with it. Heh. For drawing, nothing beats a good graphite stick and eraser. And I love/hate charcoal. I love what I can do with it, but I hate the feel of charcoal in my hands, scratching on the paper which seriously gets my sensory issues going. And not in a good way either. I have dabbled in other mediums like pastel (sensory issues here again), collage, guoache, but none of them stuck. I am hoping to work with encaustics someday, but am holding off until I can really focus on them since I have a feeling that they will completely envelope me;)

So there you go. I would like to add that I have finally learned that nothing is written in stone anymore. Twenty years ago if someone had told me I would be making a living (sort of) by painting landscapes and barns, I would have smirked and referenced flying pigs. So I guess it is entirely possible that in twenty more years I could be painting the still life in watercolor with maybe a few pigs thrown in as well.

Ya just never know.

Back in Black

Black Painting#78, 2009, Oil on Gessoed Paper, 9.5x9.5

So the color abstracts have spawned at least a few new directions for me so far, first it was The Blues and now it's black and white paintings. Or to be more accurate, the Black Paintings, (which I am calling the series) as there is no white paint involved. A mere technicality, I suppose. Clearly these can be called black and white, but whatever. I like the sound of Black Paintings.

Actually working in a monochromatic style is not new to me. In college, as an illustration major, we were often required to work in black and white in order to maximize the ability to work in a wider variety of print media. Publications liked b/w illustrations because they were usually cheaper (not really a plus for the artist, who is still creating a fully realized image, but don't get me started on the inequities of pay for creative types) so it was good to be able to include b/w imagery in our portfolios.

Here are some examples of a piece that I did in college, and one that I did when while I was trying to get work as an illustrator:



Clearly my work was quite representational then, and I used brushes and turpentine to pull the black paint off, and in some cases I also used white paint to bring out the light areas. I seldom mixed the two together though, didn't really care for painting the gray scale, I guess.

I loved working in black and white although I was never entirely pleased with the results. And when I began painting again a few years ago, I simplified this same process when I developed my underpaintings for the landscapes. And even though I was trying to find a way to meld a strong, monochromatic underpainting (I shifted to a red underpainting, black didn't really do what I wanted to accomplish) with color glazes over, I often dreamily considered using black again.

Black Painting#76, 2009, Oil on Gessoed Paper, 5.5x9.5

So to me, going back to the b/w was a natural offshoot of the color abstracts and it finally seems like a good chance to go for it. My own limitations this time around are no brushes and no white paint are to be used as those were two of the elements that always frustrated me most before. And just by virtue of the big shift in imagery I have gone through since college, the subject matter is of course, very different, and more in keeping with what I want to express in my work now.
Black Painting#77, 2009, Oil on Gessoed Paper, 5.5x9.5

I am also using a tool to scratch back into the paint, I do that in the color abstracts too, and in the landscapes and barns as well. The marks were fairly random at first, or they were used to imply windows or doors in the structures. However, they have become a bigger element in the abstracts and even more so in the Black Paintings, I think. I really struggle with the integrity and meaning of each mark, while still trying to keep their random quality. Not sure if I have accomplished that yet, but will keep on with the process. I have to say that I have been quite obsessed with the Black Paintings and am so happy to be back at them.
Black Painting#79, 2009, Oil on Gessoed Paper, 7.5x5.25

I have about five more on the drying rack today which will probably go up on my sales blog soon. And like always, the Black Paintings look SO much better in person than in these jpegs. Every single mark, paint groove and swirl is visible.....

Finally Finished Floundering (say that 3 times fast)

So a few weeks ago I packed up my new work, including the abstracts and the People You Know series and drove off to show everything to one of my current galleries then to another gallery that recently contacted me about having a show next year.

The director at my current gallery was lukewarm about the abstracts and more interested in the portraits. We spent some time discussing what should be included in my upcoming solo show and then eventually I agreed to send most of the barns and landscapes that I paint, to her gallery. I didn't expect that I would STOP paintings the landscape, I just wanted to do fewer of them and channeling the ones I do to the gallery that has historically sold the most landscapes makes sense and feels right. The landscapes and barns are still what sells and frankly I have to consider that right now. Her market is not for abstracts and portraits can be a tough sell too. She did agree to include about six of the portraits in the show, along with the landscapes, so I am pleased about that.

The show will be coming up in January and for the last two weeks I have been floundering a bit about what to start with, frittering away my days and wringing my hands. I still want to work on the abstracts, to keep developing them, but I do need to get started on the landscapes for the show and then get back to working on the portraits which have been on the back burner for several months. I have been focusing on landscapes and barns for so long that it sure feels strange to have to do some scheduling on subject matter! But finally I formulated a plan: this week I decided to do one more batch of abstracts (including some little black abstracts which I will talk about next time) before I set them aside for a few months. Next week I will begin the landscapes/barns and after I have at least a dozen of those ready for the show, I'll get back to work on the People You Know series. At least that is the plan. Usually I find it necessary to have some sort of plan in place. It's not set in stone, in fact I am sure it will morph into something different as I get going and I am flexible about having to do that, but having something to start with gives me enough comfort to get started.

The other gallery I visited liked ALL the work I showed them and the director had a great concept about how to show all three bodies of work. However, nothing has been confirmed yet, so I will wait until contracts get signed before discussing that. Have I mentioned that I heartily believe in jinxes? I do.

The Blues

The Blues #45, 2009, Oil on Cradled Panel, 10x10

When I started moving into the abstracts, my mind was full of all kinds of directions they could take. I realized that I would have to choose just a few of those directions to focus on, mostly so that my head wouldn't explode with all the possible possibilities.

One direction that I decided on was to change the color of my underpainting. This is not exactly uncharted territory for me; in college I worked on top of several different underpainting colors, brown umber, greens, blues, even black. And when I began painting the landscapes almost six years ago I experimented with several different colors before settling on the orange/red color that has consumed my interest since then.

But I have been fascinated with trying my hand at painting on a blue ground, and the abstracts seemed like the perfect opportunity. So I gave it a shot. I have done several now, and so far I am quite pleased with the results. Still working out the kinks as far as composition goes and it turns out that painting color over blue instead of red is like learning a whole new language. The regional dialect of a whole new language, actually.
The Blues #44, 2009, Oil on Cradled Panel, 10x10

So far I have kept the palette very minimal. I may expand it at some point but a. I am enjoying working with a limited palette for the first time in many years and b. most of my experiments in using a wider variety of colors have failed miserably. I think expanding the palette on the blue ground may be a very gradual process, just as it was on the red.

I am putting up a few of my favorites. This part of the series is called "The Blues'. Oh and it turns out that these are infinitely more difficult to photograph than my work usually is, which is already nearly impossible. There is one that I simply gave up on, I just couldn't get the colors even close in the jpeg. Gotta see them in person for the full effect of their "shimmer" as Doug calls it. So let me know if ya wanna stop by sometime. Heh.

This one is my favorite so far and have decided to keep it for myself:
The Blues #72, 2009, Oil on Cradled Panel, 5x3

I will start another batch of The Blues next week to post on my sales blog.

Going Abstract, Baby!

The Reds#49, 2009, Oil on Birch Panel, 9x6

Over the last year or so I have been pondering which direction to take my paintings in. I felt that I especially wanted to explore the colors and glazes that I so love to use and while I wasn't sure, I thought abstract would be a good direction in that case. I fooled around with some 4x4 squares, and just using one color; pink, red, blue green, etc and then scratching marks into the wet paint. They weren't really doing much for me though and so mostly the squares have been sitting in a pile on one of the tables in my studio all this time. I did send a few to Steven LaRose so that he could do something with them, a collaboration of sorts. Haven't seen anything from him though, so I suspect they are now sitting in a pile on one of the tables in his studio now. Heh.

Anyway, in July while I was preparing my work for the show at Carrie Haddad Gallery (the show is up until Sunday so there is still time to see it!) this caught my eye:

I had just finished this painting and since it is a 36x48 panel, I had to set it on my easel vertically (it is a Horizon Line series painting, meant to be horizontal) so that I could walk around it more easily in order to get to my desk.

So it sat like this for a few days and I couldn't stop looking at it. I kept thinking that it should be a vertical! I yearned for it to be a vertical, but in the end I left it horizontal so that it would be in keeping with the rest of the work in the show.

But.

I knew what I was going to do next! Instead of having my usual post show meltdown, I got right back to work in the studio. The first ones I did were on gessoed paper and were small; 4x8, 6x10 or so and my intent was for them to be long verticals. This worked ok, I was interested enough (somewhat obsessed, actually) by the process and the results to keep going. And Doug was very helpful in explaining to me what he was seeing in them. Which was different and much more involved than what I thought I was doing!
Study, 4x8, Oil on Gessoed Paper

I decided that the next batch would be on panels. Um, just in case they got better (dealing with presenting and/or framing the works on paper stresses me out). As of today, I have done about 30 paintings, including a batch of about a dozen to put in an event at the local arts org. next week. None have been terrible but some are definitely much stronger than others. I am very excited about these works and have a lot of ideas about other directions in which to take them. There has also been much discussion about the orientation of the panels. My intent was that they would all be vertical "stripes" and I painted them like that, but of course many of them simply look better as horizontals. I really wanted to be completely abstract with these, but now I have decided to view them as a bridge from the older work to the new. Doug and I spent some time today discussing which way each of them should be presented. Also turns out that many of them go either way. Heh.
The Reds#48, 2009, Oil on Birch Panel, 9x9

Also working in a more square format (thanks Steven!) helps to make them work better as a vertical image.

Oh and much debate about titles. Oh the titles! I just couldn't bear the thought of having to come up with more titles, 30 right now, today!!! So I decided to simply title the series and number each of them.

I am posting several images here today and will put up more along with my usual posts. Will also be posting them (well, the good ones anyway;)) on my Facebook fan page.

AND. I have a mini new direction already, will post those images next time.
The Reds#55, 2009, Oil on Birch Panel, 6x9