Finished!

Red Carol, 2008, Oil on panel, 24x36

I am not entirely happy with how this portrait turned out, but I am not exactly unhappy with it either. It reminds me of the first series of paintings I did (here is one) after taking time off to have babies; fine, but too precise and not expressing whatever it is that my heart wants to say.

Ugh, terribly sappy, eh?

Anyway, it is a good start I think, and because the piece doesn't totally suck, I entered it (yesterday, exactly one half hour before the deadline) in our local arts organization's annual national competition, the one that I enter every year, but have only been accepted into once. So we'll see.

I've probably just jinxed myself now by mentioning this though.

Directions

I don't like to talk too much about the directions I'd like to take as far as my work goes. I firmly believe in jinxes and I have noticed that whenever I discuss what I will be doing, it all fails miserably. Thinking about it too much and trying to envision what the work will look like has the same effect. But I need to do a little bit of planning here, and I have decided to risk a big fat jinx by publicly stating what my focus will be while I am on this residency.

When I began painting again after years of being a stay at home mom, I just sort of fell into painting the landscape. It wasn't anything I had done before and I certainly have been exploring that genre for the last four years! I feel like I have really developed my painting skills and so now I'd like to explore some different imagery. Back in college I was quite proficient at drawing and painting almost anything (EXCEPT the landscape) which is a byproduct of being an illustration major. We did a lot of drawing and had to cover a wide variety of subject matter.

Anyway, the figure was always a favorite subject for me and I had a pretty good eye for it, I think. I was good at likenesses, but I was still working on developing my painting skill in college and I never did get those two things to work together very well. Now I have the painting thing down pretty well and since I still love my painting process, it is still challenging and fulfilling to me, I don't intend on mixing that up during this time (someday I will, but perhaps that will be a more gradual process) and so I will focus on developing different imagery. Since there will be three hours of figure drawing sessions each weekday during my residency, I plan to take full advantage of working on the figure.

So this is my plan: First of all, I am going to toss off a barn or landscape or two just to warm up and get comfy in a new studio. After that I am planning to do a lot of drawing at first during the figure sessions, then will move on to doing some underpaintings directly from the model. In between all of that I am going to try and incorporate the drawn images into paintings along with some kind of background. In addition, I have about a million vintage photographs which I am going to take along. I have used those as reference before; I've taken figures from those and have put them into different backgrounds, with varying degrees of success. That was a direction I have always wanted pursue but didn't have the time and am hoping to do that now.

Now, having stated my plans, I have to add that I don't necessarily think I will follow through with them. I just need some parameters to start with. The thought of being able to do whatever I want while I am there is too overwhelming for me and I will flounder and probably accomplish nothing. I need a goal, a focus, along with the ability to be flexible and change directions later on.

So it's anybody's guess, including mine, on what kind of work I will be bringing home at the end of February!

My Art Star Status

More houses on deck for today. I did this underpainting last week.

Despite trying to spend less time on the computer I ended up in a blog and internet-reading marathon on Saturday.

(By the way, I completely jinxed myself with the post on Friday. I said our snow was melting and then we had a storm that day that dumped almost another foot on us. I said I was going to have the house to myself all evening, so then naturally the circus was canceled and I watched a movie with my husband with 3 interruptions involving the most trivial of childhood disagreements-who did what to who first and who gets to watch what on the other TV. I said the sick chicken was doing ok and then she died on Saturday afternoon, during the one hour of the day that we left the house to go to the neighbor's maple sugaring off party. God only knows what will become of my painting when I try to get back to it today. Heh)

Anyway, I got a kick out of my -30 score on Lisa Hunter's Art Star Game. Clearly I am not art star material. Darn! Luckily though, no one that I have worked with as of yet, has ever been concerned with my age, my looks, my degree or my waistline (except for me, but that's a given). Of course I am not in the blue chip, NYC art world, and I suppose things are different over there, but I don't really care about all of that. And actually being an art star sounds like a pain in the ass. Twenty years ago I might have been interested but now I realize that all of those distractions probably wreak havoc on personal relationships, family, studio time and whatever mental issues one already has. I just want to raise my kids properly, paint, and hopefully make a half decent living at it.

Speaking of painting, I must get to work early today. I have a number of pieces that I must finish up this week, and since Doug and I will be going to the city on Thursday, I only have a few days.