I have a collage I was going to post today, but it just isn’t ready. So, I did some doodling with new markers and this is the result. It’s been a busy couple of weeks with framing and matting daily janes that recently sold. I don’t miss the pressure of creating a daily jane every day, but I do appreciate how it got me making on a very regular basis. It obviously hasn’t been as consistent or frequent this year, but I hope that the benefits of the practice will remain fresh in my mind.
05-04-16 “map of pain”
9.5×7.5″ acrylic on matboard
This week, I revisited this old painting, adding new paint in the background and over the whole thing. In the original, I was imaging pain I was having several years ago. It began as an abstracted figurative form with a splotch of dried paint collaged on. Now I think it looks kind of map-like. So, even though the piece looks completely different now (and that pain is all but gone), I wanted to include part of the genesis of the painting in the title.
04-28-16 “Iowa hills”
8×5.5″ acrylic, collage on matboard
I’m still catching up from the daily janes sale last weekend, but in doing some organizing/de-cluttering of my office/studio I found an old “Iowa hills” poem painting that I had de-framed some years ago. I didn’t really like it any more. I had a newer scrape painting that was intended for the “Iowa hills” poem. I decided to create a collage of the old painting’s poetry lines on the newer painting. I thought it might create a more multi-dimensional feel. This is the result.
Busy this week getting ready for the daily janes pop-up sale tomorrow morning, so no daily jane this week! If you live in the Des Moines area, please stop in between 10am and 12noon. Contact me for location details.
The scraping, using some leftover paint from yesterday’s daily, took on a smeared, dream-like quality. (The card has a very smooth surface.) I then used a variety of archival markers to fill in some of the bare areas and to dress up some of the colors.
This is a layered scrape painting. The colors of the original peek out here and there, but are mostly transformed by the second layer of transparent magenta and green.
We were out looking at our garden area over the weekend, and a very healthy bluebell plant is growing alongside our raspberry patch (far away from our normal bluebell bed)! This plant was so vigorous and beautiful, I decided to take some photos for my daily art. Because these “dailies” are more intermittent this year, I was going to stop including photos. But these bluebells are so sublime (and hopefully the composition is artful), that I’m telling myself it’s okay.
Remember when I asked you to vote between the fuzzy felted circle and the soumak knotted circle? Part of the reason I asked for input is that I really didn’t like either one (well, at least neither fulfilled the image I had in my mind for this project). (Here I should also note that I changed up the yarn because I realized I needed more yellowish-orange for this piece (even though I love the other yarn, too—it was too close in color to the paint).)
Someone (I’m looking at you Maggie! ;-)) mentioned that I should learn to crochet. *sigh* I think I have used only one crochet needle in my life, for pulling fringe through knots on the ends of scarves. But it seemed like it was worth a try.
I looked online and actually found patterns (inscrutable patterns, I might add) for crocheting circles. Instead, I mostly used the online tutorials for various basic crochet stitches, and some general concept of creating a circle using crochet. Even now, I really couldn’t tell you if I used a slip stitch or a single crochet stitch because I’m not sure I understand the difference! But using one or both of those, along with the chain stitch, is how I created this. I see mistakes, but I also discovered that freeform crochet is a real thing, so that’s a good cover story.
This image shows a close-up of the crochet spiral that I just attached to a canvas. I’m not ready to show the whole piece quite yet, but the painting, crocheting, and tedious attaching (with invisible thread) to the canvas, has been my daily work for a week or two. Stay tuned!
03-29-16 “canyonlands”
8×12.25″ acrylic, wool on matboard
This involves a few paint-scraping passes. Then I took some little tufts of wool yarn, leftover from my hand-knotting weaving, and adhered them to the piece. It just seemed like the right thing to do.
