The Artful Home Catalog

Well, it arrived yesterday, the 2008 Fall Catalog from the Artful Home (formerly known as the Guild). This year, the Fall Catalog has three versions, only one of which contains my art (the version with the red vase on the cover). But there they were, my two Quadrants paintings, on page 4. I must say, I am a bit disappointed in the photography. The sheen on the paintings makes them look washed out. That combined with a terrible color separation makes me wonder if these will even sell from this catalog. I can only hope that it may inspire people to look at the Artful Home's website, where my images of them look so much better. Any time The Artful Home has featured a painting in one of their catalogs, it has sold, so I remain hopeful.

The New Reclamations

So I have finished what I have been previously referring to as “painting 3” and I am quite happy with it. I definitely like this new direction for my Reclamation series and find myself heartened to hope for submitting to the emerging artists’ show at the Art Sales and Rental Gallery at LACMA. Of course, I need at least 15 pieces in this new direction, but I am enthusiastic and am willing to work toward that. I actually think these may have a chance for consideration. In any event, it will be good to build up my inventory of this series, since art consultants seem to gravitate towards these and when my ad in the Guild Sourcebook comes out next year, I’ll have some on hand. Anyway, here it is, my latest in the Reclamation series:

Happenstance: 24” x 24”, acrylic on canvas, 2008

And below is an image of the painting in various stages of progress, from its very first texturizing and assemblage to progress points with paint. If you want to see an enlarged image, just click on it.

One very interesting thing worth mentioning is that I have switched paint brands. I have discovered Nova Color, a professional, artist-grade acrylic paint manufacturer in Culver City and this paint is fantastic. There is so much pigment in the paint, and its creamy consistency is “brush-ready” meaning that I don’t have to thin it down with mediums. In fact its coverage is so strong that I actually had to work to tone the hues down! Still, it is brighter than Interplay and its brightness is taking a little getting used to for me. Now I will get back to working on completing the other two paintings-in-progress.

A Different Work Flow

This past weekend I decided to try working on a few canvases at the same time to see if this could help keep me focused in my studio. My general tendency is to work on one piece at a time, not counting prep and finish which is always ongoing. But prep work and finish work are so mechanical, those processes don't shift my mind from a creative quandary and sometimes I need that. My theory is that this shift could keep me thinking creatively even though I’ve hit a sticking point. When get "stuck" on a piece, my tendency is to shift to the more basic set of tasks and if that’s not enough I have even been known to resort to housework. But mostly when I get stuck I just watch TV, run errands, go shopping, talk to friends, and that is not productive.

So I found that I actually spent more time in the studio, even though I do not have a finished painting to show for it. It’s a different way of working for me so I may just have to get used to it. Anyway, I have three paintings in progress, all 24” squares, which I worked on in between getting my Guild Sourcebook artwork finished, packing up a painting and working on redesigning my website. So I feel I had a very productive weekend.

Painting 1 has subsequently been nearly ruined in my last painting session on it, not sure if I’m going to do a complete paint-over or if when I return to it this evening I get a flash of an idea for a salvage. In any event, I didn’t take a photo of it in its depleted state, I’ll wait to see what happens. Painting 2 has turned out to be a bit of a weird color combination but I like what’s happening with the circles. The third painting could technically qualify as being in the prep phase, but what I have found with my new approach to the Reclamation series is that the creative process is actively engaged in that phase as I have to figure out the layout, experiment with the arrangement of the materials for the assemblage, finalize areas to be masked and plan for the gauged-out lines.


Painting 3, in the early phases of planning the assemblage:

Painting Complete?

I actually finished this one last Thursday, but I keep pondering whether it is complete. I feel like it needs something, but I am at a complete loss as to what that might be. So I am leaving it alone for the moment and moving on to other pieces. There is one thing I really like about this one and that is the lower left quadrant with the three circles. I really like what happened in the removal process and the reapplication of thinned white, that juxtaposition of transparent and opaque. I almost wish the whole painting was just that area. In fact, my intention is to try that again on one of my next pieces, making it more of a focal point. So here it is, I'm calling it a "Quadrant" for right now. It may remain as is, it may be painted further, it may get completely painted over. As a matter of fact, this one is a complete paint-over of an older painting that I was never really happy with. Sometimes a canvas gets painted over as many as three times before I get something that I like.

Quadrants 3, 24 x 24, acrylic on canvas, 2008

Another sold from the Guild's Studio Sale

Industria #12, 12" x 12", acrylic on canvas, 2005

This piece was originally painted for my very first art show back in '05 at Remmi Fine Art Gallery in Denver, CO.

Struggling still…

I had really hoped that something would have “occurred” to me by now to solve this little painting’s dilemma. Last night I put in some thin horizontal lines in the lower right quadrant, an effect that I like, but it seems I always resort to that when I am in conflict over a painting’s direction. Then I put in some circles. The balance seems off there, I need to glaze that big one down a LOT, even though I did a removal procedure after I painted it in so it’s not even as strong as initially applied. I like the smaller circles in the lower left, but that area muddied up a bit in the removal process (black always does that). And now I am in quandary over the little horizontal strip applied in the lower center portion. I got the idea to put something there from removing some of the masking tape from an earlier session. I re-use my masking tape sometimes, and this piece of tape had masked some other painting while I was using red. I just tacked the tape in the lower area of the painting, just to get it out of the way while I toiled at some other task but when I stepped back and looked at the painting the strip of red seemed just what the painting needed, a little unexpected color. So last night, remembering that little observation, I actually masked off a small area and applied the red. But now I am not so sure. I may have to paint over a bit, we’ll see what happens tonight!

Struggling…

Well, I haven’t been able to completely salvage this one yet. It started out as a “Quadrant” painting and I suppose it still has the look. What is different about this one from the other Quadrants is that I went back to brush painting and my previous two Quadrants were painted primarily with a knife. The knife yields a different look from the brush, in some ways a more interesting result, but then there are things that happen with a brush and very thinly layered glazes that I find myself missing in knife paintings. You can see my inspiration layouts tacked up on the wall, I have obviously completely abandoned those references in any but the most general way.

This work is far from complete, it still needs circles and additional embellishments. Maybe it will be a “Quadrant”, maybe it will become something else completely.

Friday's Disappointment, Saturday's Success

Friday was a bad painting day, the work in progress just wasn’t going anywhere. But I had gotten an idea for a piece that I thought I could include as a sample in my Guild Sourcebook 2009 ad, so in between bad painting sessions with the one that wasn’t going anywhere, I worked on the assemblage for this piece which I have entitled Interplay. By Saturday, it was ready to receive paint and I was ready to paint something good after Friday’s “disaster” (actually, I believe I can salvage that painting, but that’s a post for another day). Interplay was fun to paint, in fact it was almost magic.

Interplay, 2008, 36” x 12”, acrylic on canvas

Art for the Guild ad is due on the 15th, so I really wanted to include at least one piece that was truly representative of my work, either a Sticks & Stones or a Reclamation. This one obviously falls into the latter category (Reclamations are no longer numerically designated, they now get unique titles) and although there are probably things I would change in terms of layout, I am overall pleased with the outcome. I have decided to include Interplay along with Strata, my other recent favorite. The two are different enough, yet both are indicative of new directions. I even did a layout of the ad in QuarkXpress to see how the page will look:

Just Sold from the Guild's Studio Sale!

Sticks & Stones #39, 2008, 30" x 15", acrylic on canvas

I just painted this one a couple of weeks ago (see post entitled "New Direction").