Opposites, Attractions and the Circle of Inspiration

This weekend, I purchased two new pieces of art for my growing collection of small figurative paintings. I thought I might group them with another piece I bought last month. Of course I have to wait for the new pieces to arrive to really be able to tell if the three will look good together… My plan is to hang them on the very small section of wall just left of the tiny window in my guest bathroom, which is so small, only something the size of these exquisite small works will fit. My guest bathroom is turning into a little art galley! I put them together in Photoshop just to see how they might look and then simulated the wall color, which is a mid-tone muted green:

from top to bottom:

Daniel Moreira (Portugal) from “The Human Face” series, 6" x 6"

acrylic, watercolor and pencil on board mounted to balsa wood

“Graceful” by Micki Wilde (England), 8" x 8"

acrylic paint, caran d’ache, charcoal and pen on cradled wood

“The Natural Environment of Man”, 6" x 6" by Angela Petsis (PA)

mixd media on cradled wood panel

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because I was so inspired by browsing through all of the figurative pieces from some of my favorite artists while trying to decide what to spend my June art allowance on, that I had the uncontrollable urge to create a figurative work of my own yesterday, and so I did. I wanted to do a neutral face painting as I was very inspired by these and similar pieces I had been looking at. And of course, I got the last-minute urge to do something colorful and out of my comfort zone. So here is my latest painting, which is very small.

Colorful, 8" x 8"

acrylic on canvas board

The point of this long-winded post is that this painting would never have been created had I not seen the work of other artists and felt that inspiration. Not that mine is a great painting by any stretch, in fact it’s so far out of my usual color palette I’m not sure how I feel about this one. But it’s mere existence is a tribute to my appreciation of the work of other artists. The “circle” always kind of amazes me.