Dream Sofa

acrylic textures and paint, collage on w/c paper 10 X 11″

CREATE your dream sofa

and it’s got to be soft in all the right places, conforming

to the body that needs refuge in a mother’s

acceptance of all the natural

accumulated muscle throbs bone clashes sores weariness

one that naturally listens and accommodates

some evenings giving spine support and others

gobbling up the jutting sharpness of a day’s stress

tenderizing it without comment

without correction

without judgement

it’s time NOW for your dream sofa to hold

you with open arms open palms

soft fingers

Ahhhh!

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I Voted

Actually I voted weeks ago. It’s been a slow agonizing wait, or has it been fast? Feels that way now suddenly on the eve of election day.

w/c paper textured with light molding paste and finished with fluid acrylics

I VOTED

Speedy goes the clock

Goes the calendar

Goes the daylight time falling back

Goes the leaves changing falling

Down to the wire

Down to the red and the blue

Down to the finish line

The donkey and the elephant panting

With so much to weigh them down

There’s that down again

Is the up on its way?

Hope you get some sleep tonight!!

 

Phoenix Rising

The archetype of the phoenix is particularly appealing to those of us in what is officially now known as “fire country”. So it’s no wonder that when I was clearing out old paintings and moving pieces of them to my collage piles, I looked deeply into one and found the suggestion of a baby phoenix.

acrylic on w/c paper

Have you felt the whisper soft breath of the baby phoenix as it rises from the smoke and ashes?   

They say its tears can heal wounds and cure infections. (Viruses too.)

Peer into the smoke, and you may see it rising from its own ashes.

Can you see it? Can you hear its muted cry?

Are you ready to feed and protect it and help it grow strong enough to redeem us all?

Get Your Art Groove On: Free Lesson!

OK, is your sock drawer straightened up yet? Larder stocked? Then it’s time to sit down for some art fun. Here’s a lesson I videotaped 7 years ago as part of an online course called: In the Company of Muses: Adventures in Mixed Media Art Journaling. I think it’s time to release it again.

To watch the video demonstration click here.

Have a go, have fun, and let me know how it goes! And I’ll post another lesson next week.

 

Texture+Paint+Cut+Paste

Sometimes the greatest successes in mixed media painting are repurposed “experiments”.

We were doing the gesso texturing method called “decalcomanie” in Muse Group. Slather gesso on the paper, put another paper over it to “pull” the wet texture out to create a rough painting texture when dry. Then paint wetly over it.

 acrylic over gesso texture with collage on 10 X 11″ watercolor paper

A rush of golden energy punctuated with silver whisperings. It’s not time to lie down. This is the ‘shroom dance of spring, the spores rising and settling in a fine mist. It’s time now to wake early and watch the birthing of these golden days.

This painting was not the beginning. It started with various textures painted on two pieces of paper. The first (below) was a class demo/sampler of different acrylic textures, with pumice and sand and molding paste. It got very confused the more I tried to “finish” it.

See what I mean? I liked the mushroom (‘shroom) theme and cut this painting up.

Can you find the mushroom (later modified somewhat) that landed in the first painting when this one (above) was cut to pieces?

Now I have such an abundance of choices to collage into yet another painting in the series.

I also went through my collage file to find other elements that could be added.  Can’t wait to work on this some more. It’s an invitation to “build” another painting with the most interesting materials.

Mix Those Media! Workshop

Here’s the flyer for a new weekend workshop I’m offering in November ! 

For more information check out my website. Feel free to contact me with any questions and to register. Hope you can come!

A Square Creates Order (or tries)

A square attempts to bring order out of chaos here in this demo from the Patina workshop last weekend. The last touch was a bit of scumbling over the rough surface with a finger dipped in bronze paint.

Workshop demo: acrylic on textured surface, painted foil and mylar collage on w/c paper

Try looking in the mirror. This personhood has so many fun house distortions . Open those windows and the pieces buzz around and fly out. Airborne they eventually become stars and find their way home to a green planet somewhere you are.

 

“Patina” Workshop

Last weekend was the Experimental Mixed Media Painting Workshop: PATINA that I taught at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts. Maybe I always feel this way when I spend a whole weekend with people who are excited to be painting and enjoying each others company, but this was a wonderful group that “geled” almost immediately. It was fun to hang out and create with them. The fact that it was a whole weekend made it possible for out of town folks to attend and enjoy our town as well!

We started out with acrylic textures on paper and heavy duty foil, then applied acrylic paints wetly to take advantage of the the textural imprints. With the emphasis on patina blends we explored mixes of iridescent pigments with transparent pigments.

I think my favorite blend of the day was Titan Buff, Micaceous iron Oxide, and Iridescent Bright Gold (Golden fluid acrylics).

My Demo: acrylic patina mixes on textured paper with textured foil and screen collage

the “share” table with stencils, rollers, scrapers, foils, screen, punchanella, color mixes and more.

The students’ work was relaxed and free!

We all love shiny things and the light was sparkling off the paper!

Forest like textures. . .

and vibrant designs.  And an invitation to everyone to “steal” ideas from from each other. I always do!

If you wanted to come and weren’t able to, I hope you will make it next time! I’m planning another mixed media workshop at Sebastopol Center for the Arts November 11 and 12th and hope to see some of last weekend’s students back!

Early Spring Musings

Sometimes I just want to look at the blossoms and not remember the storms that brought us here. Look at the green and the lacy morning dew and imagine that this world is mine, as is, right now. Not just in process and needing to be weeded. Not because it all will soon enough disappear, torched by summer’s draught. But just because it is right now. . .mine.

acrylic textures (molding pastes), acrylic inks and collage on w/c paper, 10 X 11″

It is apple blossom season here in Sonoma County. You don’t want to blink and miss it! You don’t want to miss the butterflies fluttering through the garden, drinking apple blossom nectar, mating, and laying eggs on the pipevine. Gardening is a great excuse to be outside with hands in the dirt, and art making gravitates always to these spring colors and forms.

In Muse group we were playing with a wide variety of texture making tools and many of the acrylic mediums now on the market, from molding paste and crackle paste to gels with clear flakes and pumice. You could spend a fortune in the art store gathering up the various mediums to get texture. It’s what happens when you put fluid paint over them that excites me.

I’ll be teaching a weekend mixed media workshop June 24 and 25 where we’ll be using textures like these to achieve the light casting sparkle of Patina!  For more information and to register please visit my website.

Chrysalid

inks, gesso, pencil, and collage on canvas 24″ X 24″

A continuation of my contemplation of the Japanese esthetic of wabi sabi that treasures the passage of time and a sense of impermanence. I was going for the patina of rustic, aged surfaces, and in the process called forth an image which honors the natural cycle of birth and death.

Where do images come from? There is an obvious answer when I am out sketching people and events, doing the pictorial storytelling or reportage which I’ve come to love so much. But when I explore the surface of the canvas, and something appears, I find that I am at a loss to answer. The painted surface has its own life then.

There is always some thread I can follow back to the circumstances of my life at the moment. I have this spring been witnessing the colorful life cycle of the Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly in my studio garden. And in the past two weeks I have lost count of the number of people known to me who have passed. It gives one pause, and that gives one paintings I suppose.

Later this month,June 25, 26,  I’ll be teaching a weekend workshop: Mixed Media Painting: The Visual Poetry of Wabi Sabi  at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts. We will be accessing this rich esthetic with mixed media painting techniques, poetry, meditation and writing.  There is still space if you want to come! For more information or to register, please visit my website.