summer studio sessions part I

Kerdieekrdaad spent the unbearably hot portion of the past couple weeks in her ethereal air conditioned studio.  I came out with a series of 12 3" square paintings and Bri is going to town on a bunch of source material with her exacto.  Here are the first five:

Ode to Vision and Revision

Over the past three days, as I watched this painting change rapidly beneath my hand, I remembered the a few lines from T.S. Eliot's The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock that read:

There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea.

For everyone else, I hope there is something in this painting that lifts and drops a question on your plate. While I've come to understand that I cannot share through color and shape the conversations running in my head as I make something, I hope that the art provides a starting point for new dialogues, new questions, new debates. I hope something I've painted causes you to be curious, to remember, or to hope--that you leave a little you with the painting and take a little of the painting home.

For me, this painting is about vision and revision. The colors I used and the moments I constructed with those colors resulted from, I think, an honest sense of wonder (to use Rachel Carson's words). Wonder at color, at the way it is dispersed in nature and at the power I feel when I can choose colors. To finish this painting, I needed to take the time to look, often, and have the courage to let pieces of it fall away. The process was one of intuition, serious contemplation, indecision (about every ten minutes), joy (especially when the colors I mixed were vibrant and good), revision, and exhaustion. Today I felt satisfaction, and chose to stop here.

I dedicate the painting to the people that use their senses vigorously and joyously to explore our world!

composition in string no. 6

A sort of map of the string sculpture, in gouache (my first time using it.) Two paintings overlapped. Some sections cut out. A drawing in charcoal began each painting. The thought process was almost entirely about the color once I started painting. I treated the drawings somewhat like coloring books.

30" by 60" (approx)

Sometimes we all just need the beach

the painting that put me into a funk also released me from a bad painting rut. I was so stuck that I did a one-eighty and decided to destroy the painting with a bright orange courtyard. Which, of course, saved it, and my exhaustion of it. Nearly finished, just a little more work on the white umbrellas and the shadows that appear beneath them.

I've been looking at Diebenkorn and Hopper to get me through this one.


Now I'm onto the next one, full of color and layers and experimentation with solvents and drips.

Leonardo's Lungs

these are small drawings I'm working on. a series of twenty in total. I'm reading Da Vinci's journals of anatomical drawings, which he had to keep secret from a Roman government that forbade human dissection. The pieces, when finished, will have very dark, dense negative space filled with incorrect anatomical drawings that preceded Da Vinci, and are only guesses, as opposed to observed. I'm sort of talking about dark as an allegory for ignorance and also fear, and light as one for knowledge and also courage.

Obstacle

and a painting I've just begun about the harshness of transition in the city. (Inside to outside, dark to light, edges, boundaries, shadows...)

Mardi Gras

"Overgrowth." The ink drawing in this watercolor just poured out late two nights ago, as if my brain just needed a good rinse before I called it a day. I've always considered myself a morning person, so it's strange that I've made a habit of doing outside-of-my-sketchbook stuff at night. Perhaps it has something to do with the Nanny job I've had this summer, which has given a whole new excitement to solitude.

I think I could have planned more carefully the colors, maybe restricted my palette a bit, because I didn't intend the Mardi Gras effect. Oh well. My Mommy liked it.

AS OF 9/20: THIS WORK TO BE SOLD AT THE 10X10 SHOW BRUNSWICK, MAINE. FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT ME.

Studio work

things I've learned at art school (sophomore year, Moore College of Art and Design)