Friday, May 26, 2006

On A Roll ..I don't know!


Any time I can get two paintings finished in two days, I consider I'm on a roll. Well......I must admit that they weren't started and finishes all in the same day but just finishing one on one day and the other the next is good enough. Especially if you haven't been getting a heck of a lot of work done in some time.

......Lac Montbel 2 is today's finished painting. Although it was the first one of the two paintings I started, it was the last to be completed.

I worked over and over and then photographed it....decided it had too much of a dark inverted "v" shape almost in the center of the foreground....so back to the painting table to work on that....and more photographing.........finally, I think it's done.

I've been working so much on paper lately...that I think I must drag some canvas out of the closet next...........hum, and what size do I want that canvas to be???

Thursday, May 25, 2006

What comes first?




What comes first???.........sometimes I wonder if titles for paintings just jump into your mind because you've experienced something........or if the same painting would come and be titled something else without the experience.

Before I left for France I had two very large pieces of paper on my painting wall.....both what you call elephant size 30 x 44". I struggled with them, just playing around....I decided what the heck, just pour paint and splash and blot. I did all that and then put them up on the wall to look at. Darn, if I didn't just get out my brushes and palette knives and paint right over all that experimental pouring. Finally, I decided both of them were kinda coming along but needed a lot more attention than I had to give at that time. So I left them and went off to France for a month, praying for inspiration to come from my time away.

So.........what did I do today but paint on one of those pieces (although I did tear it apart into 22 x 30" pieces first). I thought, "these colors remind me of a place in France".........so one piece has turned into Lac Montbel 1. I'll work on the other one tomorrow and see if it's going to work out as well. This photo is a little light and washed out from too much sun beaming down and I am considering cropping off some of the sides....can't get away from squares it seems....but maybe not.

Lac Montbel near Ste. Colombe, France has the most amazing turquoise water.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

What Fun!



What fun.......I got an unexpected package in the mail today. It contained copies of the new chapbook, A Unified Theory of Light, by Theodore Worozbyt*. It was published by Dream Horse Press .

Bear wrote and asked me last year if I would allow one of my paintings to be used as the cover art..........I said yes, of course. I did this another time with a poetry magazine, The National Poetry Review.

I went to the Dream Horse site to see if it was showing up yet......but no, however, I did find that it won the 2005 poetry chapbook prize (should have noticed that on the front of the book) . I'll keep a watch out for the cover to be shown later.

In the meantime, although this doesn't really show my work well, here is the cover. I'll link this image to the painting image when clicked. Hum..that might not work out so I'll just include a link here to the image on my website. Antica7 This painting was purchased last year by a women's clothing store in the Dallas metroplex area.


*Theodore Worozbyt...a native of Atlanta, Theodore Worozbyt has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Arts Councils of Alabama and Georgia. He holds an MFA and PhD from the University of Alabama, where he teaches writing and literature.

Saturday, May 20, 2006

Rediscovery



All week I've been bogged down with getting ready for two new doors to be installed.........and after, that we have to prep and paint them. Not my idea of good painting days but it's about finished. I'm still waiting for the last coat to the trim around the front but it's 90 degrees out there.

While all this is going on I went into the studio to look around for some information for paintings to present to a design gallery in NY I've worked with in the past and found a painting I did after my trip to France in 2004.......heck, it had never even been inventoried. I did have a title on the back.....Near Esperaza. And thinking about it, I think I was reliving some of the feeling from the afternoon up at Rennes Le Chateau that day. We didn't make the trip over there to that area this trip. Maybe all this hulabaloo about the DaVinci Code made me remember this painting.

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Symbols



I've been thinking about my quick statement about selling the collage to a friend here........that it was my favorite of all the pieces I did. And it is..........but why is that? The main reason is that it summed up or symbolized the trip and what I saw and felt there.

Every day we wandered the little curving roads in this area of the Aude and Ariege departments of France. Wandering slightly south, you were always amazed at the sun lighting up the Pyrenees at some times of the day or their cloaking by the clouds at other times. However, their presence was always felt. One other presence was the corridors of plane trees everywhere in the region (and others, of course) of France. Both of these presences are not something I run across in northeastern Texas.

When I set up to do work in the studio, I had to work for several days just to paint and prepare papers to use in a collage. Hum...how could I have forgotten it would take some time to collect stuff for adding to mixed media? In the interim, I painted. So one morning I finally had to start making something and started with a 15 inch square with dark blues for a background. I started tearing from some of the other papers and low and behold, I suddenly saw those mountain ranges...........as I kept on adding small bits and pieces, I suddenly realized there were the trunks of the plane trees ......or what I think symbolized the rows of plane trees. None of the colors are colors I think of when I think of April in the Languedoc (green is THE color at this time) but for me, this collage symbolized what I had been seeing and internalizing........and I actually saw it as I worked. This isn't something that happens often for me. I usually only see this later when the work is finished. The link for the image was in the previous post. I've got to figure out why some of my images are rotating and not coming up correctly........in the interim, just check the link.

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Visit from a Collector

One of my favorite people came to see the work I did at Cat'Art this morning. She said she'd been saving a place for one of my works...and she chose one of my favorites from the trip...Cat'Art 11. ........and with all the work in her collection, she didn't have any collage.

(the image files continue to upload turned in the wrong direction so I just had to link to my site.)

It's somehow reassuring to find that the one you gravitate to most is also the one such a knowledgeable person also likes enough to buy.

Monday, May 1, 2006

Cat'Art Informal Exposition


I'm doing a little experimenting with using the Microsoft Photo Story 3 program. I uploaded some pictures of the day we all set up our work informally and talked about what we did during the month at Cat'Art. I didn't have a picture of myself (unfortunately, ha-ha) since I took these pictures. Just click on this expo link to download my video. And please don't laugh at my Texas accent. It will take some downloading so be patient even with broadband. Also, MAC users may not be able to bring it up in their version of Windows Media Player. I hope to remedy this problem later, if possible.

I just adlibbed this commentary so I'm sure some of it leaves something to be desired. As far as my work, I did quite a few small collages and paintings, but am most looking forward to seeing what will happen with my work in the future from all the time we were exposed to these new experiences and a different environment.

................thanks to Karen Jacobs for this picture of me and my work..........