Expanding Modular Painting Frame to Backing

This fifth day is the beginning of the resolution. The backing door skin plywood gets dabs of colors repeating the dominate colors. The textured tops of the deep cradled boxes are further developed. My intention remains to make compartments that differ but offer multipal possibities for harmonious combinations. They are to remain my happy colors.

Play Day

My visions is about dividing space up into compartments and then spinning out of their boundaries finding connections. I am seeking a thread to hold the parts together like a poem. I don't like it when people walk past with out seeing. I want to share my fun.

I feel satisfied that my family loves my play art. Maybe that is as far as this will go.

McKenzie's arrangement of squares. She thought the suares could also be a tic-tac-toe game.

The Display Frame says my husband is being made into much more than he anticipated. He thought it was a single time only gallery display of seperate pieces to be sold separtately. He is only somewhat flattered that I think he deserves equal colaborative credit in this new experimental painting/sculpture art form. There are problems to be solved in its construction so that all the squares blocks and window openings are equal. It remains to be seen if the boxes will vibrate outwards until they fall out.
My daughter and grandchildren deserve credit for their enthusiasm. And thank you to Martha Marshall of http://artistsjournal.blogspot.com/ for her enthused comment.
Today I am moving the blocks around into many configurations. Many posible ideas have come to mind.

Day Three of Modular Frame Wall Hanging

The flatt colors painted on the inside of the boxes contrast with the organic nonobjective paintings.





The flat colors repeat the architectural frame.

My happy colors

This is my first day using color on my modular cradled wood boxes in a frame. Tomorrow I will paint the inside. For these ones are not only interchangeable but they are reversible.

Modular Wood Deep Cradled Box Frame

My 2008 project is an interactive abstract. I invite the viewer to participate by rearanging nine six inch square cradled boxes. Today I put the third layer of gesso on each box. Tomorrow I will start in color.

Demonstration at Pegasus Art Gallery

The Saturday before Christmas was a splendid time to paint at the front of a frame shop meeting other artists mostly. Here is my work table in front of my exhibit wall. I demonstrated using one part acrylic medium diluted with two parts water. Here I did a series which was not a production line as it might appear to some. Each one is totally original and plays off of the others. I worked on all of them at the same time so as not to get obsessive over any one of them. The advantage of working on a group is the creative advantage of coming up with fresh new impulses. When I started to get overly picky in one spot, I could leave it for awhile and when I came back the paint was dry enough to approach it in new ways.

Preparing"Hidden Drangons", a January exhibit

Here are some of the paintings that I am preparing to hang at Sam's Station. I am grouping them by placing stacked small paintings between large ones.

December 26th I received an unexpected call from the gallery representative for Sam's Station. I will not be able to hang the exhibit on January 2 because the owners of the restaurant are closing down for the first 9 or ten days of January to go on vacation. So now I will have more time to organize this exhibit. I was not at all upset because next time I say I will do a January exhibit, I'll have it done before Thanksgiving. It took me quite awhile to select work and give titles. "Then and Now Self-Portrait" has several dragons hidden in it and I have titled it "Self-Portrait/Dragons Reflecting 1962"
I had fun with some of my other titles like:
Dragon Eyes are Blue Birds
The Ocean:My Cup Dragon
Peace Rose Thorny Horn Dragon
Dragon's Hidden Coral Garden
Tooth and Spike Kissing?
Sparkey the Dragon Pup
Fir Bough Dragon Whispers to Dragon Cloud
Misty Dragons Meander Between Mountains
Time to bake cookies for tomorrow's afternoon opening at Pegasus Art Gallery in Corvallis, Oregon

Rethinking Then and Now Self Portrait

On the left is my memory of a self portrait painted when I was 19. On the right I reflect on me now. This appears to be considerably changed from yesterday. Mostly I made color adjustments to reproduce what I really painted. "The Then and Now Self Portrait" is acrylic on an 18 " square canvas. After Rains's impression that I painted myself too old, I changed my posture giving myself a neck.

My Then and Now Self Portraits

My most important self portrait painting is lost. Perhaps it no longer exists. My lost self portrait has gained more importance to me as I grow older. I did it my Sophomore year at Portland State College as a third hour assignment. I had a great deal of freedom to do the self-portrait as I wished. The colors I selected were the ones Mary Hearn, another student, used in a painting of a dieing pine tree. I loved the fiery oranges so much it reminded me of my small family tree. I didn't want to look at myself in the round mirror at my back. I felt invisible as an aspiring emerging artist. My face and body melts into the atmosphere. The most important part of me was my determination and the paint brush and colors.

Mary and I traded paintings and my self portrait hung in the dining room of her folks for years. Now what happened to it is a mystery.

I thought the image of the lost portrait was so clear in my mind that I would not have any trouble in repeating it. Plus it would be most interesting to contrast the old portrait ideas with how I see myself now as an artist. Painting me as I see myself now was easy. But recapturing the idea of the early portrait was not. I started out putting liquid acrylic on with a palette knife. Well needless to say the liquid acrylic did not behave like the oils in 1962. Furthermore, I am not using cadmium colors anymore. But eventually I succeeded in rendering my memory of the essential portrait.

While I painted I went off on some interesting false starts. My posture had to be tightened up to make me more tensely upright. For awhile my arm was up and I remembered that in other portraits during my child rearing years I took the stance of a painter orchestrating my canvas as a conductor. In my college portrait I was holding my brush in a vice grip as though it were all my life. Then I was 19 almost 20. Now I am almost 65.

After nearing the completion of my portrait of the past, I occasionally made a few marks on my portrait of now. As I painted the hands I was surprised that I made a more relaxed hold on the brush. How could I be more relaxed? I am just as determined. I was thinking how much I am the same today. I paint in a similar style. I paint colors the way I feel them emotionally and not by trying to match nature. I still feel invisible to the public. But I am my own judge with confidence that what I am doing is right for me. I am more contemplative and reflective.

My Wall at Pegasus Art Gallery with display racks

My deep cradled boxes are displayed on a wood shelf rack 27" long, 6" high, and 7" deep.

Pegasus Art Gallery's owner was good to hang a third show on my wall this month. I demonstrated watercolor on absorbent ground today and will demonstrate again next week.

#2 New Year's Dragon

"#2 New Year's Dragon" is one of three dragons painted last Saturday. Tomorrow Saturday, December 15, 1-3 P. M. I will be doing another demonstration at Pegasus Art Gallery, 341 SW Second Street, Corvallis, Oregon. Artists and collectors welcome!

New Year's Dragon

'New Year's Dragon' is acrylic on museum board16" x 12" . I was demonstrating at the Pegasus Art Gallery opening last Saturday. There will be two more Saturday openings before Christmas. Saturday December 15, I will be demonstrating the watercolor and acrylic on absorbent ground board. I am also demonstrating my journey into a painting where I move the paint around.

Opening of Painting Exhibit

My wall is to the left when entering the frame shop at Pegasus Art Gallery in Corvallis Oregon. Today was an opening. There will be two more openings before Christmas on Saturdays. Early next week I will be changing the exhibit to keep with the theme of rotating exhibit. There will be more dragons. Next Saturday I'll be ready to talk about my dragons. I'll be bringing my extra yummy chocolate chip cookies and fresh fruit. To see the individual pictures larger click on the photograph.

Yesterday's frustration : today's multiple accomplishments

"Grandma Riding Sea Dragon", acrylic on museum wrapped canvas, 40" x 30" is for sale $400. For while there was a second dragon in the far lower right. As I mentioned earlier the woman talked back to me. Finally she became engaged in riding her dragon.

"Dragon's Shadow" is acrylic on museum wrapped canvas, 36" x 24" x 1 1/2", for sale, $400. "Dragon's Shadow" was at first non-objective. After many starts I became worked up with emotion. I worked towards express myself with energetic spirit. The title came after it was finished when I thought the dark looked like the distorted open jaws of the dragon.

Should these Dragon paintings be made to relate?

Working in a small enclosed area I thought my dragon paintings would just effortlessly flow into a visual harmony. But to my amazement I must force them to have a thread that connects. Sometimes I think I must wreck an already done painting to stretch it beyond where I have been.

Although I have not been showing many finished paintings, I am working hard at it.