Abstracting Memories and Inspirational Souvenirs

"Reed Sunset" is acrylic on museum wrapped canvas 24" x 36" x 1 1/2". For sale $500
I worked not from photographs but from memories of Tucson sunsets I painted in 1965 and of recent Arizona memories. First I covered the canvas with bright sunset colors and left it for several hours. Then I came back working in considerably more reds, magenta, white and yellows. Last I did the reed-like strokes recalling the reeds I watched from our motor coach. I remembered enjoying the reeds in front of the last glow of the sunset in a dark motor coach because we were conserving our power not having an electrical hook up. There were sounds from the nesting birds but not frogs. Later when we camped in a different location on the lake we heard frogs around sunset time.
I noticed as I was painting that I was unintentionally but pleasantly influenced by an installation in my studio. An earlier post is about the little installation of rocks I did in response to Martha Marshall's challenge to manipulate one of her abstracts.

I am featured in Paul Viel's "Art for the Soul" Blog

For a statement and details on this painting click on the link.

I am thrilled to be a part of Paul Viel's "Art for the Soul" blog. http://artforthesoul.blogspot.com/ Paul is a writer, passionate poet and photogrphic digital artist traveling in his and his wife's Winnebaggo Sightseer - the"Musemobile".

Pebble from Cebolia Camp

"Primal Pebble"

I picked up a cool pebble in our Cebolia camp.

If she could see and speak, she could tell us an epic story.

Rounded and polished in the Colorado's ancient glacial floods,

her surface is blackened by air and sunlight.

The shiny black conceals a heart of hot iron colors from a fiery birth.

Ages ago sister rocks were visited by native hunters

who carved through the black to warm life colors.

Prayerfully imaging their memories, maps and dreams

the natives made the blackened rock a character in our story.

"Primal Pebble" is acrylic on canvas 48" x 24" for sale $500.

To connect with a tour of spiritual painting click here.http://umbrellapaintingjournal.blogspot.com/2008/01/modular-frame-3.html#links

Finishing my last paintings of our trip

At the camp grounds in Canyon of Fire Stated Park, Nevada, just before sunset I painted watercolor and dilute acrylic medium on a lumpy textured gesso and absorbent ground on cradled hardboard 7" x 5" x 3/4". Then looking at the painting at home I saw giants risen from their rest. The painting was completed bring out the emotion with acrylic paints.

Fleeing Homeward

Although I took two canvases like this one 48" x 24", I did not complete either one. I was saving them for the last leg of our journey which was covered so quickly we didn't stop to paint. But as we started back the weather was predicted to be snow in the high passes on Friday. So we hurried past some beautiful landscape. On Thursday, March 27, we drove for 12 hours solid with a short stop for dinner. "Fleeing Homeward Past Walker Lake" was my first painting done at home.

Paintings for my husband

"Sequaro one mile from exit 52 E between Yuma and Tucson", watercolor and ink 9" x 12"

Mittery Lake, 14" x 20" watercolor, gouache, pencil and ink

my husband's favorite

Our Winnebago Sightseer as a traveling painting studio

Quick sketches of Red Cliffs in mole skin pocket book The difficulty we had on our first long trip was balancing Don's fishing with my painting. One of our stops when we first arrived appeared like a total empty place for my painting. It was a high bluff above Cebolia Lake in Arizona. The landscape stretched out to the horizon with tiny mountains in the distance. At sunset we heard the wild burroes and coyotes. When I went for a walk alone I was frightened out of my mind when I found myself in a swarm of killer bees who paid me no attention thankfully.
Here I discovered that I can find interesting and rewarding subjects anywhere. Underfoot I found a nature made mosaic of rocks of all descriptions. The camp site looked like

it had never been used by another human except for a circle of dust with some found rocks deliberately placed unlike nature could do alone. An artist had stayed here before and left the place without leaving more than his feelings expressed with the selection of rocks and how they interacted with sun and weather. Like that artist I tried to leave the camp as I had found it with an additional arrangement of rocks. As for my painting experience there, it went very well and is posted earlier.


What I like about our 2004 Winnebago Sightseer Motor Coach is that I had enough art supplies to last two months and my husband had an eight foot inflatable pontoon boat an all his fishing gear and we still had considerable empty storage space.

Watercolor from Nevada's "Canyon of Fire State Park"

This 9" x 13 1/2" watercolor was marked out in pencil on the trail and finished that afternoon in camp. For sale $200

Watercolors from trip to Arizona, 14" x 20"

Red Cliffs, California

Moon Rise over Cibola

Alamo Sunset

All three are for sale on cotton rag watercolor paper and each one is $100.

Arizona Acrylic Paintings 16" x 20"

Mountains combing the clouds passing over our desert camp near the Alamo Wayside on Highway 8 between Yuma and Tucson, March 11

Reeds seen near our camp on Mittery Lake, March 12

Wild flowers seen at camp site near Cebolia Lake on the Colorado River, March 19

photographs from California, Arizona, and Nevada Trip

Setting sun at the flat table a mile from Cebolia Lake. To reach this high nole we had to build up the road with big stones to repair where it had washed out. This was taken near the camp ground at Canyon of Fire, Nevada.

I always have an eye out for dragon shapes in the landscape and some of my paintings on this trip have a dragon shapes I think.

To see more of these Arizona paintings click on the link. widlerwenzelarizona@blogspot.com

1965 "Tucson Brick Works"

" Patagonia, Arizona" 1966, acrylic on canvas, 3 feet by 5 feet, at "Rain's" Tucson home

This is one of the first watercolors I did when my husband was going to graduate school at the University of Arizona. It is now in "Rain's" collection and has the honor of being hung in her Tucson home. I have just packed my watercolors as well as my acrylics for our trip south to Arizona.

Thank you "Rain" for supplying me with these excellent photographs of my work. After not seeing these paintings for a long time and it is important for me to see them to see the direction of my development.

1966 Desert painting

As far as I know this acrylic painting aproximately 3' x 5' is not for sale. It is an honor to have it hanging in Rain's Tucson home. Maybe the desert paintings I will be doing this month will be one step closer to non-objective. My painting journey is cyclic and I think my early work is like my current paintings.

Ideas from Kim

Kim Rodereffer Funk has a great blog with some ideas for painters. What I like about them is that they start the intuitive juices flowing. This wonderful bog is at http://kim-creatingspace.blogspot.com/. She suggested weaving two paintings together as a good warm up exercise. So I thought with all the studio clean up that I am doing I could use a little brushing up today. This is made of a portrait that probably was not my mother at the nursing home and an ink drawing mother and I did together. This little tribute to my mother is not for sale but might make it in some show with experimental or symbolic works.

The eclipse and thoughts of the future

The moon and the eclipse may not be what is energizing me to take stock of what I am doing. I started looking at my life and progress in painting before my current solo exhibit. But then again maybe the cyles of life does have direct bearing on my thoughts.
This painting is for sale. "Moon Eclipse" is watercolor with matte medium and acrylics on a wood 7" x 5" deep cradled box. $98

This is a still life I set up for some Albany artists who came to paint and have lunch. We are toying with a name for our group. Shirley suggests Kaleidoscope Artists. I put my foot in my mouth saying that I couldn't spell it. But I like the word. I think it describes the diversity of possiblities we have.

I used to fancy myself as an artists' artist. In a few instances I am sure I have influenced some. My blog might help me in that direction. But I would also like to sell some. It is not my greatest love to market my work. I really like to demonstrate that I just don't hack out my paintings and want all to know the depth of my involvement. So I think for me showing my work along with my process will mean that my art will find new homes where they are fully appreciated. I do plan to put early work and paintings I did in collaboration in on-line galleries this year. I am also wanting to get my work out to venues farther away from home this year with my solo exhibit in Keizer my first step. But I am not going to make paintings just for sale. First they must be for my own satisfaction.

Window frame, book, modular

The grid is the number one greatest invention in the history of man. Perhaps when all anthropological studies are complete, the one area inwhich mankind can be considered distinctly different from other animals is our invention and applications of the grid. An example being the fold lines of a book signature, a sheet itself which when folded and cut becomes one unit of the book. Books are one application. Here I am symbolizing the story line weaving through the book pages of the book maker's signatures of 16 pages. For those who have not been following my blog I have been painting various sides of the cradled boxes which can be rearranged into the modular frames in endless combinations. I hope to go beyond an exercise by also expressing symbolism, mystery, awe, and emotion.

What do I do with all the puppies that didn't sell?

I have stored all quarter sheet watercolors in graocery bags. For several years I stored them and now I can go treasure hunting through them. The "Red Sea Anemone" was one of the daily paintings I did with my mother during the last years of her life. On this one my youngest granddaughter painted the yellow first.

One of my treasurers is a painting that I did on the Santiam River while my husband was fishing and moving down the river. I am thankful to the cross sectional collage that maps my development. The exercise of seeing an overview of my work helped me to appreciate this one.

In addition to the treasurers from the two bags of paintings stored away for several years, I placed paintings were sorted. Some were cut down into post cards, and some were ready for the gesso recycling journey. The ones covered with matts have been croped and will be posted on a gallery on the internet for sale. I think I have hundreds that mother and I made and someone would like to have some of these bright and joyous paintings so they will be for sale too.

Where do I get my ideas?

My collage is changing daily as I think about all the sources of my creativity - strong impressions. Some of my strongest impressions come from early childhood. Some more come from working with my children, being outdoors in nature and making things out of clay. I believe all artists could map their development on the egg cross section as I have. It might be instructional. For me the collage diagram gives my body of work structure being an intuitive artist finding meaning for my work in the process of making it, I allow myself to persue many directions. To see an enlargement please click on the picture.

Painting the infinite in the manner of the Chinese

1996 Watercolor painting is primarily an arrangement of zigzag perspective. At the time I wasn't thinking I was painting like a Chinese painter. Then well known watercolorist Carolyn Lord from California picked up on the Chinese concept in this painting. Since then I study "Principles of Chinese Painting" by George Rowley. It is an exceptional book to ponder.

For those of you who not have been reading my blog for awhile, last month I started an artist statement with a visual collage of my development. The metaphore I used to organize my photos was a cross section of an egg. The center was the major impressions that are food like an egg yoke for my painting. The white is pictures of me at work from childhood until recently. The space around the egg contain paintings representive of my linear and dragon-like paintings. The watercolor is in this detail of my development collage.

Diptych Modular, painting outside the box

I started thinking of how many possible arangements could be made from this diptych if I turned it four ways interchanging all squares plus leaving the back painting open. I think it must be a calculous mathematical problem and I do not have a quick exact answer. But it must be hundreds of thousands. Today I painted the inner layer of the white modualr and also some of the concave sides of the boxes. It now occurs to me that this could be a mini artist's body of works. A slot could be made in one side of each cradled box and more paintings could be inserted. I could invite people to participate in this modular. I could teach people to paint and arrange colors without them ever having to wet a brush. It would be real paint and not like the light in acomputer monitor.

I am thrilled with finding a special meaning. The femine spirit as I began this a week ago was looking through the window with wet eyes. It was hard to tell if she was on the inside or the outside. I do not want to paint exclusion. So here I paint my femine spirit becoming. I am painting outside of my box.

In 2003 I made this cut-out after Matisse's cut-out dragon in His "The Thousand and One Nights". This is a dragon trying to expand beyond his confinement. I was painting my mother's spirit in her last days in the nursing home. I showed her Matisse's cut-outs and made some similar ones to hang above her bed where she could see them. The Diptych Modular is partly finished and will have a similar feeling and symbolism.

Continuing the same modular

Here is the first modular frame with borrowed boxes from the diptych. Surprising how different the mood is by changing the panels.

I paint abstracts very much like I do representational and fantasy. Often colors are mixed on the surface of the painting. They are adjusted by layering. sometimes I do not like the textures that build up.

Two more modular frames

Having a little difficulty staying with the abstract and symbolic. I was tempted to put a face looking through the window but will have to store that one away when I have a real reason to paint the emotion of exclusion.

Tomorrow I'll start the second modular.

My Solo Art Opening in Keizer, Oregon

Granddaughter helped meet the few guests to my art opening. She took pictures and interviewed me taking notes. We all had a marvelous time. I also want to thank the members of The Keizer Art Association. They did a splendid job hanging my art. The bright paintings were at home in the well lit white walled gallery.