Monday at sunrise, accordion folded watercolor journal

I painted in the boat on Monday but on Wednesday I made a few last touches.

CHANGE of goal for my blog

Photos: Gleneden Beach and Proposal Rock taken in September during our month stay at Coyote Rock RV Resort and Marina near Lincoln City, Oregon

I have taken photos on my painting vacation. And they are complete in themselves and I will not copy them into paintings but just add them into my experience and draw from how they make me feel helping me to symbolize the emotions I will be painting. This is my process and my blog that has been an outlet for expressing my process will Change.

And it is time for CHANGE. My new goal is to make slide shows of my work to be published here every few months. I will post announcements of events such as where I am exhibiting and teaching every Saturday evening

Detail showing lines made with Chinook Salmon fish bone

Above are my paint scraper combs. From our freshly caught Chinook, I kept the head bones for oil and watercolor painting tools. These tools could be seen as a gimmick but I like how they feel and look. Plus I am avoiding cleaning brushes and dumping noxious solvents in the wilderness. Can you find the mark of my natural fish bone tool in my paintings?

I found it very difficult to use only fish bones with watercolor. The interesting line quality worked on very small details added as a last touch. I used fish bones through out the building of an image in acrylic and oil paint more successfully.

Fish Bone painting tool and Wet into Wet Acrylics

Fish bone as a watercolor tool

This is one of two of the same subject - Precious Vase of a Hundred Leaves of a Full Good Life symbolizing what the High Lama of China Tibet wanted for himself and his monks. I met him in 2002 when our tour guide who was formerly a monk and the Lama's student took us for an unhurried talk with the Lama in his quarters. The other one was an oil.

This painting was started with the fish head bones but they didn't fit well into my pan watercolors and the marks were not always predictable. The bones that worked well for oil and acrylics became a labor. Needless labor. I can clean my brushes in a very small amount of water that then becomes a tint wash and is never dumped into the environment. The painting 16" x 20" is the largest surface that I have worked in my recent work with fish bones. Since it is so easy to work with brush with watercolors, and there is no big difference in final statement, I declare that in watercolors, the fish bones are a gimmick.

Playing with cold water sponges

I noticed some sponges washed up on the beach. They were firm to my touch but when I tried to paint with them these once live organisms showed that they were already decomposing. These sponges were just smelly and worthless as a tool.

These are some of my photos that might spark a painting.Walking through a fog dream may work for a pillow shaped vase of my dreams. On one side the beach and the other the night sky.

day of play that didn't meet all my expectations

Friday morning began with a walk at Gleneden Park near Depoe Bay, Oregon. I liked the textures and the softness of foliage and structures partly concealed by fog. Then in the afternoon I went on a boat ride up from Coyote Rock to Skunk Creek on the Siletz River. When we started the weather was sunny and warm but soon after we anchored up to fish and paint the weather did a number on our plans. A large cloud turned angry and black. The change of weather was something I could not adjust into my painting of a vase of a hundred, good, leaf years. I wondered if a small black cloud was appropriate to such an upbeat view of aging and decided a little challenge was OK. However no sooner than I put a little dark cloud into my painting, we decided we needed to race back home before the storm. I quickly started another less precise painting but it didn't turn out either. I was left wondering if I can pull off putting river landscapes in the back and foreground of my painting because they are so complex and compete with the vase. Maybe I need to think out how I can suggest a river of life in an economy of images.

What the World Needs Now is Chicago, Want-to-be Olympic Heroes and Art

What the World Needs Now Is Want-to-be Heroes of the Chicago Olympics in 2016 and Art from the Heart of our Child inspiring that WE CAN all be all that we can be with a HEALTHY work ethic. What the world needs now is love sweet love, not just for one but for everyone. Chicago has excellent basic athletic and art venues to nurture the Olympic spirit. I wish President Barack Obama and Michelle well in their quest to bring the Olympics to Chicago.
For examples of art from the heart of our child click on the icecream cone. For my process and paintings of vases click on the label below.

Reflection Abstracts

These 12" square oil paintings are made with rags, pallette knife and fish head bones. They are a step in making more paintings of vases about what is most precious. They may remain finished as is and only help me in painting vase paintings. I like them as they are paintings of the similarity between ceramic glaze and water.

I f you like these abstracts click on the Label below.

Vase of My Sparkling Dreams

We took the boat down the Siletz into the bay and dropped six crab pots. We were very busy dropping and pulling up the pots so I did not paint then. I did notice how the fog created a dream world which I tried to capture from memory. The Vase of My Sparkling Dreams is as big as all outdoors the sky, the waters and the earth. This vase is one of a growing series on vases expressing what is most precious to me. I am continuing to be open to ideas for other vases that express what others value most. A seven year old boy also said he valued his dreams.

Bounce light from vase of "Love" onto vase of "Long Good Life"

Glossy glazed ceramics placed in the sun light glisten and bounce reflections upon all that surrounds them. Like a gossy glaze the River Siletz waters, rippled by a breeze glowing with sunlight, bounce a light show on the river's banks. Looking at the river inspires a new vase in my most precious most wonderful thing series. This inspiration is based on science as well as emotion. Ceramic glaze is a glass and glass is a liquid like water according to physicists. The eternal ever lasting connection between what we observe outdoors and the characteristics of ceramics reminds me of humane life. So I painted a painting of the vase of "Long Good Life" symbolized by a surrealistic vase on a river bank.
One granddaughter made this vase about what is most precious to her - love. I'll focus on the appeal of expressing the wonderment I felt as a child.

Sunday Chinook Bone oil painting of water

The sky is overcast and the water is almost still.

River Abstract

Oil painting on location need not be complex. This painting required a half dozen colors, a small rag torn from an old sheet, the bones removed from my fish head soup, a leaf and inspiration from the Siletz River.

I have a little forethought on wanting to go where I never have been before. I am still thinking about the ceramic project and looking for similarities between the appearance of water and the glass glazes.

Fish story today but tommorrow a painting

Fishing luck today at 7:00 AM just as we left the dock we had a strike. We went back to the dock and I spent the morning making soup from the head. This afternoon I tried using the head bones to spread the oil paint. The bones break easily. I don't know what I think of the lines in the paint. tommorrow I will try painting again.

Series of nine ceramic vases

I have, in addition to making the vases, painted three paintings related to my summer project. To see the paintings scroll down. To learn more click here about the vases. http://vaseswidlerwenzel.blogspot.com/

Precious Vase - Rejuvenating Garden

A painter sculptress also a grandmother and care giver. A lady who is living a sandwiched life says the most precious thing is her garden and appreciation of nature.

Tomorrow evening I hope to have the fired ceramic vases to share.

Honoring Ancient Mariners Vase

When I hold a vase with a long neck and trumpet shaped lip to my ear, I hear the ocean. Vases remind me of treasurers found in ancient ship wrecks. This painting comes from many inspirations. A most important inspiration is honoring the ancient mariners who spread the technology of ceramics in the Mediterranean. The idea of firing clay could also have come by Ocean currents carrying ceramic bottles.
This painting will be a key part of an exhibit of my ceramic vases.

"Relationships are Precious Vase Painting symbolized by cows Elsie and Plutonium and Pb

Update Sept. 7, 2009 My painting of Relationship Vase is about a fitting relationship that works. I have also completed a clay vase about Relationships that do not always fit nicely. The vase can be seen with all the other ceramic vases on my other blog.http://vaseswidlerwenzel.blogspot.com

Update August 20. My concept of symbolizing all relationships has developed as I painted. Today the painting of the relationship vase has been saved by scrapping the many symbols decorating the vase in order of making the idea of a vase itself being the relationship most valuable. When dirt and water is mixed a clay that can be formed is made into a vessel and fired into hard ceramic - a symbol of creation and of ourselves. Ceramics have brought about the most humanizing changes like food storage and agriculture. Vases have replaced human sacrifice. Vases have democratised the observance of death. some uses of ceramic at first seemed destructive of human virtues but can also be seen as a learning challenge. Ceramic shells can withstand the heat of catalytic atomic explosions.

On the 18th I was making a more complex multiple array of relationships. I painted a shaft of wheat poised above Pu reminding me that fowl smelling manure fertilizes wheat from which we make bread that sustains us. I have also added the relationship of clay mixed with water and then fired to make pottery. Pottery is often used to symbolize relationships. I am now looking for examples of pottery from other cultures and times. I am almost ready to make a ceramic vase about all relationships. I am not completely satisfied with the painting because it has so much happening. I want to communicate at an emotional level and the chemical symbols might not communicate as well as the foods.

The "Relationship Vase Painting" is oil on a 12" square canvas designed to hang in the corner of the room. The idea for this painting was contributed by Rain. Rain is a woman rancher and blogger. She wrote me that relationships are most precious to her. Relationships are valuable not just the lovely, nice fitted ones but all of them. Relationships that do not work for us are ones we learn from.

Rain's "Relationships" is truly a challenge. For symbolizing all relationships, I can't make a sweet pretty gem of a vase. So I have painted an oil painting of a vase with proportional relationships that makes me feel good. This is a historic classic Chinese shape. A vase of this shape was given as gifts or treasured for their reminder of diverse people having similarities in common. In the background I have the periodic table. http://dayah.com/periodic/ and a solar spectrum similar to a rainbow.http://www.solarobserving.com/pics/hydrogen-spectra.jpg. I give two names to the black cow who is like Jekyll and Hyde - Fissile Pu after the radio active isotope plutonium. She has a calf escaping the field of the vase. The calf's name is Pb, the abreviation given to lead because one element that is formed in the radio active reactions is lead. The calves break through the barrier and become their own element symbolizing a relationship in decay and the seriousness of relationships that could be the ultimate destruction or if we learn our lesson well Plutonium could be key to an energy filled future. The other name I give to the cow is Elsie and she is in relationship with sunshine, cow's milk, bee's honey, and wheat bread.

Here is my first sketch for a painting about relationships.

Link to article on the effect of photography on painting

Arts Fine of the UK listed my blog in their directory and asked for a link. On their site is an interesting article about painting style and the camera. http://www.arts-fine.co.uk/BuyArtOnline/Understanding_Art.html

"Society Allowing, and Celebrating Diversity is Precious to Me"

This vase was created in response to Cath's contribution to my ceramic ideas. She wrote "The longer I live in my home town, the more strongly I realize that society allowing and celebrating diversity is precious to me." Cath keeps a blog of her latest art series including mapping abstracts inspired by Aboriginal art. She is a librarian and care giver for her mother in New Zealand. http://cathsheard.wordpress.com

I enjoy painting in the public Sure fire Design Studio in downtown Albany, Oregon. Below are pictures of the vase before firing and the drawing I made before sculpting the vase.

I am working on the Children's Ceramic Project with my grandchildren and from suggestions in blogger comments. So please share with me a subject for a vase - share with me what is most precious to you. Or ask a young child what is the most wonderful thing in the world. One granddaughter made a bowl decorated with what she thought was precious - valentine hearts symbolizing love. The bowl will be fired and ready to paint the middle of next month. As for me after making and collapsing several first attempts in clay, I drew the idea pictured here. This is a plan for the next hand built vase that will be completed next month.