Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Countdown to Montserrat

Here is an acrylic painting I finished recently. It's 24" X 30" and I call it Mixed Message. I have it up at Azure with a price of $350.

In many ways I like this painting in that I felt freer when I did it. I used favorite processes and images like circles and the pattern of metallic gold on my small block stencil. I also wanted layers of colors from background forward and I wanted to include white since many of my paintings once layered with colors don't include this clean looking color. So I like it with the final cobalt blue strings of color to jazz it up and it has a bit of an ancient/modern combined feel to it. The eye catches on the circles.

Though I've been on an acrylic run here for awhile, I really do paint in encaustics and to that end, I'm attending the annual migration to Beverly, Massachusetts in early June to attend the Montserrat Conference. It's now only 2 weeks away and I'm busy making lots of plans to ride share and connect with friends from different parts of the country whom I've known in doing my encaustics. It will be intensive, tiring and jet-lagged, but fun and full of lots of new art work and techniques in molten beeswax. Such fun!

The only challenging part is that I now live and have adapted to basically the lovely marine climate we have on the Washington coast which is right now about 60 degrees and misting where as Boston at Logan Airport hit 80 yesterday and is projected to be 96 today with tons of humidity. How do you get through that much difference in temperature? Any thoughts readers? We are supposed to each bring an encaustic painting that would fit within a 12" X 12" space so we can a feel for what others are doing.

Monday, May 24, 2010

Gracies Dress

My husband's granddaughter just had her first birthday and so I made her this little sundress for her to wear over a little t-shirt or bare if it gets too hot. Already she is a national traveler since she will journey with her parents to Oklahoma every summer.

I hadn't realized it had been so long since my last post. I finished up a number of paintings, varnished them and rigged the hangers and have now hung a 14 piece show of new work in variable sizes at Azure Day Spa in Ilwaco, Washington. All of it is mixed media and all of them are paintings except for a 12" X 12" cloth quilt and bead piece.

I'm getting ready for the big peninsula wide garage sale that is annually held May 28th through 30th and is attended far and wide drawing people from Vancouver, Portland, Longview and many places east. This is our first since we moved down here and we hope to clear the whole left side garage bay of it's treasures and trash. It has been a really overwhelming process.

And for those of you who follow this blog, I'm heading out on June 10th to Beverly Massachusettes for the Monserrat Encaustic Conference. This is the 4th annual I believe and it is an international conference of encaustic painters. Many of my aquaintances will be there for the 4 day conference which includes a full slate of demonstrations and talks and gallery showings of encaustic work. There are 3 days of post conference classes which I will not be attending. But this is my first conference for encaustic and I'm looking forward to it mightily. I'll take lots of pictures with my crummy digital and post some for you so you can see a bit of the conference.

I'm sad I won't be able to attend my friend Sue Robertson's Joyful Art Exhibit opening at Art's and Cultural Exchange in Astoria for Art Walk that will be showing during the time I'm gone but I will get in to see it after I return. I'm encouraging my art loving friends from the peninsula to go see her show as she has great, great work! It kicks off the summer tourist season too!

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Coming Down and Putting Up

Morning All! I'm getting ready to put up a new group of paintings at Azure Day Spa in Ilwaco next week. Meaning I'm in the finishing stages of preparing the work - wiring up the canvases, putting on isolation coats, varnishing, taking pictures (with a terrible digital camera).

This picture will go up and is much brighter and more cheerful in real life. I call it "Migrations", it's 30" X 24" mixed media and I think I put a price of $425. I used technical inks, reduced fluid acrylics, absorbent ground and lovely patterning all over.

I have some other paintings I'll be showing over the next few posts that will be hung in that show and I'll be painting more too!

We've been doing intensive landscaping at our new home since the site was completely filled with beach sand and in order to prevent tracking indoors on our new floors AND to prevent serious erosion we planted local lawn and sod and it's been a big project. We're done now with that and are just finishing our shrub borders.

I'm going to be attending the Montserrat Encaustic Conference in Boston on June 10th through June 14th which I have been wanting to do for many years and it just so happened we had the airline points to do it this year so back in January I signed up for this - a great confluence of encaustic artists in this country - capped to 250.

Then on June 21st through June 25th I'm taking an Acrylic Workshop with Robert Burridge up in LaConner, WA - my friend Sue Robertson has taken many classes from him and highly recommends him. And since I feel the need for some change in my work - more texture maybe, more meaning definitely, more versatility in and direction in creating series of works, this seems to be the year - and the month for investing a bit in myself and my painting.

And let's not forget how important it is for an artist to get out and see new things, get excited about new patterns and combinations, bump into different opinions and ways of looking at the world. Several of my friends are in the process of planning wonderful trips and I just wish I could ride in their pocket as they travel to all parts of the world.

So all you readers - get out there this summer and sample the life all around you especially if you're going to new places and send us some pictures of your travels, even and especially if it's just interesting patterns or colors on pavement or on old walls!