Sign and Gallery Opening

After so much time has passed since my last entry, I thought I'd catch up on my finished projects lest you think living rural means doing nothing! Quite the opposite!
The Sea Mist cottage sign was finished in real life with proud owner Marcia standing beside it at her house. This project required buying a piece of fine cedar, then distressing it with bleach, washing it, drying it, knocking off the edges, sanding it and finally staining it to match the character of the driftwood piece that it is accompanying. Came out beautiful. and I agreed to talk about garden and house art at their July Garden Club meeting which I'm looking forward to.
Today looks to be a beautiful day at the coast with temps soaring to low 60's after some very seasonal weather mix up. that means that 2 days ago the wind was gusting 30 mph and it was 43 degrees and raining buckets.



Next up is a picture of the Astoria Art Walk opening of the "Sanctuary Gallery" for the Art's and Cultural Exchange headed by Julia Carter with help from husband Mathew and many friends in the community. Here are some of the entrance way art done by children of the local Catholic School Star of the Sea. Julia worked with them to create these patterned flags that represent different tribes in Africa and really looked like colorful mud cloths whether done by young children using crayon resist or older children using fabric paint. Congratulations all on fine art work and magical night. My picture here is not nearly as good as I'd like but you get a feeling of how great it was.

And lest you think that I had time to really rest on my laurels, this week I am finishing up the planting plan for one of my landscape clients, meeting with a new client and beginning the concept sketches for the cutest little house in town. Hopefully next week I'll have some new paintings for you on the site. Stay tuned.

Ta...Da.....Pub Sign

So here is the finished Pub Sign. Well actually 2 signs exactly alike which were hung on either side of an old sign which remained in place. We had the hanging and unveiling last night with some local friends over for some delicious soup, pizza and a fresh peach pie.

It took about 104 hours from start with initial consultation to hanging. In real life it is a little more yellow in the background than what it shows here. By yesterday when I was taking this picture the weather had started to become overcast and unfortunately today it's going to rain buckets and the wind is already fierce with 30 mph gusts.

So my next project other than teaching my upcoming classes and finishing our house is to assemble 18 paintings and start showing them to galleries. I'm really going to focus on finding regional representation even though this may be an uphill battle in this economy. First with my encaustics I think and 2nd with my newer large acrylics on canvas. They would find different galleries I believe who would be interested - no overlap.

It's interesting to realize that I do (and probably most artists do) go through a little bit of a depression after the completion of an intense bit of work - even if you're really happy with the final result and are glad to see it go to a good home. It's coming down from intense focus and intense work and intense creativity, but it's also natural and it does pass. The way I get through it without letting it overwhelm me is to clean up my studio and reorganize so that I can move on to new projects. This little time away allows me to figuratively clean out my mind too and get me some free space so to speak to allow for a fresh new idea for the next painting project to emerge. And it inevitably does. If the clean up time doesn't seem long enough, I take the time to blog, to update my website which needs to be done and to make some more business cards to hand out. Now is actually a good time to market and use that left side of the brain.

The Pub Sign

The Pub sign has taken over my life! I've been working on it almost 6 hours a day since August 15th and I have just 5 more days until it has to be done. It's going up at the start of a one day festival here in Ocean Park in the center of the Long Beach Peninsula. The one thing about it other than how great it's turning out is that I got introduced to the One Shot Oil Enamel paints which are what outdoor sign painters typically use. The solvents are hellish but the paint drys to a wonderful shiny silky smooth vibrant color that I just love. I wear my paint respirator but still. Anyway the sign is actually two signs - each side identical or nearly so.

The man whose sign this will be had strong inclinations for the plants he wanted shown and they have turned out fabulous. One, the Gunnera - or Dinosaur Food, I nailed spot on and so far he's happy with it. Today I'm on the final background and then there will be the topcoat.

Check back for a picture - it's so much better than the concept sketch I did. And in the meantime I finished the workplan for a Mixed Media-Getting Started class to be held in Astoria on October 17th. And I've been encouraged to do an Mixed Media-Next Step class in December, an Encaustic Introduction class in January and perhaps a spring series. I'm really looking forward to this -- and of course painting, encaustics and moving in our new house by christmas!

Painting and the Arts community

I sold this painting last week to friend Sharon who must have seen this one hanging around my studio for a long time. I did the underpainting back at Patricia's studio before moving to the peninsula but didn't do anything with it. Then a month ago I started finishing it and became very happy with the strong gestural strokes and then with the addition of some composition corrections, it was done. And it looks beautiful on her dark blue wall surrounded by metal starfish, crab and salmon!

I've now got another of those paintings whose underpainting was done some time ago on my table and I've got some ideas to finish. So that and 2 more small collages are what I'm working on.

In addition, Julia Carter who is head of the Arts & Cultural Exchange in Astoria saw my work hanging at Azure in Illwaco. She called me and I went over and met with her and toured her lovely workspace and agreed to do at least 3 one day workshops over the next 6 months to a year so I'm busy now making a flyer advertising the class, working out the details of the workshop plan and coming up with a materials list. First up will be a mixed media class, and one will be an encaustic plan and then we'll see how it goes to decide what the rest will be. I'm excited about that.

And the sign project is coming along as well. I've finished cutting and sanding the marine plywood for the signs, 2 coats of oil based prime and 2 coats of oil based undercoat. I expect to start painting the design on Tuesday and hope to finish by Sunday next week and I'll put up a photo as soon as I can.