Friday, February 12, 2016

Light and Dark



Untitled
26" x 20"
Mixed Media on Yupo
Sold




I have been experimenting with Yupo. It is a synthetic paper and responds quite differently than traditional paper. I have been fooling around with it from time to time for that 8 or so years.

A couple of weeks ago I decided that it was time to complete a painting on the Yupo. I used Golden Acrylic along with water soluble graphite, ink, and vine charcoal.
This is the result. A horse in shadow with light illuminating the lower half.

Thursday, February 11, 2016

Spring Cleaning!


It took a week, but my studio is clean and reorganized.



I sorted through hundreds of pieces of paper, collage elements, tubes of paint, and old works. Went through boxes, drawers, and containers and grouped all the like items together. Threw out old sketches, half finished work, and old pieces that I was over.
  

Now to return and create.

Thursday, January 7, 2016

It's Nothing Personal.




I am fascinated by the arrangements in medicine cabinets and junk drawers.

Leave me alone with your personal correspondence, a diary, journal, or stack of open love letters and I'm not going to read them. I not even tempted. In fact I probably won't even you if ask me to. However, I am going to open your medicine cabinet or pull out your junk drawer.



Oh don't worry. I'm not interested in exactly what you're taking. This isn't about learning anything about you. It's about me, I am interested in the shapes, colors, and composition of things.

Medicine cabinets, in most cases appear to be ordered. Tooth paste and dental floss sharing the same shelf. Bottles of medicine line up, their round and oblong pills inside. A razor lying next to a comb.

And the junk drawer. Heaven! A pair of scissors, one rusty nail, spare change, a piece of red twine curling around a toy giraffe. Wine corks, rubber bands, a shoe horn, measuring tape, a solitary lego, the plastic clip from a bag of bread. The colors and the random way they seem to have been shoved together to spend and undetermined sentence until the are needed.




They tell stories, these places where the things we don't consider until needed reside.

This is why I love creating collages. I like arranging color and shape, bits and pieces taken out of order and assembled into the beginnings of a tale.




Once upon a time there was a sheep who fell in love with a fish.


My collage may be viewed and purchased at my Etsy Shop

https://www.etsy.com/shop/TheSuperlativeHorse?ref=hdr_shop_menu

Thursday, December 10, 2015

Fresh off the Easel


Ghost Horse
Mixed Media on Panel
15" x 15"
1250.00


This painting took years and moments to create. 

I had a panel that I had been adding and subtracting color to for years. Literally years. I have memories of this particular panel that are at least 8 years old.

Sunday I was looking at it. I really like the color. I started adding lines with a pencil that became the outline of a horse. I started mixing paint and applying it to the surface and then removing it. I added more lines with colored pencils, I added more paint, and so it went on.

Yesterday morning I looked at it and thought it was finished, so I left it alone. Today I believe it is ready to share with you.

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

I Believe in Beauty





I believe in beauty.

 Not just the beauty of something pretty, but all beauty. The beauty that comes from something you feel so deeply you weep. The heartbreaking beauty that is there when after countless rejections and disappointments, you willingly, lovingly, pick up the task again. The beauty that is present in loss.

I believe in beauty.

The beauty that is present in the still quite early morning hours when all is dark except the glittering stars. The beauty that is there in the sunrise when the day lies before you and everything is still possible. The beauty of the fading light in dusk.

I believe in beauty.

The beauty that is present when your friend, or child, or lover smiles. The beauty of exchanged smiles between strangers. The beauty in kindness.

I believe that it is transformative, restoring, and ever present, even in descent. I believe it has the power to comfort, elate, and enlighten, and I believe it is the doorway to joy.

I believe in beauty.

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Delighted




Yesterday I received this photo of "Wild at Heart" hanging in it's new home. I am delighted when I get notes and photos of where and how people are living with the artwork I have created.

If you are living with one of my creations, please by all means send me a picture. I love seeing where they make their homes.

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Thinking & Inertia



Detail of painting in progress


This is the perfect image of a painting I am working on. It's a little dark, a little out of focus, which is exactly what I am feeling.

I thought this painting would be finished two weeks ago. It is no where close to bringing finished. Why? Because I am so easily distracted by what I think I should be doing, instead of doing what I should be doing.

Thinking can become my trap. Over-thinking is my down right nemesis. Heaven forbid I start awful-izing! All of these ultimately lead to inertia. Like a shark if an artist stops moving they start dying.

I recently came across an article that addressed this issue. The correspondence between Sol LeWitt and Eva Hesse to stop thinking and just paint, to just DO IT!

So now I am off to the studio to just DO IT!