Inside/Outside

mixed media on paper, 11 1/2" x 15"

Morning/Evening

mixed media on paper, 11 1/2" x 15"

Dirt/Fog

mixed media on paper, 11 1/2" x 15"

Blue Eyebrows

watercolor on paper, 11" x 15"

Rose Eyebrows

watercolor on paper, 11" x 15"

Pink Eyebrows

watercolor on paper, 11" x 15"

Gold Eyebrows

watercolor on paper, 11" x 15"

Forgotten Art

When I was teaching art I often worked on art projects to show students what I was doing. Many of these “in progress” pieces came home, but with Hurricane Katrina and the flood, I forgotten about them. Recently I’ve been sorting through boxes and papers. Slowly I’m finding my incomplete works. Many of these are near completion or just have me stuck. Yes, I sometimes have to come back to piece to complete it.

Premonition Pink Sold!

Well this piece is no longer in my possession. A fellow artist bought this shortly before Thanksgiving Day. That means I only have one left of the three pieces I created.

In the meantime I did start a new one. Unfortunately the paper I used did not work out as nicely. Hopefully I'll find a solution. I'll post it at some future date.


mixed media on paper, 17.5" x 24"

Eyebrows Series

For the last several years I have looked at works by Takashi Murakami and wondered what I might do in that spirit. I was trying to think of image. Well, I decided to work with an eyebrow motif in symbolic form. Some years ago I was at a Supercuts and the hair stylist was all set to do trim my eyebrows. I got a little ticked that he was just about to cut them.

I’m not sure what I’ll do to finish them. Maybe they are finished. Anyway, I’ve been on the fence with these for three years now. Hopefully something will move me. They are now in a place where I am forced to see them.


acrylic on canvas, 4 canvses, 8" x 8"

Strata Series

Just before I turned forty, I went to Denver, Colorado for an art educators’ national convention. On one of the days there, I went on a city tour in the morning and then a mountain tour in the evening. It was on the mountain tour I had a chance to see where giant red rocks pushed through the ground. I also saw petrified dinosaur bones embedded in another area. Also, there was an area that used to be the sea floor - including fossils of sea creatures. When I came back from the trip, I became interested in a strata motif.


watercolor on paper, 8 pieces, 7 1/2" x 11"

Here I was turning forty. It seemed like a good symbolic way of representing the milestone. Anyway I did strata painting for our Contemporary Art Center. It was having a fundraiser in which each artist was given a postcard size piece of paper and asked to make it into an art postcard. I wish I had taken a picture of it. Anyway, that was the first one I made.

I did these larger strata paintings after that and got stuck. One of my students said they looked like wallpaper. That’s what put me into a rut. How do I get them away from them just being a dull repeating pattern. Anyway it’s been a good three years since I began these. I just have to finish them. Then the nest trick will be framing them.

Super Flat Stool

After reading The Inevitable Japanese Experience and Super Flat, I painted a stool based on characteristics from animé and manga.





acrylic on wood

Three New Paintings

Well I finished these three paintings this afternoon. I took forever to decide on what I wanted to do in the very beginning. Then it took forever for me to work through them. Originally they were going to be like some Japanese paintings I have seen, but they just were not working out. Midstream I had to do something else. Maybe these will lead to some other paintings. I just know I had to do something other than dots.

Fountain

acrylic on canvas, 20" x 20"

Patio

acrylic on canvas, 20" x 20"

Wall

acrylic on canvas, 20" x 20"

Dots, Grids and Expressive Lines

This piece brought together three types of imagery found in my artwork. Below are two sketches as well as the final piece.


colored pencil on paper, 5.5" x 8.5"


colored pencil on paper, 5.5" x 8.5"

At The Decordova Museum outside of Boston, I saw a kitsch show back in 2005. There were lots of sentimental objects and garish pieces. When I got back to Metairie, I started working on this piece. In each square of the grid, I picked six colors blindly. I then chose which ones to make the background in a square and which others to color the dots. Then I'd pick six more again and again until I had used all the colors in the set.

Normally instructor artists will tell you to use a limited palette. I was determined to use every color in the box of 120 colored pencils. I kept pulling six colors until I went through the whole box then started over picking six colors at a time.


colored pencil on paper, 21" x 26.5"

Artwork in Circulation

In March '06 many of the pieces on this blog were placed at the Friends of Rivertown Fine Art Gallery. In mid April '07 the gallery closed for good. Since then I have circulated the art to other venues around town. I've even entered some of the works in competition.

Although I have concentrated on the production of my dot artwork, I do plan to continue on this tangent I began in late '04 - that is keep what I do more random and continue to experiment. These works represent a different direction for me and I hope to continue it. Like most art I do, I just have to jump in and see what happens. Making art spontaneously is always more exciting. I don't who said it but it goes something like this: "If all you do is what you did, than all you'll get is what you got."