aLTERED Portrait of Lady In Green

This is a collage I did for Michele, after a visit to San Diego, Michele and I had previously only met through on-line art projects. What a great experience to hang out with her 'in person' and have the love of art in common, among other things. She took me to so many wonderful places in San Diego, including Balboa park where we toured Timken Museum of Art and saw this Original Painting by Bartholomeo Veneto.

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Prairie Still Life Collage

Do you think she might be reading "Leaves of Grass?"

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More Images from the Nooks and Crannies of my studio - Old Sketches

More photos from my studio walls. Don't ask me why I decided to put a sticker from The Wizard of Oz (Dorothy and Toto) in the top sketch....? That particular sketch was done almost 20 years ago and I guess I was trying to capture a dream. The lower one is a sketch I did of a Tibetan child - also done many moons ago.

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Considering Juxtapositions.....

Another shot from my 'garage studio' (which is one rare corner where it almost doesn't look like a garage!) I think I must have put these two beside each other so they'd have company.

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Canvas Side - 'grow'

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Starfish and Kimono

I was glancing over at one of several shelves 'growing' in my studio this morning and saw these together and realized their similarities...how often do you 'group things together' without any conscious thought only to later identify reason?

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Snapshot of Two Box Canvases

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Northern Flicker

This is a tiny little mixed media painting (3x4.5 inches) I made using Cotman cold pressed 140 lb water colour paper, liquid acrylics and acrylics, bits of Japanese rice paper, a smattering of liquid embossing, rusted iron mesh with two tiny Northern Flicker feathers I gathered last year after I discovered a beautiful Flicker in my backyard had met with misfortune. I wanted to create some art with these intricate little feathers included to pay respect. Because these particular feathers are so tiny, I decided to make a series of small pieces and attempted to add layers of detail in the layering. I love the silohette the smaller feather creates of two birds together. On Etsy here.

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"It took me 40 years to learn that painting is not sculpture"

I spent my leisure time today y gazing at various master paintings after I'd read a chapter about Paul Cezanne titled "The Process of Sight". In it the author explains the way our visual cortex processes light in a two part process. We subconsciously attempt to make sense/form/structure out of every beam of light that we 'see.' Cezanne was the master at creating only enough visual information for our brains to process, complete and then interpret his art. He was able to achieve such nuance and complexity with so few strokes. I was absolutely fascinated to consider that with the stroke of a thin grey line on the blank canvas, he creates a mountain. Notice how much dimension the pistachio tree has by his emphasis on the curvatures.

Pistachio Tree at Chateau Noir - P. Cezanne

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Compositional Analysis of Seurat Painting

Art Fundamentals: Theory & Practice (9th ed.), McGraw-Hill 2002

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