Willow Test

I have an entire series of willow leaves that I'm beginning to pursue in wax. This little painting is a 10 x 10 test for a large 36 x 72 panel. I've utilized too many colors here, and I plan to work on making the leaves more mysterious by melting them further into the background. I'll keep you posted on the development over the next month.

bubble wrap, bubbled wax and heartbreak

"twigs tangle in feathery tails" 18 x 48

This is a story about lessons learned. The triptych above is from my 2010 'dogs eye view' series. I had it up in my studio for a month. Rather than sending it to another gallery, I decided to put it on display in my home for a while.

I only live five miles from the studio, so rather than bothering with the usual glassine and panel insulation, I wrapped each panel in it's own bubble wrap and loaded them in the car. On my way home, I parked in the shade and stopped by the gym for a quick 1-hour workout. As soon as I got home, I unloaded the paintings, and left them in their bubble wrap until I had time to hang them.

Three days later, I removed the wrap to discover that the wax had melted in areas of the paintings, and the bubble wrap had made serious impressions into the surface.

After the initial shock, I brought the panels back to the studio. My plan was to heat them up in these areas, and scrape them down to the base photo. Then I would rebuild the wax and apply new paint.

But after the initial burn (carefully, with a heat gun), I decided that the wax had smoothed out enough without scraping. The surface is still uneven, but after the new oil glazes are applied, I will live with it for a while and see if I like the new texture.

details of reheated wax surface prior to new oil glazing

I actually feel lucky that this happened now, before I inadvertently pack up a big stack of work to store this way. From now on, rigid foam box with nothing touching the surface!

details of the completed "fix".

Master Encaustic Artist Betsy Eby

I just returned from a trip to the Winston Wachter gallery to view the Betsy Eby show, "Arrangements". I am always inspired when I see Betsy's work in person, and this new body of work really knocked my socks off.

BradoSonata, 36 x 58

Her colors seem more muted than in past shows, allowing my eyes to revel in the beauty of her surfaces and textures. I just love the depth of the greys and whites.

detail from my personal show favorite: "Soledad"

It was an inspiring, humbling and rewarding visit. You can visit the work in-person until June 16th.

Apres Show Work in Progress

The show is over, and I'm busier than ever. I have 10 new paintings in the works, with lots more concepts banging around in my head waiting to get out. The two above combine the poppies with the grass series. I'm incorporating more of the layers of colored shadows and deep layers of wax.

The photo above shows one of my grass images layered with some of the smokey colors and shapes from the willow paintings. The wax application is about 50% complete.

My plan is to have five paintings out the door by end of May!

Studio Visit with Alicia Tormey

I just returned from a wonderful visit with the talented encaustic artist, Alicia Tormey. We met at Patricia Rovzar Gallery where my solo show is on view until May 2nd. We then trotted across the street to Taste Restaurant to enjoy a lovely lunch enhanced by Alicia's beautiful work on display until mid-June. We finished the afternoon at Alicia's working studio in the enormous Inscape artist building in the International District.

A great thing about visiting working studios is that you have the opportunity to see the little personal projects and new developments and experiments that you won't see in a gallery. One of her workbenches (above) had several small works in progress. They are sweet little paintings that she refers to as her "truffles". Yummy.

Everywhere I turned there was a new discovery. The photos above are a rather poor representation of one of these fascinating projects. Alicia first created a ceramic form and then applied her unique encaustic approach to the surface. The dimensionality of the form combined with the texture and depth of the encaustic is incredibly seductive. It's as if one of the forms has popped right out of the painting and set itself squarely in the middle of the table. I can't wait to see how she continues to develop this approach.

www.aliciatormey.com

The Final Four

"and so it will ever be" 36 x 36

The final four panels for opening night on April 7th are completed and delivered to the gallery. In these paintings,

I create a surreal landscape

, where reality and imagination live together. I find the many layers of transparent wax and oil glazes incredibly seductive. As I gaze at the paintings I begin to feel as if I am inside the paintings, looking back out at the world through layers of fog. I invite you to visit Patricia Rovzar Gallery Seattle, during the month of April and share your own impressions with me here.

"beyond the wild wood comes the wide world" 36 x 36

The Light of Morning Curls Forth

Left: 'forest spirit'. Right: ' the light of morning curls forth'. Total size: 43.5 x 72

Two paintings recently completed from the series of birch trees enveloped in fog. Rather than a direct representation of what the camera sees, this series is an impression of my memories of the colors and atmosphere on my late summer barge trip through the canals of France. None of the actual photos captured the spirit of the experience. Through photo manipulation, wax and paint, I more accurately portray the view that I saw in my minds eye.

Although this was created as two individual paintings, I liked the way the two work together as a single diptych. I really love the blue tones, and I'm hoping Seattle has a heat wave during my show to encourage collectors to purchase more cooling images.

Detail from ''ight of morning curls forth'

Giggles of Delight

"giggles of delight" 36 x 63

I'm stunned at how long it's been since I've posted to my blog site. My excuse is a good one, as I've been holed up in the studio finalizing the work for the April show at Patricia Rovzar Gallery. There are 17 paintings completed, and I'm working on four additional panels which may join the show if they look like a good fit.

"Giggles of Delight" is one of the larger pieces for the show next month. I love the movement in this piece. The wild grasses really seem to be dancing as little seeds twirl off the stems. The naming of this was a serendipitous moment. As I completed the painting, a friend posted a photo on her Facebook page of her daughter in absolute glee, the description included the words "giggles of delight". Makes me happy just to type those words here.

I'll share more sneak peeks during these final weeks of prep.

above: details from "giggles of delight"

Winter Blues

The past few weeks we have been inundated with low clouds and fog, creating the most beautiful blue sky at sunset. It was impossible to capture the color with my digital camera, but I was determined to try to emulate that unbelievable blue.

I pulled some images of the birch groves along the canals of France from my barge trip last September, threw them into Photoshop and went to work. The final images are a composite of multiple photographs, spliced and layered with varying levels of blur and opacity. All the layers are adjusted with major amounts of color alterations from the original. This work took weeks of manipulation to produce.

Satisfied with the results on my computer screen, I printed the images digitally onto 100 % cotton watercolor paper with archival inks. The images are spliced together and mounted to hollow core doors.

I am using more base layers of wax than in my previous work. These panels have up to 15-layers of clear wax medium, interspersed with a few layers of transparent white. Then finished with glazes of oil paint burned into the surface.

I just love the results. Mysterious, soft and gentle. I have one complete, one on the table, and hopefully two more will be ready for the show in April.

The result is so close to my memory of that winter color over the Puget Sound.

Trying to Keep Pace

the studio, January 2011

I'm always trying to catch up.

I have an abundance of imagery and words in my minds eye. I feel an overwhelming sense of urgency to get them all out of my head and onto the canvas quickly, before they disappear from memory. But there are too many visions, and I can't physically work that fast. So I have to make choices. And some ideas may never see light. Because by the time I've completed the first bunch, my mind has already moved beyond where I was before. Maybe if I didn't have such an abundance of pictures in my head, I would be able to produce more. But I don't think I'd like that trade-off.

So, I'd better just show up every day. Get as much out of my system that I can.

Commission Complete

"One Sunlit Morning" photoencaustic and oil, triptych. 30" x 104" x 2"

The paintings are complete and will be delivered next week. I call the triptych "One Sunlit Morning". It will be hung in the waiting lobby of a beautiful new hospital here in Washington state.

The next two months will now be devoted to preparing for my solo show in April at Patricia Rovzar Gallery. I actually have enough work completed already, but I feel that I'm missing some variety in scale, subject and color. Send good thoughts for productive studio work!

Repairing a Scar

It seems that some lessons I'm destined to learn over and over and over. In my excitement to begin work, I was not careful with blending the seams. The photo below shows a detail of an area where the seam is most apparent.

Because the painting consists primarily of transparent yellow, it is almost impossible to completely cover the offending scar with paint and clear wax alone. I painted a semi-opaque white wax, mixed with a tiny bit of yellow, over the seam. But I also had to add the wax over other areas of the painting, so that the resulting texture would be more unified.

I call this the ugly stage. It takes me a few days to actually build up the courage to attack the painting in this way. After applying the patch, I scraped it to a smoother consistency, and then started re-building the painting.

This detail of the area now has four or more layers of oil paint rubbed, painted and burned into the surface. You can see where the underlying wax was added, because the area is more textural, but I think it is richer and more complex than the original. It's a time-consuming approach which requires a lot of patience and trust. Check back later to see how the patch integrates with the rest of the painting.