The last month has been busy! 2 new pieces, 2 national shows, and BB revival!

Sorry for my long absence!  It's been a very, very busy month since Beyond Barbie finished.  I am still planning to write a post about the series and how it went for all those of you who might be wondering.  In the meantime, just a teaser...  we're working on putting together a "Best of Beyond Barbie" to run for a weekend in March in Richmond.  It will have 8-10 pieces in it, a compilation of topics from all the evenings, but most of the pieces will probably be different than what you saw at Crossroads.  We're in the initial planning stages.  Of course I'll let you know as soon as anything is certain!

Other than beginning to plan The Best of..., I've been painting, planning two shows, and working on getting other shows outside of Richmond.  I'll give you more details on all that as they are solidified as well.

Some great news - I had a piece, Waiting, accepted into Shades of Pastel, a national pastel show sponsored by the Maryland Pastel Society.  The very, very exciting news about that was that the piece got a prize for Best Portrait.  THAT was exciting!  The prizes were a gift certificate to one store and a 78-piece set of Great American Artworks Pastels - I just received them the other day and am looking forward to trying them out - they're a brand I haven't used before.  Can't wait to see what they're like.

Some other wonderful news - I got another piece, Susie Kissing Sally, accepted into a different national show, Au Naturel, at Clatsop Community College in Astoria, OR.  It's my first West Coast show, so it's particularly exciting!  I wish I could go out for the opening in February, but it's a bit far for that!  I've applied for a solo show there in Oct.  If I get that, I'll definitely go out then.  Astoria is supposed to be a wonderful town with lots of art, so it sounds like great fun.

So stuff is happening like crazy art-wise.  Not Barbie was a great success.  Beyond Barbie, the performance series, was fantastic - I'm blown away by the talented women living here in Richmond who performed in it.  Almost every day someone tells me how much the series meant to them and how much it affected their lives.  It doesn't get any better than that as far as I'm concerned!

In addition to all that, I've also been managing to get a little bit of painting done.  The two most recent pieces are "Present to You" and "Dancing with Hotei."

"Dancing with Hotei" is the first once.  My model was sitting on the floor and "danced" with the wonderful statue I have of Hotei.  Hotei is described on Wikipedia as follows:

  Hotei is traditionally depicted as a fat bald man wearing a robe^[3][4] and wearing or otherwise carrying prayer beads. He carries his few possessions in a cloth sack,^[3] being poor but content. He is often depicted entertaining or being followed by adoring children. His figure appears throughout Chinese culture as a representation of contentment.^[3] His image graces many temples, restaurants, amulets, and businesses.^[1]

The picture here shows him from the back.  My model saw my statue when she came into the studio and commented that she liked him, so when I was photographing her I asked if she'd like to have him in the shots.  She immediately said yes then moved into a meditative dance with him.  I feel like she's reaching the sublime in this image.  The necklace she's wearing is one her friends put together for her at the Blessing Way before her son was born.  Each bead was from a different person then someone created the entire necklace.  I believe the model wore it when she gave birth.

The second picture is called "Present to You".  I thought about calling it "Behind the Curtain", but I didn't want to give the indication that the model might be hiding - not at all!  She was exceedingly comfortable in her body and modeling for me, very open and at ease, so "Present to You" feels like a more accurate description of the image.  I have many beautiful images of her, but I liked this one for the expression on her face and the strength in her hand.  I find everything about her completely authentic and present, no pretense, no hiding, no pretending.  She is who she is. 

It's fascinating to me to paint these women, each of whom is so very different and whose images come out so very differently.  I love how much of a sense of the person you can get from each painting when I've done them well.  My models are such a gift to me.  And to everyone who sees the pictures!  Thank you, models!

Finding her Peace

I'm enjoying the process  of making this piece tremendously.  It's very different than any I've done before.  Usually I'll start a painting and I'll know basically how it'll look when it's finished since I'm just copying a photograph.  With this one, I knew I wanted to work with this image of my model (whom I'm calling Nan) AND I felt called to work with the myriad images of models from women's and teen's magazines.  I spent 2-3 days looking for and cutting out pictures then it took another day to get up the courage to paste them onto the canvas.  Then I toned them down.  A lot.  That's the stage the piece was at in the first picture.

The next day I did a lot of work on Nan then got frustrated because she wasn't standing out strongly enough from the background/foreground of the models, so I darkened that substantially more then put a dark ring around her painting.  Now it looks like something was burned to make her stand out.

This afternoon when I was finally able to get back to the picture, I realized I wanted to put leaves on top of the models to hide them even more and to evoke woods more strongly.  First I took a ladderback chair outside and sat in the garden drawing vines.  We have a jasmine vine as well as a hydrangea.  Neither one was exactly what I was looking for.  Then it occurred to me to go find a beech tree - that's what she's hugging - and draw those leaves.  I got a good number of them then came inside and drew them onto the canvas then painted them.  I can see they need to be more opaque to show up better, but I think I like how they're looking conceptually.  The models are still visible if you look hard enough, but they're less dominant, kind of like they are in most women's brains - they're in the background, subdued - usually - but omnipresent.  There may be other things in front of them, but they're always there, lurking in the shadows, peering through, affecting us.

The title keeps changing.  Today "Finding her Peace" feels better.  Who knows what it'll end up being!  Stay tuned!  Or if you have a good idea, please write and suggest it!

Where She Finds Herself

A couple of months ago, before Not Barbie, an acquaintance asked me to photograph her.  I was a bit surprised to find she wanted to go outside, but I was game for it.  I have woods beside my house which are dense enough that the neighbors can't really see what's going on unless they are out on a walk.  This model, I'll call her Nan, told me she'd been going through a tough time recently - way too much stress, too much responsibility, and definitely not enough fun.  When I mentioned the possibility of photographing her outside, she jumped on it immediately as if I were offering her a ticket to sanity and peace.

When we got outside, she disrobed and immediately began to explore her surroundings.  She went inward, communing with the trees and bushes, many of which had just fallen during Hurricane Irene.  I photographed her among the fallen trees and dying leaves, giving me the sense that she was sitting in her nest, a home which offered her natural safety and protection.  She got up to walk some more.  She had been told by a psychic that trees were very important to her and she should spend some time in the woods.  She went over to a large birch and embraced it.  I could sense an exchange of energy as Nan received strength and succor from the giant.  I photographed her in that moment.

When thinking about which painting to create from the photographs of her, I was strongly drawn to that one.  I also had the idea to collage pictures of models onto a canvas and have them surround one of my models.  Nan's picture seemed a good fit for that.  I worked in Photoshop to try to figure out the composition.  I spent two days, in fact, playing with possibilities and options, trying to figure out what I was trying to say and how to say it. I guess all that thinking and experimenting was helpful, but I didn't come up with anything through that process.  Instead, I got sick of trying and finally just went to the canvas and painted a very rough sketch of Nan.  Then I went to my large pile of models I'd cut from several women's/teen's magazines my daughter had given me permission to destroy and began to arrange them around the outside of the oval.  It was exceedingly time-consuming to find them, cut them out, arrange them, glue them on, etc., but it was a fun process too.  Once that was done, I felt like they were too dominant, so I toned them down by glazing them with veridian and cadmium mixed with Golden's Semi-Gloss Gel Medium.

After that, I drew Nan on the canvas more carefully then couldn't wait to start laying in paint.  I got out my palette mud - what's left over at the bottom of the jar where I keep my turpenoid when it's too dirty to use anymore.  I pour off the turpenoid so the sediments can fall to the bottom then scrape out the paint that's left in the jar still.  I put that in another jar and keep it for when I need to tone a canvas or for whatever else - you never know when it'll come in handy!  It was perfect for the tree.  First of all it was almost the exact right color.  Secondly, it had a lot of glop and gloop in it - perfect for texture for the bark.  I got out my palette knife and started scraping it across the canvas.  Sloop, droop, slop, mess, scrape, glub, glob.  I took some texturizing tools and dragged them through the mess then added more paint.  It was really fun!  Kinda like making mudpies.  I really wanted to get my hands in there but managed to keep that impulse under control.

That was yesterday.  Today I couldn't wait to get back to it.  (I love that feeling - when I wake up wanting to paint, thinking about the canvas, excited to get back to it.  It's not an every day occurrence, so I've come to really appreciate it when I have it.)  I taught art at Crossroads then rushed home, had lunch, and came on out.

I assessed what I'd done yesterday and still liked it so I began painting her shoulder.  I don't have the light right on it - the white part doesn't read well since it's too confusing what the light is supposed to be.  I'll change that tomorrow.  I moved on to her face.  For some reason, it seemed very, very easy to paint her face.  I think her features must be somehow similar to mine.  They seemed very familiar and simple to paint.  She doesn't look completely like Nan yet, but it's a very good approximation for a first day of work.  I was feeling tired but couldn't wait to keep going so I painted the hand quickly - I wanted to fill in the entire canvas.  Then I did some more work on the tree to make it look more realistic.  I'm excited by the texture of the bark!

When I look at it now, I'm starting to see the message I'm trying to get across.  Chris came out to the studio when he got home from work and said it looks too chaotic to him - all those faces are bothering him because he wants to focus on her meditative sensibility.  THAT is pretty much my point - how can a person stay attuned to nature, or become attuned to nature, with all the input from the media and the rest of the world?  It's a real challenge to not let the thousands of images we see daily overtake us.

I may lessen the impact of the surrounding images a little bit by glazing it again so they'll be darker and less prominent, but I haven't decided yet.  Perhaps my dreams will tell me.

In the meantime, Nan can meditate on the tree, and all those faces can try to attract us to buy whatever it is they're offering (sex, clothing, lipstick, face powder - whatever), and I'm going to go to the grocery store then make dinner and share the evening with my precious husband.  Have a good one, y'all!