While I'm in the neighborhood...

Cow (on yellow ground)   watercolor/mixed on paper   10.75 x 15

Rooster (on orange ground)  watercolor/mixed on paper   11.5 x 14

I thought I would try a couple more.  Actually, there was a pig as well that I attempted before a trip.  Alack and alas, I was far too distracted with details....tried to hurry....and, as we all know, ART can never be hurried!  Creative minds yearn for novelty...that is what keeps our engagement so focused.  Yet, there is nothing like the first attempt into the unknown, where disaster is at our heels each minute, to make the experience explosive.  I read somewhere sometime, that the death of all art forms comes from over-ornamentation...it becomes too perfect, too polished.  I am satisfied for now and will come home to my paintings with renewed energy.

My current read:  Rapt:  Attention and the Focused Life by Winifred Gallagher.  Wonderful!

Road Trip - Sheep (on green ground)

Sheep (on green ground)   charcoal, watercolor and relief ink on paper   10.75 x 15

Road trips take one off of the beaten path and add discovery and excitement to our lives.  Every so often, I feel the need to enlighten my studio experience.  For some time, I had been craving a drawing experience, as most of my time is spent painting, a more complex experience.  Charcoal conte pencils were used to render the sheep on a sheet of unknown paper (when will I learn to be a better labeler?).  Watercolor was added here and there, as was a sprinkling of powdered charcoal and some blasts of water spray from a bottle.  No method to my madness at all.  Just a trusting of design elements and my hard-won experience of failure and success at creating images that hold my interest and express my personal sense of visual aesthetic.  Relief ink was printed on top...that being the most unreliable of the processes.  Water, pressure and placement are all unreliable variables.  I am thrilled by the layering of pigments and yet, at the same time, am striving for simpler shapes...a combining, of sorts, of traditional realism with a more modern simplicity, where details are highly edited and discarded.

I am pleased.  Road trip....yeah!

Happy Father's Day...N and S

N and S   conte crayon, charcoal and watercolor on paper    10 x 10

This is a mixed media work on paper of my son and his infant daughter.  Nothing beats subject matter from the heart!  While the reference itself provided a diagonal movement, I strove for a horizontal melding of the two subjects by manipulation of the pigment.  Horizontal=Status=Restfulness=All is Right with the World.  Patterning within patterning.  Two become one.