This painting is from a photograph that my dear friend Talia shared with everyone, and allows me to paint from ... so grateful, although the colors and shapes are most distinct from the photo, they are now related ... my next work is to be a 22 x 30 inch pastel on paper of the same photograph ...
The studio is full of paintings, whose edges are being carefully painted in Prussian Blue, which is painstaking. The paint is lovely, deep and full of pigment, but unlike some flat edge colors I like to use, it takes several careful layers -- as each stroke is marked, I do very long strokes for the entire edge. Dry for a day. Do over. This for four edges. It takes time and I don't want them to be wet when it's time to wrap them for the February 13 show. I'm looking forward to finishing all the edges and moving these on out. I think this is where the Craft of what I do comes through, that I care about the edges and make them just so, especially since the acrylic canvases are 1.5 inches deep and unframed.
It is a particularly gray day and I had to fight not to go back to bed, I mean what is stopping me, but I finished the painting instead, for which I'm most grateful. Although I was scared to touch it, but I found shell-like highlights in the middle range mountain that I like, like an iris or flowerbonemountain, hee. Much credit to all the work of Georgia O'Keeffe. I see her in my work and I try to communicate something new to her memory.
That was such a huge theme of mine at the time of writing Memiel, the dialogue of the creatives -- I felt so very isolated. Sometimes I still do, and I'm glad I was writing actively when that happened, but I'm much more at home in myself and less needing some other to complete me. Longing never ceases, in some form or another, but at least I'm more able to give myself TLC than before.
So I'm looking forward to the new pastel, the pencil sketch from Talia's photo, and then explore with sensual layers of dusty color/pigment. I'm thinking of how I construct and create with pastels to try to imagine how to explain it to others for the first time, hopefully to the participants of the weekend workshops in July, fingers crossed, for the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah. What an honor! I can't hardly wait, and yet I'm flustered by the responsibility. I know myself well enough that I will overprepare for my role of instructor, laughing at myself. So eventually no worries on that point.
Into this gray day, grey day, I will insert a new image, a sketch, the beginnings of a landscape of dust ...
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