a muse in every port....

we went on a very short vacation in the east of our country, just to relax and refresh our (creative) energy. a change of scenery can do wonders for your spirit, especially during those last days of summer.

on our first day we visited Deventer, a trading city on the bank of the river IJssel that used to belong to the Hanseatic League. wonderful historic atmosphere, lots of interesting photographic opportunities.

although  i missed my three muses, i very soon found a new one gazing at me through a shop window.

like a siren she drew me in and put her spell on me, there was no way i could resist her...... 

on the second day we went for a short walk through the woods and stumbled upon this incredible impressionist view

decided to blend these two shots into a new image

recognise some of your own work in the background?

we also went to Zutphen, another Hanseatic city, where i literally ran into a brand new muse when i rounded a corner in a narrow alley

there was no way i could get around her, so i obeyed her command and took out my iphone.....

at the end of the day i managed to capture the last rays of sun bouncing off the top windows in one of Zutphen's ancient cobbled streets

merged together, these two shots produced this rather dramatic scene

i felt like a sailor instead of a tourist: a (new) muse in every port

and it is true, they can be found everywhere! they surface in the most unlikely places, sometimes only leaving some subtle traces of their presence....

Online classes

are you creating anything in Procreate yet? I haven't seen any of your postings on Pinterest or Facebook. Here is something I just did to explore the app and all of its many fun tools and colors. COLOR palettes we can create ourselves. Tooooo much fun.

I guess I have to find that photo from my desktop computer instead of this iPad. I'll be back.

Coming up for air

I love your last post and, despite a long list of weekend tasks that includes WORK work, I have to respond, react, and comment.
First, your studio is shaping up into an amazing space for you. The light...oh, yes. Everything is so fresh and clean and illuminated by the sun. Your manikins look so happy where you've put them, standing like ancient goddess statues waiting for you to put them into wild, mysterious, or scary photo collages. I'll get to that work in a minute. I also like your little gallery of "old" and inspiring artwork. Of course I am attracted to the bloody red you used in three of the four pieces. So dramatic. Did you see the mobile phone collage work that Ivy Newport posted in her email? Nice, huh? I wonder if we will actually meet those artists in our virtual paint & pixels course, which begins Tuesday here --> Paint and Pixels

Thanks for all the links to books and artwork you've explored lately. I looked at the collagraphy art book on Amazon and was intrigued. I think I sent you photos of some collagraphic work I made last fall. I have the best framed and hanging in a gallery "room" in our vacation rental house and one in our house temporarily. The other books you referenced told me why and how you have such knowledge about art styles and leading artists. I admire your focus and see how it helps you - and me! - think about our artwork. I haven't had the patience to stick with reading those kinds of books long enough to obtain the knowledge you have. Go get 'em!

The link to the paper vase products is interesting and I can see how clever the design is for moving a 2-D paper product into a 3-D vessel with limited prints that could easily be expanded to endless flat artwork images. Personally, I'm done with that idea. My experiment left me cold to the idea - for now. I put those pieces aside.

Altering old books. I have watched some videos on that recently and it does look like a fun thing to try. You have a nice encyclopedia set to try it on. I hope you will post your experiments on our blog.

Ok, now to your new mobile artwork with your manikins. I don't usually resonate with artwork featuring words, but I really like what you did with the images of writing in your photo collages, especially the one where the writing looks like a wall in perspective. The manikin appears to be leaning in to walk through the wall, through the words toward a deeper meaning...or am I reading too much psychology into this image? The "special" manikin peeking within the fading poisonous jack-in-the-pulpit plant (I didn't know it is poisonous!) (I've never seen this plant at this life stage!) has that combination of scary and mysterious. I love the deep, dark colors against the pale (innocent?) complexion of the manikin. What deep psychological story is told in this image?

Ok. I've got to get this day going and come back with some photos of my work so we keep this going at a faster pace now that it is cooling down (at least here in Midwestern US) and I am inside more.

Later...

a happy reunion

last week i got my three manikins back from storage and welcomed them into my new studio. 

while re-assembling them i found their arms and hands were missing, probably stored in a separate box somewhere in a huge pile leaning to the storage wall......lol! so i'm afraid they will have to stay like this for some more weeks. i must admit i actually quite like them this way.

some of my old work has also been hung/positioned. i really love the way these images are grouped together. i 'see' them every time i descend the stairs.

the reunion with my three muses immediately sparked my creative fire.....

this last one is kinda special, a blend of my favourite manikin with a very poisonous plant called

arum maculatum. it is not very common here but in the park near the shopping mall their clusters of red berries appear every year at the end of summer, poking out from under layers of wet withered leaves surrounding the huge trees. apparently this plant has a range of very interesting names, such as 'lords and ladies', 'snakeshead', 'friar's cowl' and 'jack in the pulpit'..... i remember that last one as a painting by Georgia O'Keeffe, but she painted it in a different season, with the spadix still intact, and with no sign yet of the bright red berries emerging from within the spathe.

still no time to work in my studio, but already lots of ideas, almost too many to process...
just ordered a book on collagraphy, bought a dutch version of Art in Time, (a world history of styles and movements) and am currently reading Michael Wilson's 'How to read Contemporary Art'.
also discovered this workshop on mixed media and digital printing by Loek de la Haye. i would very much like to register, it seems to be just what i've been looking for.....  but i have no idea if can go, lots of previous arrangements and tasks to reorganise..... well, we'll see what can be done, no doubt this guy will offer more of this stuff next year, i now know how to contact him.