A little update

Helga, I know you are very occupied outside of our creative blogging. I just wanted to tell you and use our blog to announce my new website and art things I made for sale on Etsy.

My new art website is simply my name. In creating this art website, I finally identified my three specifically identifiable art focus areas; wax and paint, hand-painted paper collage, and book arts. I have you to thank, Helga, for pushing me in all three areas.

My new book arts work is posted on my Etsy site . I am not sure these listings are any more tangible or understandable to people looking for stuff to buy on Etsy than were my other art objects. I made the first of these books to give as holiday gifts to family. A few friends bought books after seeing, touching, feeling the paper, and looking at each page of background watercolor paintings. The paper's texture has been a huge immediate reaction. The second from adults is that they "couldn't" cover the soft pastel-color paintings and marks already put on the pages and cover by me. One friend bought books for her nieces and here are a few photos of how they are making the books their own. I really like how very young children approach art with such joy, freedom, and no hesitation about how to use these books. They use - or not - the color brush strokes and other marks I put on the paper.

Please accept my deepest sympathy. I hope you will soon tap into your great creative resources during this time of great sadness and loss.

On the same wave length

Ah hah!! We are, at the same moment (separated by several time zones), both getting back to our blog. I was actually surprised to open it up and find your latest posting. Wonderfully surprised because your photos are so full of fun and adventure for your muse. She must be thrilled to find her virtual self in so many exciting locations and outside of the damn storefront window. Lucky her. I love them all - the location shots and your story of how you put her in those places is so full of your excitement and pleasure with you new iPad purchase. I wish I felt that those apps fit with my work better. But, that's ok that they don't. I love being away from the computer these days.

Still, I felt a need to get back to your comment about my artwork needing to be broken free from the constraining borders I put them in. So, I am posting a couple to float freely within your background photo and a couple with a tiny white border like the one you give your artwork.

First, totally free of any constraints:

Next, slightly contained with a tiny white border:

Now a little explanation of how I decide what parts of a larger painting to select for these special small artworks (I wrote the following in an email to my sister who asked the same question; so, I am cutting and pasting my reply here): 

A long time ago (2-5 years back) I was looking at my large paper paintings through a camera lens and "found" so many areas of wonderful colors and designs. I "wanted" them; but, I couldn't find exactly the same place when I went into the large paper to "cut them out." They were very precious; and, a lot of trouble to deal with. I started tearing the paper randomly for the waxed paper assemblages I used to make and discovered that it stopped me from getting caught up in the "precious" thinking. I found lots of small pieces that I loved and never did see in the whole piece and lots of them that I didn't like at all but they often looked great when added to an assemblage that covered up parts of it. It opened up a whole new world to let go of the preciousness of my artwork.   

From that waxed-paper assemblage period, I moved to tearing and cutting up (with an Exacto knife and ruler) large un-waxed paper paintings (often paintings that I hated) by turning the paper over so I can't see the artwork. I flipped over the small pieces (and sometimes they were very, very small - 1" x 1") and - surprise! - there were all kinds of wonderful small paintings in front of me. Lately, the tearing often goes like this: I fold the paper in half, take each half piece and tear it in half and keep doing that until I get a size I like or want. Lately, I've been painting BOTH sides of the paper and I have two sides to choose from. I might work in a color theme so I can put the pieces together in new, but complimentary ways.  I select the pieces I like best or some that look passable. Some of them get pasted on a larger sheet of paper as finished artwork in its own right (like the ones above). Others are pasted into a collage. Some are used to scale up into large paintings (usually with dismal results). Still others are torn even smaller to adorn a journal page or another mixed media painting. And, others sit in a box waiting to be chosen or, at least, taken out to test in one setting or another - like your manikin muses, Helga. 

You can guess that I have thousands of these little pieces of my art lying around. Maybe they really are my muses. They certainly inspire me; though I find I cannot replicate the design and colors in larger paintings like I wish I could. The large-paper approached, with no expectations of producing a perfect painting, end up so much freer, expressive, and looser than I can produce on panels, canvas, and other things I cannot tear apart. I tighten up, agonize, and fail. Is it a flaw in my artistic skills? Am I cheating? I try not to go down the road of answering these questions because I'm really loving the tearing-up-ugly (and beautiful)-paper-paintings process. 

I hope this post answers your questions about my process and why I might put paintings into constraining borders. 

i've got it!!!

yes, i really did it .... went out and bought the new iPad Pro with the amazing Apple Pencil......
this stuff is so awesome, it will take my art to a whole different level, my images will be so much easier to transform and manipulate, it is mind-blowing....!!!!

i immediately went to work, starting with one of my recent iphone shots, taken in my favorite shopping street

my new iphone 6S has a much better camera with a 12MP (instead of my 5S's 8 MP) resolution, so the quality of the images i use as a starting point for my artwork has increased accordingly, such a wonderful improvement!

it was an absolute joy to lift the manikin from its background on my new ipad pro, loads of extra screen 'real estate' to work on, the pencil felt and performed just like a real one, incredibly accurate, by zooming in i was able to erase the background almost pixel-by-pixel.....

and then searching for new scenes and adventures for my manikin.....

barking up the wrong tree

invoking my inner artist

forever chasing rainbows

first one: nature scene from my daily dog-walk; added written text (part of the song: "Elephant Talk" by King Crimson i was listening to at that time) in Procreate 

second one: Lianne LaHavas performing in Utrecht, viewed from the balcony; added the birds with Distress FX and the Bacon-like vertical lines in Procreate

third one: shot a beautiful rainbow from the bridge, after having dragged the dogs through a rainy, muddy marsh; added some painterly effects with Impresso and ToonCamera and a bit of texture and a wavy line in Procreate

so many creative possibilities, such a great source of new inspiration, i'm already completely addicted to my new toys....:-)

some really sad news too, we had to say goodbye to our little dog BiBi, she'd been with us for 16 years, she had a stroke which left her hind legs paralysed, so we could no longer keep her with us.

after she died i was transferring my latest Olympus shots to my Macbook and found this image of her reflection in a puddle, already fading away, it felt like a last goodbye; while shooting the puddle i hadn't noticed her coming back and quietly waiting for me, like she always did..... not anymore now....