Hi, I am back at work in my studio after catching up on paid-job responsibilities.
A few weeks ago a friend came over for dinner and spent a little time in my studio looking at my small, pocket-art books. She made a comment that stuck with me: "I like these little books; but, I don't like each and every page. Why do you put these little paintings in a book like this? I would buy a small painting because some of these spreads really speak to me." I already wrote here about why I like making the books; but, my studio visitor made me ask myself if I am afraid to do the same thing in a larger format, picture by picture to mount and frame. I had to test that fear but I decided to first use the same size as an open spread in the pocket-sized books. Here are a few of my favorites that I mounted:
What a pain. I cannot access my iCould to get the photos I want to embed here. Why does Blogger limit my choices to Picassa, phone, or images I've already posted? Or URLs. NOT my iCloud where I have hundreds-maybe thousands-of photos of my work.
Without photos, I will describe a place I eventually came to as I worked on these small, 2-D paintings. I started (unintentionally - although I've recently seen at two separate art museums exhibits of art from Black Mountain College where Albers taught for awhile in the 1930s) channeling Albers in putting torn pieces of paintings into a full sheet of background painting from the same large sheet of painted paper (process explained here a few months ago for the Make it Yourself books). I really like how these come together and ask the viewer to step a little closer to inspect what is going on, then step back again to see the illusions created by negative and positive space, color combinations, and overlapping patterns that move forward and back.
OK. I don't like this lack of photos to talk about. Just know that I am working in my studio even when the weather calls me outdoors. I also signed up for an online course in advanced color theory. Are you taking any courses?
