We had a brief and powerful rainstorm over here today and the view off of the back porch was totally magical! I have not cracked out my oil paints in a while, so today was the day. I painted my neighbor's clothesline, which got caught in the rain. Oops!
First-- a quick update on my screen printing class last night: It was SO much better! I am finally getting it! I finished the background of my print and moved on to the ship itself. The sails are done and next I will move down to the hull and eventually the water. And all the rigging-- I'll need to throw that in somewhere. I learned a new way to register each piece of paper (line it up correctly with the screen) and it made my life a bajillion-million times easier. Still no images for you though. Sorry!!
What I am going to write about in this post is a painting that I have in the works-- a new nightscape in oil on wood panel. I am thinking of it as Van Gogh meets Edward Hopper. I'm borrowing from the color palette of Van Gogh's nightscapes and using classic New England Architecture as subject matter-- the same subject matter that Hopper is known for (my work has been compared to his before and I take it as a huge compliment... though admittedly when I first moved to Boston, I had a bit of an artist block because I realized that Edward Hopper had already made all the paintings I wanted to make, so I had to shift in new ways).
So here is what I have so far:
Eh? Eh? Cool, right? Vinceward Van Hopper! Edwincent Hop-Gogh?
No, no, the first one is better. Vinceward Van Hopper.
So what I am debating about right now, is 1) I want to finish this painting BUT 2) it looks kind of cool unfinished, am I right? There is something appealing about the sketchy boldness of the shapes I already have. I don't think I'll actually leave it like this, but a small part of me wants to. What do y'all think?
Oh and also, this isn't just any old house in Boston. This is MY house. My room is the one on the third floor balcony.
This painting is the completed version of one of the paintings I posted last week. It was loosely based on the view off of my back porch in JP during a snow storm. When I photographed the unfinished version for that post, it was directly after I had done the painting-equivalent of a rough sketch.
I just realized how many trees I paint. I love trees. They are the most noble and grand of all plants.
I am leaving for a trip to Miami tomorrow to celebrate the start of 2013 on the beach, where it is warm! As always, my watercolors and paper are packed and ready to go.
I wanted to squeeze in one more post for this calendar year, but I don't have anything completed at the moment. I do have a couple of paintings in progress. They are both at the point where someone might look at them and think they were finished, and that they were just really boring. But do not be confused! They are not done yet! I have plans for their finishing touches, plans indeed!
One of my co-workers at the USS Constitution Museum commissioned me to paint a portrait of his dog, Kiley as a Christmas gift. It was a great project and I was honored to be asked to do this painting. I also got the chance to meet Kiley in person last week and she was so excited about life!
Today was exciting because I installed nine paintings at Ula Cafe in Jamaica Plain. This is the first time I have ever put work up in a cafe and I am very thankful for the opportunity. I would not have been able to put up the show without help from my friends Kat and Hel, who are both fantastic people!
I snapped some photos of the work hanging up on the walls:
All of these paintings have appeared previously on this blog except for one. The largest one with the prominent leafy tree and the colorful fences is a piece that I started last Spring and then put on back burner. When this opportunity to show work came up, I decided it was the perfect time to finish the piece. It is based on my backyard in JP. Our neighbors have a lovely, multicolored fence that I had to get onto canvas. Here is a closer look at the painting:
And finally, I wanted to include part of my artist statement that I hung next to my self portrait:
I am primarily an observational
painter and no matter where I am, my work is inspired by my immediate
surroundings. I love capturing a place and then committing it to canvas or wood
panel. The collection of oil paintings I am presenting is inspired by views
from the windows of my house here in JP and the streets I walk every day.
Because these paintings are all snapshots of my life, I have also included a
self-portrait to complete the narrative.
Night scenes are particularly
interesting to me because of the extreme contrasts of light and dark, the
heightened importance of shape, and the way every color stands out, illuminated
against the dark. Trees, houses, and clouds are some of my favorite subjects
and it is fascinating to see how they change with the light at different times
of day.
Thank you Ula for giving me the
opportunity to show my work, thank you to my friends who have been incredibly
supportive of my art, and thank you to my housemates for putting up with the
smell of oil paint and my brushes taking over the bathroom sink.
I just completed this painting last night, a nightscape from my front balcony. The building in the distance is an old brewery and it is a beautiful structure, very iconic of the neighborhood (at least for me).
I recently discovered the Uforge Gallery in Jamaica Plain, which presents gallery shows on themes that change from month to month. November's "assignment" as they call them is Day of the Dead. I was super excited to make a Day of the Dead painting and here is the completed piece:
This was one of the most challenging compositions I have ever attempted. About halfway through I was like, "what have I done?! Why didn't I just do like two people and one light source?!" But it was all worth it in the end. It came a long way from its humble beginnings:
I hope Uforge does not mind wet paint, as I just finished it this morning. Also, my camera is getting old and the quality of the photos it takes is worse every time... I know what I'm saving up for next.
If you are local to Boston and would like to come to the opening night of the show, it is Thursday, November 1st from 6 to 8 pm at 767 Centre Street, Jamaica Plain!
This is a post about my new half French easel-- I bought her a couple of weeks ago and she is gorgeous and I love her. She looks like some kind of strange and beautiful three legged wild animal, like a mutant fawn-giraffe.
I asked the girl in the art supply store what made it a "half French" easel and she said that it is half the standard size for a French easel. I was hoping maybe one of its parents was French and the other was Turkish or Australian or Nicaraguan or Texan or Egyptian and that they had some kind of star crossed love affair that resulted in a bi-racial easel baby, but no, it is just half size.
French easels are cool because they have all kinds of screws you can adjust and parts you can move, so that you may fold it up into a box for easy transport. This is also how she was packaged when I brought her home from the store, so I spent a lot of time unfolding all of her gangly limbs from this box and it strongly reminded me of an anime I used to watch in Middle School and High School called Outlaw Star, which is about space pirates and alien cat girls and a bounty-hunter/womanizer, and many other things as well.
Setting up my easel reminded me specifically of a part early on in Outlaw Star when our bounty-hunter/womanizer hero comes into possession of this mysterious giant box/briefcase thing, which turns out to be carrying a hot naked bio-android girl (one step more human than a cyborg, but still made with robot parts), who rises out of the box much like my easel rose out of its box to stand for the first time. She later goes on to operate a space ship and have an identity crisis.
The hot bio-android's name in the show is Melfina, and I thought it would be suitable to name my new easel after her. When Cartoon Network aired Outlaw Star, they gave her clothes because kids watch Cartoon Network, but you get the idea.
And here is Melfina the easel, set up in my bedroom/art studio, surrounded by works in progress that I have not yet posted. Consider this a sneak peek.
Like the previous post, this was painted based on the view off of my front balcony, but looking down the street instead of up (it is on a hill). The sky really looked like that one evening! No joke! I got home from zumba and the sky was like, "paaaaiiiiint meeeeeeee!" And I was like, "Alright, princess." The sky is so vain.
This is from the view off of my front balcony. The sunsets lately have been rockin' my world and since the balcony is a great place to paint, I expect to paint more rooftops and skies. Living in New England and painting houses is hard because every time I go to paint something I think, "Oh wait... Edward Hopper already painted this." Me and Edward Hopper have some things in common, artistically.
Anyway, this painting is not finished. I can't help but feel like it needs something else. Like a tree! Something that breaks up the barrier between the house and the sky. It is pretty rigid at the moment.
I painted this nightscape on July 5th, but have been touching it up ever since. I'm out of practice I guess. Boo! I was having trouble figuring out what to do with the sky because there was actually a tree there but I couldn't get it to look right so I just took it out and I am pleased with it now. I have a bunch of other paintings in the works, but they are not ready to be blogged about.
The house is on the street that I walk to get home from the T.
Sorry I haven't posted in forever-- I will be posting more soon because I am in the middle of several exciting, new paintings that are taking me in some exciting, new directions, but until then, this is a painting of the hallway in my apartment, which turned out rather spooky. Maybe Shaggy and Scooby will pop out of one of those doorways, being chased by a monster who turns out to be the landlord wearing a costume... he would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for those meddling kids!
I apologize for not posting for so long! I have been busily at work on many art projects but have not finished any until these two most recent paintings. Here you are! Two nightscapes from my new neighborhood in Boston:
I just finished this portrait moments ago! You know what is difficult? Photographing wet paint. You know what else is difficult? Painting hands. This is a self portrait with one of my favorite scarves.
My dad is visiting me this weekend! Yesterday we went antiquing. It is sort of a tradition of ours that we go antiquing whenever he's in town. He knows so much about so many things that people have made, particularly American art and craft from the Civil War era through the mid twentieth century. One antique place had an old rope bed. It is a bed with a wooden frame and where we now have things like springs, they once used ropes to hold up the mattress. When the ropes got loose you had to tighten them so your bed wouldn't sag. This is why we say, "sleep tight." Isn't that cool?
Also we bought a tiny couch!
We think that the tiny couch was either used for small children or it was a salesman's sample. Furniture salesmen used to travel with these mini versions of the furniture they were selling so that people could see all of the things they could buy without having to lug around a ton of furniture. Now it is the perfect size for a stuffed dragon.
Behind the tiny couch and dragon, you might notice the infamous ugly apartment painting that I have yet to complete (but I DID work more on last night). I thought it would have been funny if my dad didn't like this painting because he finds that building so ugly, but he does indeed like it. He says it reminds him of a southern plantation.
I also painted a quick little sunset piece last week. I usually don't paint in pink and purple, but it looks like candy. Also it looks sparkly because it is they view out my bedroom window through a screen and that makes lights look kind of fancy and twinkly. Now when I look at this painting, all I see is pink and purple and sparkles. All it needs is a unicorn.
I must be doing something right though, because I already sold it. Hooray!
While I was apprenticing at Bread and Puppet, we spent one evening down the road at The Museum of Everyday Life checking out a great exhibit on matches, drinking Long Trail beer, and getting devoured by mosquitoes. Once it got dark, we settled on the lawn in front of a makeshift movie screen (read: sheet) and watched a film from the 1960's by Jack Smith. I had never heard of Jack Smith before, but learned that he was a contemporary of Andy Warhol. They did collaborations and things but Jack Smith was against using consumer culture as a vehicle for his art the way Warhol did, so he is not nearly as well known, but he should be! His work is a little bit elusive because he tried very hard to make it unable to be reproduced, but some recordings are available anyway.
The film we watched was called Normal Love and there may have been a plot, but I wasn't too concerned with that. I was too focussed on what a cool sensory experience I was having-- It seemed to me that it was almost like many paintings in motion. I loved the music as well. Here is a few minutes of Normal Love that I was able to find on youtube:
It was like watching beautiful image after beautiful image lit up on this square in the middle of a very dark, mountainy Vermont landscape with a ton of stars. I wanted to imprint that image on my brain so that I could paint it when I had access to my oil paints.
So that is what I have been doing. I started out using film stills and movie clips from Normal Love that I found online and then started transitioning to filling the movie screens with my own images. It is a series-in-progress, and so if any artists out there in internet land wanna throw some constructive criticism my way, I would be grateful.
I wish the image quality had been better on the owl one. Alas! I have a couple more in the works.
The following has nothing to do with Vermont or Bread and Puppet or Jack Smith, except that those experiences are getting me inspired to paint again, which has led me to finish up some projects that I let fall by the wayside. I wanted to post those as well.
This first one is a landscape from Ithaca.
And this next one is a nightscape I did waaaaaay back at Earlham and never finished. I still don't know if I would call it finished, but I am certainly done with it.
I took advantage of the solstice and painted from sunset well into dusk last night. It has trees now! I'm having issues with the willow branch on the right bottom quadrant of the painting but as they say on Project Runway, I'll make it work. Otherwise, I am pleased with the progress.
I painted a lot of this after it started getting dark. Because of all the nightscapes I painted last year, I have gotten pretty good at painting in the dark. The colors I choose are always a bit of a surprise to me the next morning though. I always think that I am mixing really subtle colors, but then they are actually quite vibrant.
If anyone was wondering the secret to the nightscapes, it is that I can't entirely see the paint. Why are my paintings better when I can't see what I'm doing? No idea.
