sensing a theme

I've had the same colors on my paint palette for ages. When I organized images for my website, it was like I had turned every single canvas to the same sand-and-cerulean channel. I guess I had been aiming for consistency, but it kind of made me panic.

I've started some new pieces that radically and deliberately diverge from my comfortable creamy ochres and sage-y blue-greens, but then I noticed that combination showing up in my recent fabric purchases:

And on my bed:

And a little pen holder I re-painted:

And a bag I sewed:

I just can't help it. I love it so much I want to LIVE IN IT. And clearly, I do.

As if that wasn't enough, I started a painting based on the first fabric, that sweet deco floral design, because it's a smallish, odd-shaped remnant that I couldn't decide what to do with, and really couldn't bear to do anything with, lest I waste it, the horror.

So, back to the painting palette I went, and the colors fairly mixed themselves:

After this, it's fluorescent pink, promise.

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time lapse

Meanwhile, the portraits continue.

This is the youngest one to date, at 6 months old. What a little dumpling!

I attempted to create a time-lapse movie while I was painting, which was a little laborious and the quality is not that great, but here it is anyway:

I think I spend about 75% of the time terrified of painting and wanting to run away. I have to tell myself over and over just to bring the brush to the surface and keep going. Eventually the piece starts to come together and I find some confidence in placing the paint just so, but MAN. The first hour I'm like a pre-schooler hopped up on sugar and can't sit still... Maybe I'll check the mail! Maybe I'll make a phone call! My fingernails need cutting! The books need alphabetizing!

Most of the work happens on the palette mixing colors, and then in my head as I wrestle with self-doubt. Too bad there's no time-lapse image of that.

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art party

The RISD Art Sale last weekend was my very first, and it was kind of exactly what I expected, plus physical and emotional exhaustion. And trying to look engaging but not over-eager. That's a facial expression I'm going to have to work at for next time. IF there is a next time. I don't know how people do this for a living.

My mantra gearing up for this event was that it was all a learning experience: It doesn't matter if I break even, I'm LEARNING! It doesn't matter if I spend too much money on prints, and varnish my paintings at the eleventh hour, and change my mind a hundred times about what I'm going to hang... I'm LEARNING.

It was overcast all day and a little misty, but it never rained outright, so there was that to be grateful for.

I shared a table with my friend Elizabeth, who is the real RISD alum, and the maker of these great ceramic rhino heads. I decided to show my five remaining kami kami pieces, from the show I did in Kyoto in 2007.

 

I was mainly there to drum up more business for the portrait project, so I made postcards to advertise and created a portfolio of the pieces I've done so far. Maybe a dozen people took a card... not as many as I'd hoped, but better than none. I sold a few prints, and an original mixed media painting, so it was not a total loss.

I think we had some overcrowding issues at the table... Elizabeth's daughter was showing some of her prints, too, and it made our space a little busy. There's too much to look at and no central theme. See? I'm LEARNING.

 

People saw the mints, though. Those were gone by the end of the day.

Now I'm going to go hawk some cheap prints on Etsy...

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