FOCUS - PART TWO?

For 2015, my word was FOCUS. It didn't quite meet what I had in mind. Instead of honing in on what I thought would be my art path this past year, the FOCUS turned inward and ended up meaning something quite different. Somewhere about the middle of the year I had a change of course and seemed to do anything but what I thought I was supposed to do. Tried new classes in unfamiliar techniques and liked it! Seems my art approach is going through a bit of a transition and I am not quite sure where it is taking me right now. Wherever this is leading it should be an interesting adventure. Why not come along and see where my journey leads???? See you next year!

WHAT TO DO WITH THE LEFTOVERS

Creating mixed media art is sometimes a messy business and there always seems to be scraps and leftovers still sitting on the table. It's always a nice feeling to use these leftovers and turn them into something usable. This piece incorporates the positive & negative flower shapes, leftover ginwashi scraps and paper weaving from altered papers.

My last show of the year is about a month away and I realized there are a few pieces that needed to be photographed before they "hopefully" left home for good. Part of my sale pieces are unfinished class samples - pieces I have painted while teaching but probably didn't get finished during class for whatever reason. The wonderful thing about watercolor batik is the colors always come out just a bit different. I try to finish each piece by pulling out some unique aspect to change it up just a bit. This particular painting had more of a warm brownish cast to it and I happened to get a really nice dark linen mat board in a mixed board stack. It worked perfectly with this particular painting and turned out quite elegant. Now to find a good home for it!

The Disappearing Man

One of the fun things about creating the altered papers is the serendipity of the results. This particular paper leached out some of the color s surrounding this figure but left an interesting outline. What better place to start creating? I have also cut several tree stamps to work with a purchased stamp to help change things up a bit. This piece uses one of my stamps.

OUT OF THIS WORLD

This altered paper had the lovely greens just wanting to be some type of sky so I took advantage of the serendipity. It has a bit of land to anchor the scene but it is mostly sky and that moon. There was a bit of a blobby thing happening with the gold pen so I used it to advantage to create some interest. This is definitely a OOAK!

Cat's Eye

This eye appeared on the page and looked like an interesting place to start. A regular moon didn't look right but adding the crescent moon gave the eye an eyebrow, further enhancing the effect. Here's looking at you!

Ode to Easter Island

Do you see it? The cliff on the left looks like one of the moai - the monumental statues on Easter Island. This was a happy accident when the pages were pulled apart. I even have a mirror image for another piece of art. He is staring up at the moon - maybe dreaming of - what?

FRACTURED

Still working with the Small Worlds theme. This one is a bit larger at 8" x 10" and is my first use of independent layering elements. Can you tell I am having a really good time with this?

AS THE WORLDS TURN

Two more additions to my growing collection of collage worlds. Half the fun is finding a starting point and watching the scenery build from there. Usually there is one area of a paper that suggests something - a moon, horizon, neat sky features, landscape, seascape - and that is my starting point. Both of these were pretty much complete as a whole and didn't really need much to complete the scene.

TO TREE OR NOT TO TREE

This is another one of my small world creations. After I assembled the pieces and took the first photo it was just a bit bland - lots of color and pattern but no real focus. I added a much larger moon and decided to go with the tree theme since I had used the trees stamp and add just one large tree top to bottom, front and center. It is almost as if you are approaching this large tree and looking out onto the landscape - at least that is what I hope is happening!