the future is upon us

Another art gallery has closed its doors:



And despite all the doom and gloom I have started some new city canvases:


resonance paarticles:
any group of extremely short-lived fundamental particles of high mass and variable charge and angular momentum that are as yet incompletely understood, but which appear to play the role of field quanta (*quantum theory of fields).

... and then some

Lately I feel a bit like a one-woman painting factory. Not sure where this is going. Sometimes I am so sick of painting these cities, over & over again, what the gallery wants, blah blah blah.
Yeah, nice problem to have, on the one hand. On the other hand, I never bargained for this: being constrained to paint what sells, because now this is my primary source of income.
Suddenly the downside is obvious.
Another learning curve headed my way and moving fast!

Seems to me I can continue along, painting what sells because it's more fun than, say, making shoes or selling cosmetics, and develop a "sideline", other art that I do just for moi.
Or I can go off and change direction entirely, paint something totally new and enticing and marvellous!
...thing is, I'm not quite convinced that I am a genius whose every work will automatically sell, and I ultimately do need to pay the bills.

Ok, enough deep thought for the day, on to some visual stuff!

Today I started some new paintings:


And continued along with a few:







And decided these are finished:



That's all, folks!

2 guys I know

The first guy is my husband, who last night generously agreed to pose while sleeping:


The second guy is my husband's cousin, drawn just half an hour ago:


Both done with a ball-point pen in my new 7x7" square sketchbook.

just keep plugging away

Where does that expression originate, and what does it really mean? "Plugging away"... like plugging up holes? keeping things afloat? defying a whistling wind?

It's been one of those days of questioning: what am I doing, really? And in the interest of keeping myself afloat I continue along, beleaguered by thoughts, caught in a headwind but painting as usual...

This is what I have to show for it, cut & pasted a bit from 3 photos:

Hours become days....


Today I could move this from the table to the wall and take an upright picture. The paint has all but dried and soon I can start adding transparent layers.

Also an upright picture of this one:

Which I had photographed lying on the table and posted a few days ago. Here it is again.

discipline?

Pulled an all-nighter in the studio, it's now 6:30am and I'm making a quick post before hitting the sack for a couple hours' sleep. Talk about obsession.
I began painting a little after midnight, and this is what I worked on:

Just a bit on these


Started this series


And did all this in one shot tonight!

Night Life

oil on stitched canvas
22 x 68"

citified

Today I finished this one:

Everything Has A Life Of Its Own
oil on stitched canvas
48 x 48"


And worked on these a bit:

zip zing zoom

A portrait of A, done by me:



And a portrait of me, done by A:



both done on matboard, around 12 x 18" and using liquid acrylics and pens.

ongoing

A finally finished painting:

Beyond The Gates
o/sc
23 x 53"



And a couple of portraits of co-workers:

M at the computer
acrylic & pen on matboard
14 x 18"

J reading a book
acrylic & pen on matboard
16 x 19"

at day's end

Worked very hard all day on the cities, then did this portrait which I think is just awful! She looks quite lifeless, doesn't she? But what the heck, I'm posting it anyway:

where to from here

before:




after:

oil on stitched canvas
23 x 40"

...finished? perhaps...

edit - added a bit more yellow & red:

from here to where

from here:



to there:


Yesterday wanted to be in the studio all day but life intervened... then after dinner just went in for a couple of hours & voila, good work. Not sure it's entirely finished, but now very close.

edit - small further changes:

busy bee!

A very good studio day today.

First C came to the studio with her cello and I did some quick sketches:


and a rather awkward painted portrait:

china marker & oil on canvas
20 x 20"


Then I worked on this city a bit, it's getting quite close I think:




And then with some leftover green I did this, just as easy as pie:

"Beyond The Violet Rays"

oil on stitched canvas
24 x 24"

I love it when a painting finishes up seemingly effortlessly. This one has been languishing for some time, then yesterday I put on the light purple sky, today a bit of dark red and that green and it just feels like a great big "whoosh" with a smile.
:)

Spanner

and another

red & black china marker, yellow oil paint and clear oil medium on canvas
approx. 12x18"

real live portraits!

the portraits I did of M. during our 3-day exchange, appearing in the order they were made:

oil on canvas, 16x16"


oil on canvas, 13x14"


pen and acrylic ink on matboard, 14x18" approx.
this one was made while we simultaneously drew each other


photoshop'd a little


china marker and oil paint on panel, 20x20"


china marker and oil medium on paper, 20x24" approx.

this last one - it is not as pretty as the others, but there is something about the technique that interests me, the way the medium dissolves the drawn lines, taking the thing somewhere between drawing and painting...
wonder how it would look on canvas?
hmmmm.

exchange

My co-worker wanted to do an extended figure painting, and I have become increasingly interested in doing portraits again, so we agreed to do a posing/painting exchange.

For this project we used the Untitled Arts Society gallery space, which has a "bare walls" open time between scheduled exhibitions. Artists can apply to use the space during these between times to work on individual or group projects. This creates a more dynamic community gallery feeling, and reduces the amount of bare wall space in between exhibitions!



3 days of this was very intense and exhausting! But the results were worth it:

3

Into The Light

oil on stitched canvas
25 x 46"


A Day in the City #8

oil on stitched canvas
19 x 20"


Neighborhood

oil on stitched canvas
29 x 31"