Ruining Paintings (on purpose) and Making Envelopes

The closer a painting gets to being finished the more uptight I tend to get about ruining it and the less I want to work on it. Really the best thing to do at that point is to ruin the painting so I can relax and get on with it. I can always paint over it so there's really nothing to lose.


I realize they may not look that different to the casual observer but once I get attached to a piece the slightest change seems monumental. I had hoped to finish these before school starts so I can begin new projects with a clean slate but I got very stymied with moving, looking for a new job and not having anyone around to bounce ideas off of. I am not too disappointed. I feel I've accomplished a lot for my first stint working solo.


This is definitely the most problematic piece. I feel somehow it should be easy since I don't want it to be representational as much as emotional. The hardest part, though, is trying not to be representational!


Despite my half-hearted attempt to sell my hand-made papers on Etsy I still dream of having a business that revolves around making paper. today I decided to make some envelopes out of my Favorite Papers collection. It was wonderful to be crafty! I just love the way colors interact and somehow its more magical when I am arranging colored pieces of paper then when I am plowing paint around a canvas.

These are the lids, yet to be constructed into envelopes. I love metal grommets even though they are purely cute and cute is totally antithetical to Art.

When to Stop

This piece is called Stop, Stretch, and I'm not sure when I should have stopped it. I am interested in delving into a more flippant drawing style because I feel my work is too labored and not spontaneous enough. The thing I like most about this piece is that it is my way of commenting on how polarized we are for having different opinions on issues and each believing that we are right and people who disagree are ignorant.

Vacation

I just returned from a much needed vacation to Colorado to visit my sister and her husband. It was wonderful to get away, spend time with family, hike in new places and visit a new art museum. It was very inspiring to see new art, a new landscape and to get familiar with my sister's art, quilting. Fabric artists are more inspiring to me right now than painters and just going to the fabric store with Julie blew my circuits. The patterns were so beautiful, there were about 20 fabrics I wanted to bring home with me, but I hate sewing!
The piece above is too much fun, tedious but fun. I think I could make many more versions.

This is my first landscape painting of the summer, not that it's finished. I got a little overwhelmed with the complexity of the forest and the mosquitos. I love painting all the tree shapes but the leaves and undergrowth are sort of a headache that I need to learn how to abbreviate in a way that holds the piece together.

Dream, Work, Fail, Learn

I am a bit romanticized by photos of ink bottles, even in a plastic corale (Do you have any idea how easy it is to tip over a bottle of ink or how quickly that ink absorbs into carpet?)
I think I am really done with this painting. I haven't the faintest idea if it is successful or not but I can tell I am done with it either way. I actually like it, by the way. I ruined it at one point by painting too many letters over the top. I printed a photo of it at an earlier stage and tried to reconstruct parts of it. It seemed like a natural part of the process more than a mistake.
This is another heart work piece. I was exploring failure as a part of the whole learning process. We are so focused on success as a culture I think some of become a little petrified of failure but it is so necessary, we should glam it up a little bit!