Find Your Joy 2025 - Open Painting I

This is a first large-to-me canvas painting that I've completed in Louise Fletcher's course. It is 24" x 30" and was started as a course assignment -- an open painting.

The open painting is a place for experimentation and play. Mine has gone through quite an evolution since the first rubber brush line was made. After many days of adding drips, writing, and paint to the canvas bit by bit, it changed.

At one point, I turned the strange-looking canvas upside-down. With more painting, it changed so much more until a tree shape arrived - the hint being an upside-down funnel that would became the trunk. At that point, there were two spirals on the bottom, one on each side of that trunk. One has been painted over. The remaining one has peek-a-book layers and looks like a portal to an 'other' place. Hence, its serendipitous title: Rabbit Hole under the Tree of Cups.

I may make a few tweaks, but the painting is essentially finished even though it's still on the easel. That said. the overall image to me feels like an invitation -- where the portal quietly awaits someone's entry. How does this piece read to you?

Rabbit Hole under the Tree of Cups

Comments

Highjacked Blog Photo

My profile photo was highjacked ! For those of you who are blogging, be wary. There are some unscrupulous folks out there who may be using or about to use a photo(s) you've uploaded to an online photo-hosting site. At the time I created a blog, having a URL for a photo uploaded online was the only way to insert a photo in your profile or to create a custom header. There had been no problems for a long while. This morning, however, I did a Google image search for my name and found my photo linked to a totally different blog than my own! It is possible I didn't mark my file with the online photo-hosting site as private, but I didn't expect this to happen. I don't know whether marking it private would have actually averted the situation, but I'm not waiting to find out. I eliminated my membership to that online photo-hosting service today and caution anyone to be careful with uploading images to the internet . If you read the terms of agreement at many sites, you'...

Life Book 15 - Week 36 Project Completed (or nearly completed)

This project went in an entirely different direction than the Life Book 2015 lesson. That's ok because we're also working on accepting those times when we move in our own direction using the lesson purely as a launching point. This piece involved experimenting with collage on a substrate (muslin covered with joint compound), followed with paint, more collage, and then the felt, fabric and beaded plant. This piece was created through a class offered by Tamara Laporte from Willing Arts Ltd. For more information, visit this link: www.willowing.org .

Pottery Play Day

Today, I threw a couple of bowls, but my ability to center was not working. It could have been partly due to the new-to-me clay I tried using. In addition, I trimmed three others. One of those three ended up being very experimental...in that I tried a version of mishima on the interior of the bowl. Mishima is a technique of painting a leather-hard vessel with an underglaze(s), then waxing the layer, and finally...carving a design in the underglaze/wax surface before the vessel is fired into bisque. I tried it, and we'll see how it comes out. Below are the five vessels of Batch #8 that I brought home today. Of them, there are two new things I tried. The stripy one was done with one base layer plus a second layer of alternating painted stripes of the base color and mulberry. The other first is where I used a base layer and added two different lip colors of different widths. Lately, I've noticed other potters getting some great results...

Cay Denise

Search This Blog