Inspired to explore

"Still - Moving"

Oil on gessoboard

6x6

This was painted interpreting what I saw in real life and playing around with the design.  I was inspired by a plein air sketch I did at Leo Carillo Beach and although it's realistic I moved things around to work better and I like that I'm starting to take more liberties that way.   It's in an exhibit called Yin Yang Summer at the Hillcrest Center for the Arts in Thousand Oaks which I was invited to participate in right before vacation so it gave me a good (tight) deadline to ponder the theme and get to work on it:-)  I have 5 pieces in the show and 3 of them are painted in a more representational style - something I'm more familiar with.  The other 2 gave me the opportunity to explore abstracting my subject matter and interpreting it in a more personal way which really appeals to me...and I'm uploading those below.

Visiting galleries in Provincetown last month with my mom and sister was really inspiring and the two artists whose work I loved the most because of their beautiful abstracts were:

Kristen Gossler whose work can be found at the Hutson Gallery and:

http://www.jennynelson.com/2010.html#setsail

Jenny Nelson who shows her work at Julie Heller Gallery in P-town.  I loved Jenny's work because of her colors, strong simplified design and variety of marks and looking at her work helped me approach my abstract work in a more structured way.  I've realized I'm not an artist who can throw some paint on and just get lost in the process... I'm too much of a control freak I think (no - I know:) and that process is too unsettling for me because I don't know where I'm going... :-) so...

-First I started with the theme, deciding how I wanted to interpret the yin and yang of summer in a way that was meaningful to me and what symbols to include.
-I did a lot of sketching trying to simplify my subject matter and abstract it.
-I then painted an original sketch that still seemed too realistic to me.

Farewell - Hello First attempt

-I then painted on top of that.  Inspired by Jenny Nelson's work and the way she ties the design together with big shapes of colors, many times in light color-combinations, always beautiful, I worked on doing something similar, and was able to simplify my design more and tie it together better, I hope.  Here's my final version of the piece:

 "Farewell - Hello"

Oil on Gessoed Artboard

12x12 

And for my next piece I got even more abstract, focusing on big shapes unifying my more representational elements and had more fun in the process:

 

"Pleasure and Pedal"

Oil on Gessoed Artboard

12x12 

Vacation on Cape Cod

"To Catch or be Caught"
Oil on linen on panel
6x6"
NFS

Spent two lovely weeks on Cape Cod with both my husband's family and my mom and my sister with family from Sweden.   The kids had a great time playing with all their cousins, swimming around in the pond and finding both snapping turtles and fireflies.   One evening, aunt Susan and aunt Mary were fishing off the dock and Max and Jake the two golden retrievers were very captivated by the process.  They even managed to snag the rather large catfish Susan caught off the line by jumping in the water...it was quite a sight:-)      And even though I didn't paint as much as I set out to do, I got up early a few mornings to paint and one morning I did paint this from a photo I took of the dogs that night on the dock, as well as some abstract pieces that were a lot of fun.   I'll post more of that and the art we saw coming up...