Slideshow below: started a new painting in the kitchen this afternoon.
Click images to enlarge: Happiest with the first one. The lightbulb painting might have some potential. The kitchen paintings seem to be going through an awkward adolescent stage and are really testing my patience. Updated progress slideshows of the kitchen paintings: Click images below to enlarge: Started another hallway painting Wednesday. Worked on it again yesterday. Looks like two sort of unrelated paintings. Going to put this one aside for now. At the moment this feels like one I would tortue rather than resolve.
Recent Inspiration: As always, latest greatness on the painting perceptions, Sydney Licht. Gillian Pederson-Krag is a favorite painter of mine who I somehow haven't mentioned on here before. Unfortunately it seems impossible to find good pictures of her paintings online and she doesn't have a website. I have two of her exhibition catalogs that miraculously appeared on amazon. I highly recommend them to any still life painter, they have been an invaluable resource for me. Above are the few (and sadly, tiny) pictures of her work that I could find online.
Update: 4/16/12- Excellent and insightful interview Gillian Pederson-Krag by Elana Hagler on painting perceptions! Finished the shoe painting friday night. (Click above to enlarge) Below is a slideshow of the painting's main stages from start to finish. Started a new painting tonight that seems to be coming together rather quickly. After working on it for less than 2 hrs I think it is about 80% done. This happens to me very rarely. Excited! Factors that may have worked to my advantage: strong directional light source, objects of personal interest, energy drink I had beforehand. Now that I think about it, the works I have been struggling with are all interiors. Maybe I'll put those aside for now and allow myself to concentrate on still lifes again.
I was Texas for the last week visiting my boyfriend. Went to the Fort Worth MoMA which has a great Diebenkorn exhibit. It was incredible to see many of the "Ocean Park" paintings in person. The smaller works were equally awesome. Highly recommend going if you're in TX. Unfortunately, no photography allowed. My boyfriend's mother, Martha Burkert, is a wonderful painter. She introduced me the work of Christine Lafuente. Her still-lifes struck a chord with me (Example below). I love it when a painting can be so specific about light and color without tedious detail. Forms are unlabored and come together despite the abstraction of the parts, describing the sensation of sight more accurately than realism. The surface of the painting is a guided visual meditation. I was reminded of illustrators Doug Chayka and Mark English. The simplicity of their work is gorgeous and intentional. Why they are painted seems related in an interesting way to how they are painted. Many people describe art as a method of engaging/fighting an obsessive part of the mind. I've been thinking recently about the conversation between the obsessive mind and meditative mind that unfolds in certain paintings.
Decided to change the bathroom painting from portrait to landscape. Like the bedroom painting, this has resulted in basically starting over. Progression below shows the work I did on the painting today. Really want to finish this one before Wednesday. |