Alternate Outcomes and the Marriage of Painting and Collage

It can begin by simply brushing texture onto a page. That's what I remember about the origins of this piece, anyway. I started out by brushing thick layers of white acrylic paint onto paper, with the bristles of the brush creating ridges in the white expanse. Three colors-- orange, purple, and deep pink-- told me it was their time, so I found them among the dozens of tubes of acrylic paint colors, mixed them with small amounts of water, and squeezed them onto the still wet white paint. I left the paper lying flat and then walked away. 

During the night, the watery paint followed the path of least resistance across the page, leaving behind paths and pools of intriguing shapes, lines, and patterns. Although I enjoyed the combination of colors and the juxtaposition of textures I found the next morning, I knew it wasn't finished. The idea of tiles of color depicting similar images danced in my head, along with the fact that different sections of the piece had different stories to tell. So instead of adding water or more paint to alter the look, I picked up the paper, walked over to the paper cutter, and began to cut. Three cuts later, and the imagined tiles were sitting before me. 

To create the background, I started with a layer of white acrylic paint, and while still wet, overlaid with a wash of soft orange watercolor, using broad strokes to emphasize the movement. As I began to arrange the colored tiles, the theme of alternate outcomes was forming in my mind. I thought about how the choices we make and the actions we take inform the outcome of a given situation. With that idea, I knew that the tiles needed to physically connect in some way, and the piece took shape as:

"Alternate Outcomes"

This piece marked my first, albeit basic, marriage of painting and collage, which is an avenue that I would go on to explore in subsequent work. It marked a turning point in my relationship with my work because I realized that sometimes putting paint onto a page tells only part of the story. The pre-2007 artist in me never would have entertained that notion. After all, in artwork, just like in life, there can be alternate outcomes.

Featured in this post: Alternate Outcomes
All current artwork can be found in my profile at Fine Art America. Thank you for your time and your support.
 

Deciphering Dreams: Altering the Color of my Mind

One of my first online handles was pisceandream. Without knowing it at that time, I was telling the world how much water and dreams factor into my life.  Often they work in tandem, as flowing water and patterns in blue figure prominently in my dreams. In February 2016, the deep waters of my spirit were stirring once more, which drew me into the studio again.

The near-death experience of my best friend just 3 months before transformed many aspects of my life. Undulating amidst those changes was the end of a relationship. My dreams during that time were enigmatic, causing me to dwell on them during the waking hours. All I could see and feel were the changing shapes and shades of blue from my dreams. They clung to me with such intensity that had I not been pacified by them, I would have thought they were haunting me. 

My time in the studio creating this was fairly brief. With the underlying theme of water, naturally I turned to watercolor paint this time around. With the segments of blue in place, I applied artists' tape to conceal individual sections before painting over everything with metallic acrylic paint. Even with the finished piece, I still did not know what to make of or call it, so I spent more time deciphering its message than I did creating it. It wasn't until I came across this quote by Emily Brontë that I began to understand, "I have dreamt in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind." The truths that I knew through my dreams, presented in changing patterns of blue, were ushering in a new version of consciousness for this water sign. They were, in fact, forever...

"Altering the Color of my Mind"

Featured in this post: Altering the Color of my Mind
All current artwork can be found in my profile at Fine Art America. Thank you for your time and your support.

Finding Her Place in the Universe: Our Own Spiritual Journey

2016 was, for all intents and purposes, about finding and reclaiming my true self. As described to a friend, certain landscapes reached this year felt like I witnessed them before birth and I have been making my way back to them ever since. My next mixed media piece symbolizes and illustrates this.

The lapse of time spent working on this piece spanned close to a year. The sunface came first. When I created her in the early part of 2015, I had no idea what would ultimately surround her or where she would end up. The round sunface spent several months sitting in the art studio, watching in silence as I worked on other pieces. Occasionally, I would look into her eyes in search of where she belonged, but to no avail. Then one day, while working on another piece, I had what I like to call a "happy accident" with some acrylic paint mixed with water. Just before I discarded the paper it was on, I thought, "wait a minute," and on a whim, I cut out some triangular shapes. The paint just so happened to go with the paint I had used on the sunface from several months before and these triangular shapes would go on to become the rays around the sunface. By the summer of 2015, the sun was assembled and complete. I placed her on a sheet of white paper, where she remained while the backdrop to the piece came together over the next several months.

Independently of this, I used the same "happy accident" technique to create swaths of blue, black, and purple throughout autumn. What I thought would be the foundation for a different piece ended up serving as the backdrop to this piece. Leftover pieces from a holiday craft project found their way into the piece in January 2016. These strips of blue construction paper with gouache were added to bring intrigue and asymmetry to the composition. The final element emerged in early February. While listening to Gustav Holst's seven-movement orchestral suite, The Planets Op. 32, I was inspired to create planetary bodies out of semi-diluted acrylic paint. With those in place, this sun truly was

"Finding Her Place in the Universe"

From the time we become self-aware, we seek to understand ourselves and to discover our purpose in life and our place in the world. Some step into it with ease, others have to search for it for years, and still others never manage to find it. After years, if not centuries or millennia, this sun has found her place. She has her own corner of the universe that's as unique as she is, where she is safe and accepted, where she has devoted satellites, where she can reach her zenith, where she is free to just be. Through this piece, I began to understand my own place in this vast universe.

Featured in this post: Finding Her Place in the Universe 
All current artwork can be found in my profile at Fine Art America. Thank you for your time and your support.

Signaling the End: Sandstorm of my Mind

Sometimes being an artist is like being a cryptographer. The universe gives me messages that I have to decode. Instead of breaking the code with words or numbers, I rely on the language of colors, shapes, patterns, and textures to reach the place of understanding. With the next piece in my portfolio, I did not know what I was creating, or the meaning behind it, while working on it. Even when it was complete, I still knew as little about the piece as when I set out to create it. For the first time ever, it wasn’t until I began writing this blog post that I began to break the code and thus understand what the piece truly represented.

I was first introduced to Peter Gabriel’s superb score, “Passion: Music for the Last Temptation of Christ”, in Autumn 1999.  I was immediately mesmerized by the score which varies from epic, sweeping tracks to minimalist pieces. Naturally, some of the epic tracks are stand-outs, but some of the more subdued and obscure pieces really shine as well. “Sandstorm” is one such track that has always been a silent favorite of mine.

It wasn’t until 17 years later, one morning before dawn in April 2016 when I awoke unable to calm my thoughts, that my connection to this song would come to fruition. In the early hours of that morning, I stepped into the art studio, inserted my headphones, scrolled directly to "Sandstorm", and instantly I felt it reflect the spinning chaos of my emotions. As the music pierced my soul, I began creating the initial layers of what would become this piece. At the end of that first painting session, all I had was black, white, and grey on the paper. “And this means what?” I asked the muses, to which they gave no reply.

Work on this piece spanned several days without knowing where it was taking me. The only thing that was disclosed to me was whether or not I was finished. More often than not, I was told to keep working. Each time that I returned to work on this piece, much like donning a mask, I would step into the music, channeling its energy. As the tempo would build and swirl into a climax, the muses would guide me, whispering that it wasn’t finished. As such, I would create the next layer.

As mentioned above, even after its completion, I did not know what this piece was. “Great, I made an abstract sandstorm,” I initially thought to myself. The second I had that thought, I knew I was on to something, that this was an interpretation of a sandstorm. I couldn’t have known what this represented because I had not yet decoded the underlying message. A few weeks later into the middle of May, I chose the title, but I still did not fully understand this piece.

Through practicing Mettā, I am learning to reside more in my heart and less in my head. Through this practice, I have realized that often my heart comes to a place of understanding and acceptance well before my mind does. In the previous November, I knew in my heart that the long term relationship that I was in was over, but there was a disconnect between my heart and mind. It wasn’t until I set out to write this blog post that I understood that the swirling tempest that pulled me from my sleep that April morning was foreshadowing. My heart was communicating to my mind, signaling the end, and with my mind's reluctance to embrace it, it manifested into the turmoil and chaos that was the

"Sandstorm of my Mind"

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All current artwork can be found in my profile at Fine Art America. Thank you for your time and your support.

Somnium for Sarah: Communicating through the Unconscious Mind

Sleep. For weeks on end, my best friend got plenty of sleep. She was in an induced coma following a freak accident. Anyone who knows my friend knows that she is the queen of bizarre and vivid dreams. She has written about them often and in explicit detail. 

Each of those initial days following the accident, when we didn't know if she was going to live, when we all would flinch at the notion or sight of death's door, felt like an eternity. After the shock and grief subsided, I was nothing. I had no one nearby to turn to, due to various circumstances. It was all I could do not to become unhinged. For the first time in the 18 years that I had known her, I couldn't pick up the phone and call her. I couldn't hear the soothing voice of my wise Leo friend. I couldn't begin to imagine the dreams she was having while in a coma. When I realized that she couldn't simply wake up from any of the dreams she was having, feelings of uselessness began to set in. I sought ways to tap into her unconscious mind to communicate with her. Then one day in mid-November 2015, I decided it was time to turn to art and music for guidance. 

With the album Sleep by composer Max Richter playing as inspiration, the muses guided my hands while creating this piece, so much so that I feel it is more their piece than mine. This piece is also a bit of an anomaly for me, in that I created it all within the span of a day. I began by painting areas with watercolor and applying alcohol for added intrigue. Then, taking a cue from my previous piece, I applied artists' tape to conceal stripes within the areas of different color. From there, with acrylic paint mixed with water in spray bottles, I painted over everything. First I applied white paint. Then I added pieces of white lace paper to use as a makeshift stencil when applying the pale yellow color. Interestingly enough, when I removed the lace paper after applying the second round of acrylic paint, pieces of it adhered to the painting. My initial response was panic and frustration, but as I looked at it, I realized that it gave an added feeling of softness, of dreaminess, almost like faint clouds. For that reason, I decided to leave those pieces of it on and chalked it up to being a "happy accident". 

With each musical note and with each brushstroke, I begged the universe to intercept her flashbacks of the accident and bring them to me. In return, I would give her

"Somnium for Sarah"

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All current artwork can be found in my profile at Fine Art America. Thank you for your time and your support.

Glimpses of the Truth: Life Lessons in Art

When I began work on this piece, I had no idea of the phases and changes it would undergo. I started this piece at a friend's art studio one afternoon in January 2015. I was simply playing and experimenting with watercolor. I put down several large brushstrokes in three different colors and that was the extent of it. I left it at her studio to dry and several months would go by before I laid eyes on it again. That summer afternoon when I finally saw it again, I brought it home and unrolled it onto my kitchen table, where it sat for several weeks as I continued to work on it. I added more watercolor, which added greater density and complexity. I didn't know where I was going with it, I just kept painting. Eventually I reached a point where it became a busy, almost garish conglomeration of watercolor. Unsure of where to take it next, I set it aside.

Verbal exchanges, unpleasant situations, and some serious life events took place while it was on the back burner. Each of these things forever altered my perspective and my life, and in keeping with that difference, I switched to acrylic paint when I finally returned to this piece in November of the same year. For that last phase of work, I started by covering the entire piece in an extremely thin layer of white acrylic paint. Then, using a silicone blade while still wet, I smeared the white paint, revealing some of the underlying layers of watercolor. I was happy with the result and the effect of the multiple layers; however, the piece was still not complete. 

If the events that had taken place taught me anything, it's that when my intuition gets dragged into a situation, then there is almost always more going on underneath the surface. What better way to mask everything than to cover it with solid black. I cut out strips of artists' tape and placed them directly onto the paper. Then I proceeded to slather everything with generous amounts of black paint. I smoothed it out with a silicone blade and let everything dry. When the time felt right, I gently lifted the edges of the artists' tape and began to peel off the strips. What I discovered is that when you begin peeling back the layers of subterfuge, you get:

"Glimpses of the Truth"

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All current artwork can be found in my profile at Fine Art America. Thank you for your time and your support.

Refraining from Entanglement

That moment when you realize that you've come full circle, when an experience from a previous relationship plays itself out again in a current relationship, is, in a peculiar way, rewarding. It's especially rewarding when this time around you're applying the lesson you've learned. Suddenly, the past makes much more sense than it ever did.

In the spring of 2010, there was an escalating issue in my family that was spilling over into the relationship that I was in at the time. The person I was dating was unhappy about my family situation, and rightfully so. Being the peace-keeper that I am, I was trying to cater to everyone. It worked only for a short while until I could see the anger building in the person that I was dating. He kept wanting to get involved and I repeatedly asked him to let me handle it since it was my family. He eventually reached his breaking point, and, against my wishes, got involved. What ensued was an unpleasant verbal altercation between him and a family member of mine. In the end, the relationship imploded, I had an ugly mess to deal with in my family, and there was no peace among any of the parties involved, which was the opposite of what I had wanted all along.

Flashing forward to the summer of 2015, I was in a different relationship, but a similar situation was starting to arise. As discussed in a previous post, my partner and I had gone through an unpleasant and unacceptable experience with his family a few months before. So this time around, the tables were turned and I was in the role of witnessing things occurring in my partner's family that I disagreed with. Part of me wanted to get involved (in a less explosive way than my ex did) to stand up for my partner, but I struggled with what to do and how to do it. When I presented a few ideas to friends of mine, they advised against it. So out of sheer frustration, I did nothing. As an escape, throughout August and September, I created:

"Refraining from Entanglement - Cognitive"

"Refraining from Entanglement - Associative"

"Refraining from Entanglement - Autonomous"

All three pieces from the series are composed of watercolor and acrylic paint. Beyond that, the elements of each piece varies, with some containing molding paste, gouache, gesso, and various material to help create the shapes and patterns that you see. The series title "Refraining from Entanglement" was inspired by a composition titled "Entanglement (Reprise)" found on the soundtrack to the film Senn. I listened to it repeatedly while I created the first piece of the series. The subtitles from the series "Cognitive", "Associative", and "Autonomous" are the three stages of learning. 

The orange (cognitive) piece came first. It began with the smaller solid orange vertical lines. From there, I created small strips of differing hues, patterns, shapes, and textures. Once completed, I immediately began work on the purple (associative) piece, applying what I had learned from the previous one to this one. After this one was complete, I thought I was finished with this project, but a few weeks later, the green (autonomous) piece decided it needed to be made. Again, I built on what I learned by creating the previous pieces.  

It wasn't until that first piece was complete that I realized what was happening. By creating this work, I was avoiding getting involved in my partner's family's affairs. The artwork represents the idea of separation with each section remaining separate and confined without mingling with another section. Had I allowed the sections of paint to mix, the unique colors and patterns would be lost resulting in a cloudy, muddled pool. In the same vein, the aftermath of stirring things up with my partner's family would be nothing more than a mess. 

Some have disagreed with my stance on this and think that I should have spoken up in the situation. I can see the inclination to do that, especially in the age of social media where everyone is prone to give their opinion on everything all the time; however, my getting involved in the situation would only have made things more difficult for my partner and I might have jeopardized my role as his ally. As I learned from my ex, even when a situation is unfair and you fully disagree with it, unleashing your anger and spouting off your opinions won't help your case. Sometimes, the best course of action is to do nothing and continue observing, remembering, and refraining from entanglement.

Featured in this post:   Refraining from Entanglement - Cognitive     Refraining from Entanglement - Associative     Refraining from Entanglement - Autonomous 

All current artwork can be found in my profile at Fine Art America. Thank you for your time and your support.