Gratitude Day

Clematis

After this long weekend and before I sit down to dealing with the inevitable letdown of real life, I want to list many things I am grateful for, in no particular order:

• the beautiful sunshine we're enjoying after so many months of rain


• that I drank just enough water to avoid sunstroke yesterday


• the incredible effort and work of the volunteers and coordinators of the Lake Oswego Art Show


• that I had enough energy to create and submit art and be a participant


• my friend Jenny is home after 2 weeks in the hospital


• the existence of Starbucks, cell phones and taxi cabs after I missed the last shuttle


• I'm of the age that reunions are interesting and welcome


• the friends I've reconnected with this past year and the new ones I've met


• Bob's help framing the art works and attending the show with me


• Bob doing the laundry, cleaning and barbecuing while I gallavanted around all weekend


• the artists who teach and share their techniques in person and on-line


• the people who support me and have supported me in the past that I often take for granted!
• I have work/career that lets me indulge my interests

Honorable Mention!

Today Bob and I left our house at 5 pm to go to the Lake Oswego Art Show - and we finally made it to George Rogers park at 6:50 pm. There was a traffic backup on Highway 43, so everything just crawled. We heard the last two songs of Lenny Rancher's band (he was in my class in high school) and wolfed down dinner. We went to a vendor booth and I picked up a birthday gift from an artist for a friend who admired her work two years ago. Then we rushed up the hill to the Art Center to attend a panel talk on "Why Wax?" which showed the work of 4 encaustic artists. We just had time to see the juried Encaustic show before they turned out the lights. Finally, we scurried over to the big tent for the Open Show and ran around looking for my art pieces.

Guess what?! "Begin Anywhere" won an Honorable Mention and it sold! I think it was Honorable Mention - the ribbon was yellow. As we were being kicked out of the tent, we found "Cabbage #1" which is still available.

"Begin Anywhere"

(Remember encaustic works often look better in person. *grin*)

How exciting is that? I have no idea who decides on the awards - perhaps I'll find out this weekend. I'm really happy. I'm looking forward to going back this weekend and spending some time actually looking at all the work there.

Encaustic Works for 2010 Lake Oswego Festival of Arts

Here are my two pieces for the Lake Oswego Festival of Arts show taking place June 25-June 27, 2010 in Lake Oswego, Oregon. Website is here.

"Cabbage #1"

"Begin Anywhere"

The right third of the painting turned out quite differently than I had imagined. I originally put down various colors of dots, then layered with more colors. When I scraped back, they did not please me. I added more color and stripes and that did not work either. I left it for a week and realized I wasn't getting the industrial abstract look I wanted. I added organic elements in the form of pen and pastel on mulberry rice paper fused to the picture with clear encaustic medium.

I had also planned to do a whimsical 3D work called "View from my (pretend) Beach house." That one will have to wait.

At first, I had a great time working on the pictures for the show. Then I hit the wall when I realized they just weren't what I had pictured in my mind. I spend an awful lot of time thinking and reading about art, but not that much time actually creating art.

I had to remind myself of the quote from Martha Beck that I wrote about here. Basically, it says if you want to be good at something, you need to do the work. I really haven't done that much encaustic painting since last year's show. I've taken a couple of life drawing classes and sketch on a regular basis, but I haven't produced any full size paintings. So, remember, to get better, keep doing!

Finally, the stars align...

I managed to clean up my basement studio space enough to actually start working on some projects, I'm caught up with work enough (sorta) to take a weekend off, it's beautiful out and the show deadline is next Sunday. In addition to planting flowers and visiting the Farmer's Market, I worked on some encaustic panels.


Here's a panel that has been painted on the sides and taped. Then I fuse a couple layers of encaustic layers to the surface.



I added alizarin red, titanium white and dots in R&F Cadmium Green Light, R&F Bronze, red.




To the red, I added a layer of bronze, then a layer of R&F King's Blue encaustic paint. I plan on scraping back the blue. In the center stripe, I used a paper towel to dab on shellac and 3 colors of Jacquard's Pearl-Ex powdered pigment, then lit it on fire. (Fire, fire, fire! - Too much fun.) Actually, I didn't put enough shellac on at first - it seemed to need a layer instead of drops.




This is the begnning of a big cabbage. I really love the look of a nice cabbage.



Hmm - what will these turn out to be? Bob promised to put them together for me. More later!