'The Conversation' is a mixed media extravaganza. With each medium, a new layer is used in the message thats being communicated. But what is the story being told? It's different for each person, to be sure.
Mediums used~(acrylic, oil, oil pastel, charcoal, 18k gold leaf & ebony pencil on 20oz, cotton duck canvas)
Where do our thoughts travel? Do we free associate our thoughts and knowledge or possibly is there a design more fractal with bits of chaos throw in for good measure. Tomorrow is here.
Like the night sky, looking out on the universe and all of creation with complete awe and wonderment. We connect the stars or dots and ask, why am I here? What is this all about?
The basics, yellow, blue and red, patterns within patterns are echoed.
How we see things, what we value, the enviornment we're raised in and their influences on our mind, body and soul, define our perceptions and perhaps our 'minds eye'.
This subject and composition, are a dreamlike mixture of expressed human physical gesture, juxtaposed against a nightsky petroglyphs symbiotically, thus emerging from stardust.
A Timeless Beauty~tats, piercings and guages, it's a communal, yeah tribal thing. Just puttting yourself out there, complete, with raw, spontaneous and natural honesty. Now thats sexy!
Like the thin layers when peeling an onion, so are the layers of this mixed media abstract piece. While the mediums layered are acrylic, oil, oil pastel, charcoal, ebony pencil, 18K gold pen & leaf, so are the levels of meaning so layered. Seek to unravel the mystery within and find what you are seeking.
These pieces generally take months to build to completion. Their fnished state and appeal hinges entirely on my final emotional state or mood. I begin with one medium, and emotion and each time I come to the canvas, a new medium, emotion and layer are added to the complexity of life that I’m trying to convey on canvas. Toward the completion of this particuliar piece my overall emotional state, did a 180 and so there you have it. But what do you see, is the real question.
All things that exist in the shadow, exist in the light, or do they. Shed a bit of light on the subject and see if they don’t disappear or indeed, what remains.
Life has its own set of ‘Algorithms’ , a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations . Nature is fractal with sparatic moments of chaos changing those algorithims. We are here sharing the human universality of it all, as expressed in this artwork.
An edgy & provocative figurative abstract, 'ATM' 18"x36" framed (gold & warm black floater frame) Mixed Media (acrylic, oil, ebony pencil, oil pastel & 18K gold)
Two figures in an intimate dance, but whats the meaning behind the dance? Only the two in it know and we can only observe & speculate from a distance.
Everything or nothing at all, time is fleeting, crcuitous, a mobius strip flipped ubside down on itself , ever moving and still. It is present, tomorrow is our today, that is all. All the layers touch together in an instant and yet are seperate and individual. Time as we know it is a human construct to make a 3 minute egg and get you to work on time, nothing more. So than what is time if not persistant in its march?
Gray~He was a hunter of sorts who loved everything beautiful. Narcissus was proud, in that he disdained those who loved him, wanting them to prove their devotion to his striking beauty. Narcissist is one who has a fixation with oneself and one's physical appearance or public perception. Once, during the summer, he was getting thirsty after hunting, and he was lured to a pool where he leaned upon the water and saw himself in the bloom of youth. Narcissus did not realize it was merely his own reflection and fell deeply in love with it, as if it were somebody else. Unable to leave the allure of his image, he eventually realized that his love could not be reciprocated and he melted away from the fire of passion burning inside him, eventually turning into a gold and white flower.
What if the whole of life were made up ,of the stuffs, that are stardust. What if the entirity of the universe was conciousness, a universal mind...What Is..Is.
I've been on about 10 whale watches, each a new adventure, on 2, I had occassion to see these majestic creatures in person, several years ago. I've taken to following their migration route from calving grounds around St. Augustine Florida to the feeding grounds in Cape Cod Massachusetts, over the past 8 years now. I have been lucky enough to attend seminars on, clean up/educational festivals for & even participated in a rescue of a mother & calf, one year. Critically endangered, with about 400 left along the eastern sea board, I wonder. with low birth rates & high incidents of death from ship strike, fishing gear entanglement, plastics pollutions & military sonar interference, just how long they will survive, if we don't take more immediate measures.
A phenomenon of light & color being deflected in passing obliquely through the interface between one medium and another or through a medium of varying density playing upon our imagination, thus emerges the coyote & raven.
This piece has more scribbles, marks & erasures then most of my other artworks of this nature. They are very difficult to photograph and capture their true depth and scope. More so they are best appreciated in person as the layering of mediums draw us in with an hypnotic quality. The mediems used are oil, oil pastel, ebony pencil, charcoal , 18k gold paint marker & gold leaf. The 18k gold leaf has become my trademark, a signature of sorts, on most of these artworks.
An abstract with lines, oil paint, ebony pencil and 18k gold leaf. This piece speacks for itself, on many levels & it just is, my reality. A PRIDE 2020 vision.
In Norse mythology, Huginn and Muninn are a pair of ravens that fly all over the world, Midgard, and bring information to the god Odin. But what’s the message being communicated & did you receive it?
Your interpretation applys to current events in the history of the U.S.A.
Life and all it's complexities. Especially in my abstracts, layer by layer, pattern by pattern, expressing the idea of fractals, chaos, unity plus the thought that all life is connected, in these things, from the tiniest to the largest. Sometimes what looks like the sun setting is really the sun rising. For contiunuity, I used a cardiac rhythm, a heartbeat as the vehicle in which to carry through the 3 images.
I read 'Slapstick' it was my first Kurt Vonnegut read in 79’-80’ish. I was immediately hooked. If you haven't read it, it's a futuristic tale in which all the people of the world are assigned middle names, of flowers randomly. Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain, is the main character. Which ever flower you are connects you to all the other like flowers, as family, so you are never alone. I'm partial to sunflowers, so that makes me Richard Sunflower-1 Sperry. What’s your flower? Here’s where we all gather, mingle and dance, in the sun and a light breeze.
A doorway, gate, or other entrance and you’re on your way to places only your imagination can take you.
Color my world, add a bit of white line, some black scribble & break the gold off so it trails off into our day dreams, then we can imagine the wonder of it all.
We kiss & embrace, creating a human mobius strip of love. Gender identity and sexual orientation united.
Fusing abstract and representational ideas on a single canvas in mixed media here. The black, white & grey palette was chosen as an experiment that led to the sketched figure.
Took a photo and broke it down into a more abstract form. I especially wanted to convey a sense of universality of the figures & space, creating a more transcendent reality.
Our thoughts connect in a more free associative way, as our senses ,vision, hearing, smell, & touch, triggering memory & thought as we create stories and our imagination takes away on a journey far far away.
The meaning is in the layers, some lost, others found.
The mystery of life, it’s the ultimate puzzle. Here I’ve layered it up with a multitude of mediums, which ultimately begs the question…What’s it’s all about?
18K gold represents the light, the charcoal scribble represents the darkness it’s chasing in a symbolic dance in a field of color it intensifies.
One of my FB friends is a dancer. He posted a photo of him and I transformed it into a more contemporary statement.
I used 6 different blues, a violet & magenta, for a more dynamic heating & cooling of the blues...then did some sgraffito, scratching a male dancer into the paint, hence the veil. A veil hides things for many reasons.
I used a photo reference of an undersea cavern to create this more abstract image using mixed media of acrylic, oil paints, oil pastel, ebony pencil & 18k gold leaf. Does it speak to you? What does it say?
Like peeling an onion, so then are the thoughts in ones mind, as are the layers of meaning within this piece. Adding & subtracting, making marks & erasures made until finally the vision is complete for others to ponder.
Two together, no words, only body language and the doors open.
To rise above all expectations, all.
*As we head toward PRIDE month, 2022, I wanted to remind everyone from 18-118 years of age, to register to vote & vote, make your voices heard, you are the difference... the changes you want to see the world.
Pride x Infinity Squared = Love, was the working title as I built this painting up, layer by layer, medium by medium. An aerial view, of us, the viewer, hovering over the two figures… 2 people as they float face to face embracing in water, contemplating leaning in to kiss. They are the intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of something, especially something abstract, that determines its character, hence the essence of being, their being complete in a sort of mobius strip configuration, of pure energy, infinite.
Is it representational or an abstract? Do you know the image that inspired this painting?
In many of my abstract works, I begin with a representational concept and break it down into its essential forms, such is the case here as I began with a figure.
Design elements with a touch raw energy.
Somewhere between graffiti & primitive art within the abstract milieu and a tonal vision with a pinch of color & mood is this pieces inspired revelation.
A FB friends photo had me think all things ,manga, goth, glam & glitter, so, let's paint that.
Just completed~a little bit of this & a little bit of that....marks the transitions and layers on this piece....scribbling & scratching away in four directions.
We create our own realities, what we see, how we live, and who we are…without borders, makes it a more fluid connection.
side notes ~
*It's overcast today, so I'll take a better photo later.
**When I'm walking the pups and I see a robin, I start singing 'Rockin Robbin'.
***I had a mystical experience at the CSO concert over the weekend, during the Rachmaninov piano concerto #3. It was good.
****I'm listening to Elvis Double-Dynamite on the cd player today.
An Fb friend posted a photo and it inspired me to translate it in to oil on canvas…here’s the result.
At the PRIDE parade this past June in Chicago, amongst a million or so, give or take, persons, this divine creature stood out and I thought, yes, ‘that one’ and so I knew I had to translate into one of my more contemporary mixed media pieces…so I present to you, for your consideration…
A wave splashing down on the rocks broken down into a more contemporary abstract form.
“You are a universe inside a universe. Galaxies are born within you.”
“Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.”
— Rumi
“Everything amazing about the universe is inside of you, and the two are inseparable.” — Carl Sagan
We are all satellites orbiting/wondering through the universe in search of love.
Where we’re at and where we’re going, as humans and a planet. In the immortal words of my Grandfather Clyde Virgil, “Anne, I’m at the corner of walk and don’t walk, which should I do?” This and an aerial view of a desert road washed out in a flood, provided ample inspiration for this piece.
Some of my favorite color combinations was the initial inspiration for this piece. Then 7 square/rectangle shapes in a larger one makes 8. 7 & 8 are numbers that factor significantly in my life.
The reasons why, when and what for are many and variable.
Above as Below, what we thinkk, we believe, is.
Toward the very end of 2023 we saw Patti Smith at the Salt Shed, Chicago. Ever the consummate rebel & activist, her encore was PEOPLE HAVE the POWER and the crowd was feeling it. see blog #85
Patchwork is a contemplation of the 4 corners with earth wind fire and water as its compass.
I've been out east on Cape Cod, upon the Atlantic, where visibility was dim from 50-100 feet in front of you unless you could get above it for a moment and when the fog was so dense all you could do is hear the whale songs. This piece was inspired & created from several photos of Humpbacks, the Pilgrims Monument & my general emotional state atm.
Another starrry night themed about our place and the meaning of life, the universe & everything.
A centrifuge of color & light being drawn to the center of things.
This piece has many a cultural symbolic layerings involved in its creation, subtly, but there.
This was the first time I built & created one of my contemporary abstracts/ absrtact realism pieces in public. It’s usually a more solitary endeavor. It was an interesting challenge and exercise. I had several conversations about my process along the way, so here’s the inside story, blog Art, Nature & Soul #88
Some titles I was considering, Return of the Pink Triangle, Silence+Death, Safe-Space and the like. The artworks I create, have specific meaning to the time in which I've created them.
He covers his privates in his modesty, but his smile says, I am here. The figure is juxtaposed a puzzle like relief of abstraction.
I came home after voting and put the finishing details on this abstract. It’s a bit graffitiesque, as I’ve incorporated words in the background. Words & ideas I value…like respect, compassion, love, hope & humanity. There’s lots more words and symbols added in their too…I had hoped for a better outcome.