Daily Art Practice part 7

Continuing with the equinox ~ equinox project, I was happy to be back home and get back to work. Maybe I was trying to create a cool respite from the heat. Continuing my “search for robin egg blue” ( or “happy hot springs blue”) begun in the 1980’s, I wanted to compare two possibilities using opaque and transparent colors. On the left page it is cerulean blue (opaque) and Quinacridone Gold (transparent). On the right page it is Phthalo blue (transparent), light Phthalo blue (opaque), and ochre (opaque).

On the ride home we listened to “Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch” (Henry Miller), which was the impetus to add the orange. I copied the it from a 2000 oil painting, using transparent pyrrole orange, Hansa Yellow opaque and Diarylide Yellow.

As an afterthought, I included an image of the oil below, taken from a slide, so it is a poor representation of it. What surprised me was to see that same arched gateway that has been popping up in my work. It must be a significant symbol for me. Like entry to the “Realms of Wonder”, passing through has infinite choices of direction, but always it is about the journey, the path. Don’t forget how long the path is!

On wood panels, I began a new series, and worked out the palette adding naphtha red and light magenta to the cerulean and Quinacridone gold. There’s a hint of one of the panels in the featured image detail at the top of the blog.

Just playing with different colors.

Since early childhood I have loved the color coral and wanted to feature it and the “happy hot springs blue” I mentioned above in the new series. All the notes on the mixes and photos of the layers are added to the journal as I develop the 5 panels. As of this time, I’m still working on them. Sometimes there are 10 or more layers.

Prints of the stages are affixed so that I can lift them up and see the previous pass underneath, in case I want to return to an earlier version. This is the complete opposite of how a watercolor is done! Sometimes I miss the simplicity but appreciate acrylic’s vibrancy.

I felt happy about a neighborhood dinner, catching up with everyone’s news, sharing food, stories and interconnections, I represented it symbolically with gestures of energy –  pink is love, green is growth, gold is bonding.

Sometimes I don’t know what to paint, and if I’m rattled it comes out like the blue/black image in the second painting. Then I want to refer back to my guiding word, “lighthearted” and transform it. So I covered it with white paint and collage of some prints of light colored art and a photo of my mom.

Other times I use leftover paint on art tissue for collage. No waste!

Do you have a question or comment? Don’t be shy!