Back to Paper

A while back I posted some images of paper pieces that I was working on and then I posted revisions of those pieces. Just so you don't think I've been slacking off, I'm happy to say that I have now finished 20 paper pieces to be offered to my art consultants for corporate collectors. I made 10 pieces 34" x 34" and 10 24" x 24". Here are a few of my favorites (new ones - not seen here before):

"Split Infinitive", 34" x 34", acrylic and oil pastel on ricepaper.

"Growth Pattern," 34" x 34", acrylic and pencil on ricepaper.

"Nocturnal Vision," 24" x 24", acrylic and pencil on ricepaper


"Narrative," 24" x 24", acrylic on ricepaper

"Correspondence," 24" x 24", acrylic on ricepaper

"Fruition," 24" x 24" acrylic on ricepaper.

It's not easy keeping the different mediums I use and the projects that I'm working on separated. My studio looks like a war zone right now. Luckily, the paper pieces fit into a flat file and can stay out of the line of fire until called into the commercial battle. Let's hope somebody, somewhere is still buying art.

Working Paper

"What's happening in the studio?" you may ask. And here's my answer: I'm still working on those paper pieces that I'd like to sell to the "corporate" market. Is there any market left? You never know until you try is what I'm thinking. So, my goal is to get 15 or 20 pieces done and send the images out to a couple of consultants to see what happens. Then I'll switch back to encaustic and/or oil while I'm waiting for those big sales to roll in.

I'm going to show you three pieces that I revised and one new one.

New Version/New Name: "Final Count", 34"x34", acrylic, pencil and crayon on ricepaper

Old Version (basic color hasn't changed, but color in New Version above is truer. I thought the upper right was too dark .)

New Version: "Number of Days", 34"x34", acrylic, pencil and crayon on ricepaper

Old Version - I thought the color needed tweaking and the top needed definition.

New Version: "Back Track", 34"x34", acrylic, pencil and crayon on ricepaper

Old Version - I thought the bottom right needed more color.

And here's the new one. I was able to reuse some fairly large sections from a couple of older pieces that I took back from a consultant.

This is "Growth Pattern", 34"x34", acrylic and pencil on ricepaper.

So this is life in the studio - or at least life in my studio. If you're following Joanne Mattera's "Marketing Mondays", you're reading about how to move the work out into the world. This post is about making and remaking the work, getting it ready to move out of the studio and into the world.

Desolation Row

There's something so dispiriting about the studio after all the work that I made for a show is taken out. It looks like Filene's Basement after a big sale - just a few remnants laying around and trash all over the floor. Quite sad.

The only thing I can do to relieve my internal gloom (besides staying away from the studio) is to pick up that broom and start cleaning. Focusing on sweeping the floor lets me avoid that blank wall and lonely feeling.

Then, once I've swept up, bagged the trash and put things away, I find the best thing to do is to switch mediums.

I'm going to be working on paper with acrylic for a while and not fire up the encaustic griddle. The paper (actually ricepaper) is work I usually sell through art consultants to corporate clients. Who knows if anything is selling these days, but if I don't give them any work to sell, I'm guaranteed not to sell anything.

I just received some pieces back from California that hadn't sold and I'm going to be reworking them and sending them out again on consignment. Here are a few of the pieces. I'll show you the "after" shots - if any work gets finished.

This piece is 32x30 inches and is collaged from ricepaper painted with thin washes of acrylic. I called it Yellow Box.


Here's another one - 24x24 inches, called Pongo. Some of the paint is interference so it looks a little funny.

And finally, here's one that's 18x80 inches called Two By Two. This is kind of an exceptional size but a few of them did sell. I didn't have much luck with work that used purple. I guess purple (violet) just doesn't have that corporate cachet.

So what I usually do with this work is start cutting it up and piecing it together with newly-painted patterns, colors and swatches, and/or I overpaint what's there with other colors and then paint patterns on top of that. I do love patterns and especially juxtaposed patterns.

Maybe that will cheer me up.

Selected Painting of the Day

No, it's not one of those painting-a-day things. I don't think I could do a painting a day. This is a blog feature I'd like to try about paintings that are already completed and seasoned and that I'd like to comment on - and hopefully provoke a thread on.

So, here's my first pick - just because it's kind of out of the mainstream of the work I'm doing now and really reminds of work I was doing on paper a few years back.



This is called "Magical Thinking" and was painted a few months ago (2008). It's encaustic on wood with a poured center and embedded plant parts. It's 24"x24"x 1.5". Here's the thing, if it's so different from the rest of the work I'm making now, what to do? I could sell it off by itself, not show it with the rest of my work, or make more work like it. This is always a problem for me because every now and then I come up with strange pieces that don't fit in with the direction I'm moving in. Yet I think they need to be made. I guess this is where commerce and art divide.

Isn't there something to be said for the unique work that is not part of a series? Any comments on this? I think the making fills some need in my work and maybe it just gets that out of my system so I can continue moving forward. Although, who said everything has to be a series? Maybe a series emerges over time in retrospect instead of intentionally?

This one is an acrylic on ricepaper painting, 36"x36", from 2001 or 2002 that reminds me of Magical Thinking. It's called "Four Directions" and was part of a series I did with central focus and a very geometric layout. I liked making these because they just expanded geometrically from the center. It felt very satisfying to see where they would go by the time they reached the edges - another type of exploration.