Remember the Ice

I'm in my second week working as the art director at Arden Community Recreation Association, Summer Program here in Arden. Last week we made spin art, dot art, our own art journals and printed leaves on fabric to make into pillows. Wow, and today we started papier mache. I will post pictures soon. I guess after I take some. I usually don't have a break in the art making frenzy to take any photos. At one point today I had to count how many kids were in the room and it was close to twenty. They're hard to count because they move, kind of like the fish in my pond. I came home exhausted today and took a long nap. It's only Monday, God help me!

Since it's been brutally hot lately I thought I'd take a moment to remember the cold winter storm, which I personally loved and thought was beautiful. While I was busy preparing the diptych and sculpture that comprised my June show I also painted 3 smaller canvases. These are 24 x 24 inches and were started on a black acrylic ground. The inspiration was icicles on shale walls that I always see along the highway to Syracuse, NY and some ice I photographed during our winter storm.

Rocky Shore, oil on canvas

Shale and Ice, oil on canvas

Layers, oil on canvas

Meagan Mika, an intern at the DCCA this summer has started a blog about the DCCA. She interviewed me a few weeks back. She wrote a really thoughtful post about my show and other work she saw in my studio, thanks Meagan. She happened to mention these canvases, in particular the one with rust in the composition that I titled, Shale and Ice. She stated that it was quite possibly her favorite piece.

Artist's Inspiration

If you asked 10 different artists where they get their inspiration from you'd probably get 10 different answers. I believe that artists are always being inspired by their surroundings either consciously or unconsciously. People usually choose to live in a surrounding that they find interesting or exciting in some capacity. City people like the vibrant social and cultural stimulation that is readily available in a city. Country folk like natural landscape, animals and the sky for instance.
I didn't paint nature until I moved to Arden, DE. When I moved here from center city Philadelphia it was like coming home. I grew up in a rural area and spent hours walking or just daydreaming in and around fields, lakes and rivers. Summers were spent literally living on our family boat. What a great way to grow up. My inspiration is nature and it never ceases to amaze me and stop me in my tracks. I'm really inspired by seasons in nature, the way a familiar landscape is always changing. I like the way you can see more of the sky in the winter and the way the bare branches look against the sky. Just in the past few weeks I took these photos of the sky through my skylights.

Here's my kitty named Winter, looking out at the snow. She showed up at our door 2 years ago in the winter and once she got a taste of the warm indoors she wasn't going anywhere.

This is a painting of a winter landscape inspired by how the sky looks through the trees when the sun is lowering on a hazy winter day. If you click on the title you'll see the progression of this painting, and how it evolved layer by layer. It took 14 layers before I called it done.
The link takes you to my progression page to see Winter Sky you have to click on it, it's the last one on the list.

Winter Sky

It is hard to know when to stop and sometimes I want to take it off the wall and add more trees or something. Hmm, I feel a winter series coming on.