Inspiring Artist

The artwork and life of Jim Denevan are awe-inspiring. His paper is the earth and his pencil a rake. The photographic images are beautiful. I would love to meet him and see what a day is like making one of his sand drawings.

He is also known for his series of dinners called Outstanding in the Field

This video shows both his art and his work with farmers presenting incredible dinners from their produce alone.

Inspiration

I was at the beach two weekends ago and the waves were awesome; great inspiration for new paintings.

The beach was empty and I got some footage of my muse Delaney.

Arden Fair, Art Show

Arden, Delaware is a special place to live. Once a year the center of the village is transformed by many volunteers into a Fair grounds for the Arden Fair and Antiques Market held the Saturday of Labor Day Weekend. The Fair features children’s games and rides, handmade crafts by over 100 vendors, an Antiques Market, used books, plants, live music in the Shady Grove, food and drink, an art exhibit, and more. Proceeds from the Fair help maintain the Arden Gild Hall, where the public can enjoy concerts, musicals, plays, dances, suppers, and programs throughout the year.

The role I play is curation of the Art Show in the Backstage Gallery of the Gild Hall. It is always someone who lives in Arden, Adentown or Ardencroft,and often it is one featured artist. This year I sent out a call for entries to all women artists. The gallery which is used as a green room for Shakespeare productions and musical performers throughout the year, needed to be painted, thanks Shari Phalan for helping! Then Barbara Henry and I installed 37 pieces of artwork that coincidentally was the exactly right amount of artwork for the space. The mediums and techniques ran the gamut and included metal piercing, quilting, traditional rug hooking, oil painting, watercolor painting, nuno felting, shibori dying, restoration of leather chaps, pastel drawing, colored pencil drawing and ceramic and metal sculpting. Women Artists of the Ardens are a group of pretty talented individuals. But I have to give one shout out to a man. Alton Dahl does the machine stitching on Bev's beautiful quilts and he installed the ceiling lights Friday morning that made the show the success it was. Without him I don't know how anyone would have seen anything. The feedback was great and many stories were shared in typical Arden fashion. Thanks to everyone that participated. My photos aren't great. Sorry, Rhys I didn't get your work in the pictures and Shari, sorry your's is cropped.

Participating Artists:

Beverley Barnett, quilting,
Naomi Clark, metal piercing,
Hunter Clarke, painting,
Linda Celestian, painting and silk sculpture,
Ellen Dolmetsch, traditional hooked rugs,
Barbara Henry, nuno felted wearables,
Bunni Hurlong, pastel drawing,
Judith Kay, photography,
Rhys McClure, colored pencil,
Eleanore Morrow, oil painting,
Betty O’Regan, hand-made paper and collage,
Jeanne Orr, watercolor,
Erica Orr, pen and watercolor,
Linda Parks, ceramic and metal sculpture,
Shari Phalan, restoration of leather chaps and wreath,
Toby Ridings, cyanotypes,
Marjorie Roberts, oil painting,
Jeanne Stigler, oil painting and appliqued quilt,
Dorothy Verne, oil painting.

New Painting

Summer is flying by. I was in Boston, Massachusetts for 3 days, great city. We took the ferry to Provincetown located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod for 1 day. Here's a new painting I just finished in the nick of time for a grant proposal.

Fenland, oil on canvas, 36 x 60 inches

It reminds me of the marshland in Provincetown where the ocean meets the land.

I'm preparing to teach my first ever Summer Art Program in my home studio. I'm so excited. I'll be teaching kids some fun, easy printmaking projects that you don't need a printing press for.

Silk and Painting Pendants

I've recently stocked my etsy shop with NEW pendants. Some are made from painted papers from my workshop on Star Island.
One of a kind, looks like stained glass., reversible. These are original paintings not prints.

Or the plastic tablecloth that was too pretty to throw away.

2 original acrylic paintings on paper captured between 2 panes of glass that are soldered together. Solder is silver and can be polished with silver cloth or polish. Sold with a 16 inch black leather cord necklace

Here's a few that are made from canvas with a layer of silk.

Inspiring Artist

Naoko Serino

Aroused

Naoko Serino is a Japanese artists sculpting jute fiber into beautiful forms. Her website calls her work "Three-dimensional expression using jute that contains light and air." I call it, wow!

The Ball You Blow

Generating 5-B

Generating 8-A

Star Island Arts Conference

After a long journey from Star Island in the Isles of Shoales to Wilmington, Delaware I woke up Sunday morning in my own bed, a little sad. My body was home but my heart was still there.

Photo by Barry Simon

I will have a hard time teaching Expressive Painting in a new environment because I know nothing will ever come close to what happened on Star Island. I'm going to try to recap the experience for myself and the many new friends I made.

I opened with an exercise from Betty Edwards book Drawing on the Artist Within. Drawing Out Insight exercise: Drawing with marks alone, no pictures the emotions 1. Anger, 2. Joy, 3. Peacefulness (Tranquility), 4. Depression, 5. Human Energy, 6. Femininity, 7. Illness, 8. Your Choice.
Draw how the emotion makes you feel, I instructed. We discussed the similarities and differences in the drawings.

Then they chose one emotion to do an ink painting of with some really beautiful results.

For homework I instructed everyone to look at colors, here are a few photos I took that day.

Day 2: Color

I shared color poems, and we wrote color poems, how a color smells, sounds, feels, tastes, looks, makes you feel and other associations.

Painting with large sponge brushes we painted color fields of one or two colors per page.

I had fun photographing them in different arrangements.

Homework was to look at texture. Photos I took that day.

Day 3: Texture - Using tools to create texture in the paint. Painting over dried color paintings to create layers.

Art imitates nature. Look at the similarities.

Homework was to look at shapes. Here are some photos I took.

After a while everything looked like a painting to me.

Day 4: Mono Printing Shapes
We did a fun exercise with shapes and their meanings that everyone seemed to enjoy.
I demonstrated additive and subtractive painting techniques on palette paper to make prints on dried paintings from color and texture explorations.

Elizabeth's monoprint

Day 5: Collage with painted papers created on days 2, 3 and 4

Bettie's Work

Day 6: Collage with some instruction on composition and negative space.
Look at all the finished work on the walls.

Finished work in order by Betsy, Bettie, Christine, Darby, Holly, Cynthia, Jean, Joan, Kathy and others

Samantha's finished collage mimicked her ink painting from the first day. She had 2 others I didn't get photos of that looked like the island in ocean blue waves.

Fred loved painting and gave me the best testimonial. He said "You gave me permission to put emotion in my art."

Here are some of Fred's paintings I wish I would have photographed more, he was very prolific.

I read daily excerpts from Eric Maisel's book Fearless Creating:

Hushing Exercise- page 5,
Holding - page 6,
Wildness Rules - page 14,
Thought for Food - page 28,
Surrender to Order Chaos - page 144,
Hating the Work - page 156

And I meant to share Criteria for Completion - page 173
Ask yourself is it Alive, is it Powerful, is it Suggestive, is it Resonant, is it Wild and I added is it Sublime? You can add your own as you continue down the path of creating expressive visual art.