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My Favorite Face

"Tom" Acrylic background on wood with image painted in oil. 26.5" x 11.5"

This is my favorite face.  You might mistake this statement as a slight to our son, Owen, but on the contrary.  He is the proud owner of a perhaps even more lovely duplicate.   Tom has some strong genes, wouldn’t you say?  You might. But allow me to provide you with my alternate explanation…

I am a painter.  Every part of me is a painter.  Not just my hands.  Not just my eyes.  But my whole body.

I met Tom when I was nineteen years old.  That is when I began memorizing my favorite face.  Taking  it in  nearly every day.  When I was twenty-two, we got married.  Nearly every day became every day,  and eventually I could paint his face with my eyes closed.  Just before my twenty-fourth birthday, I discovered I was pregnant.  I believe this is when the painter in my belly got to work, recreating the face it knew by heart.

And yet, there is something uniquely “Owen” about Owen.  Yes, he does have my ears, but there is something there that is not Tom, and not me.  Something brand new.

My paintings are not recreations of people.  At their best, they are merely “about” someone.  No matter how much command I might feel I possess over my brush, at some point in the process, most often unwittingly, I loose the upper hand for a moment.  The painting has a life of its own, and it goes, ever so slightly, in it’s own direction. Every painting I have ever done has something about it that I feel just happened, inexplicably. Maybe this is part of the process.  Maybe this is what happened to the painter in my belly.

Either way, this is a face I am happy to see two of every day.  Expect to see many more paintings of both of them in the future.

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What I’m Working On Now.

I try to be conscientious in my creativity. I use discarded materials as painting surfaces and I paint with water soluble non toxic oil paints. Yet recently, something had been weighing on my conscious. A stack of unfinished paintings, in various states of progress, some started and abandoned in Bogotá, others started and left untouched since the first months of my marriage, over three years ago. Not to mention half empty books of canvas paper I lost interest in.

Yes, I have several people interested in portraits at this time. But lets face it, I have an ADD style (and what artist doesn’t?) so I am usually working on more than one piece at a time. I am tired of cringing every time I pass these wooden and paper ghosts in the closet. I am taking them out, and finishing them.

How I wish I had a photograph of this painting from before! It was atrocious! I started it in April 2007, and worked on it now and then over the next year. The colors were very dark, and there was a bird, and a pink bracelet hanging over one branch. When I sat in front of it Saturday night I was horrified and overwhelmed. And then, inspired by some Emilio Pucci images I had been researching, I decided to go purple. After an hour, although not anywhere near done, the painting was transformed. It was now something I was excited to work on! Although in the light of the morning it did not look nearly as colorful or purple.

Then I went REALLY purple.  It occurred to me suddenly that this was a night painting, that the tree was lit from within, perhaps from lanterns for a party, perhaps because it is a tree house.  I was hoping I would have photos of it in a more finished state for today, with flowers even but this is as far as I’ve gotten.  I have a heavy hand (or you can call it “painterly” if you want to flatter me) and sometimes the paint needs to set a bit before I can continue.  Also, I was working on these two paintings.

These are two halves of a wooden box. FYI: I would love to find some old wooden boxes to repaint, if you have some you don’t want, send them my way!

The first one is a collage.  The  background image is torn from an old book. The tree was part of an acrylic painting on canvas paper I did in Bogotá, that I cut out with an exacto knife.  Why is a long story, but other parts of that painting, including another tree, Charlie, and Tom, are still waiting to me collaged into new works.

The aloe plant sat in my studio in Bogota and I miss it to this day. If only we could take our plants from post to post!  I painted this there, but it was a little rough around the edges.  I freshened it up this morning and am quite happy with it.

Not sure yet what do with the outside of the box halves….

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The End of The Never Ending Painting

I thought I had conquered the Never Ending Painting the last time I posted about it, and I emailed a photo to it’s future owner.  He got back to me Monday and said he liked it, but the the front mountain looked a bit yellow and the center bushes were too bright. So bright that your eye was drawn to the bushes, instead of the mountains.  I took a look and realized just how right he was. Still, I thought, this is a quick fix! That night I told my husband “I’m going to finish this thing, give me half an hour…you can time me!”

More than an hour later I actually got to the bushes.  Those damn mountains drew me in again, screaming “pay attention to us! We aren’t finished yet!”  It…just…never…ends.

When my friend and I first discussed this project, he sent me tons of photos, and what drew me to this image was that unlike many of them, it had four components; the sky, the canyon, the river, and the greenery.  Yes, the Grand Canyon is amazing and beautiful, but somehow it doesn’t always translate well into photography.  It ends up looking like a hunk of rock.  And as someone who’s been there, it truly is beautiful.  So I suppose I thought by having these other components in the painting I could make it more dynamic.  I was reminded by my friend’s complaint, and by my hours of painting last night, that this is a painting about mountains.  It’s more fun (and fast) painting sky and rivers, but every painting has a subject  and the subject of this painting, the star, if you will, is the canyon.  I’m painting it’s portrait, and it simply couldn’t be finished until I stopped grumbling and did my best to capture it.

I hope I’ve finally done that.

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This Country is on Fire

And so, the story of my never ending painting continues.  This was my state of progress yesterday morning.  I vowed to finish it that same day, once and for all.  And my little men vowed to do all they could to help/distract me.   One of the little men was particularly distracting (one clue, the little man with less fur) as his first molar is making it’s first appearance.  Mi hombre comelon didn’t even want to eat!

The evening ended very strangely indeed, with a highly anticipated aguacero, and Owen insisting on being sent to bed without supper.

Yet more curious than all of this, was the smell.  At first I thought I must be imagining it.  But my husband assured me it was quite real.  “This country is on fire” he said, “that’s the smell of the rain putting it out”.

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I was woken up AGAIN at 5:00 this morning, but to a seemingly more happy Owen, who eventually ate his breakfast.

…And possibly, we have come to the end of The Never Ending Painting.  At least, I think so.  I’ll probably touch it up here and there over the weekend.  But it’s looking pretty done to me.  What do you think?

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Monday Pick Me Up

It occurred to me last night that I should post a blog each Monday morning with an image that inspires my work.  Just the cure for the Monday blahs.

I bought this vase at the Ice-T (I know, bizzare name!)  Murano glass factory recently.  Our trip to this factory has been one of the few highlights in our time here in Caracas.  I love this vase because of it’s retro, almost psychedelic style.  Yet  it is also so undeniably Latin, with it’s swirls of  flamboyant canary yellow. Doesn’t it make you want to throw on a Pucci print dress and go salsa dancing? Very Vida Viva.