It's not abstract but I follow the muse.

I belong to a group of wonderful women painters called, Women Painters West (WPW). It was founded in 1921 in Laguna Beach California, so that women artist, largely excluded from the art world, could form a community, and show their work. To celebrate the 100th anniversary, we were challenged to pick one of the original members and make a painting influenced by her work.

I chose for my WPW 100 Anniversary artist, Virginia Wooley (1884-1971).  Virginia Wooley was born in Selma, Alabama. She moved to Chicago in 1904 to study at the AIC.  She continued her art studies in Paris. In her earlier years, she visited Laguna Beach by  stagecoach. She returned to live there in 1923 where she created an impressive body of work, mostly landscapes, not only of Laguna Beach CA, but also New Orleans, Charleston, and Santa Fe. She helped to create the Laguna Festival of the Arts in 1932. Her painting “Laguna Haze”, (trees in a coastal landscape, oil on board, 12" H x 10" W) was my primary influence. My intention was to imagine Laguna as she may have seen it in the 1930s. First, I did a representational study to absorb her light, palette, and shapes. I then imagined Virginia Wooley in 2021 with a large scale, acrylic paint palette and a preference for the abstract. "Laguna21" is 40"40" acrylic on canvas. 

I love Jasper Johns. Full Stop.  I began this painting when I saw his show at the Broad a couple of years ago. I wanted to use his palette with my "stuff".  My shapes and patterns are determinative of ideas that will not settle. One of them is the idea of the oppression of measurements. Measuring our height, weight, waist, bust size, dress size, not to mention success and creativity. Expanding, or shrinking, never quite fitting anywhere, being late or early rendered the shapes: Squares, rectangles, circles. I used one of my old yard sticks from which I suspended an old rusty chain across the surface (representing oppression). Clock faces overlaid with the clothes pins holding an article about art fakes -- the tyranny of time and perfectionism. Who says abstract art is about nothing?

Measure UP

Acrylic, chain, wood, collage, metal

36 X  48, 2020

Measure UP

Acrylic, chain, wood, collage, metal

36 X  48, 2020

Distance and Measures, March to June 2020

6’X6’

Acrylic and mixed media on raw canvas

I’ve had a grid painting in my ideas cue for some time. When the Covid-19 quarantine came in March of 2020, the Zoom screen, a grid format became a communication portal. My piece explores the human body as a yard stick. Standard measurements are based on the average male body: an inch = the distance between the first and second knuckle of the forefinger; the foot = 12 inches; a yard (3 feet) = the distance from the nose to the outstretched arm. Both arms outstretched = 6 feet.  I used a 6’X6’ foot raw canvas gridded in 1 foot squares.

Two squares are collaged newsprint from the front page of the New York Time, May 24, 2020, the week the death toll from the Covid-19 reached 100,000.  With the other squares, I am exploring isolation and adaptability. I see the human form with arms outstretched as a magic wingspan within which we would evolve and hopefully resolve the conflict of distance (isolation) and measures (exploration) that the stay at home order and 6 foot social distance measures would bring about.

I am a slow painter. Even slower when events of the world overtake me as happened in 2016. The gift (and curse) of a curious mind has revealed to me the purpose of this creative downtime - if it's not one thing it's your mother. This year, my darling mother passed from this world after way too many long months of illness. 

This past week has been my most productive in a very long time. The result, I finally saw what my painting, Carolina Julep was supposed to be and more importantly what my muse (the idea) wants of me. Borrowing from great songwriter, #JimmyWebb, "A song always knows what it is supposed to be", a painting always knows what it is supposed to be. and it nags until the painter makes it so. Carolinas Julep (below) was a four canvas grid piece from a series I was doing last year thinking the subject was "The South". It was an abstract piece (below) and it held its own on the wall for months, until my mother passed and it didn't anymore. So it nagged until I took it back to the easel and started working one panel at a time, starting with the lower left. See what became of it.

Carolina Julep from The South Series Oil on canvas: 4 24X20 canvases: total 48X40

I am really missing those snarky IT support guys I once called on to figure out things like the best format to upload an image and why is that error message appearing on my home page. Now I get to see if I learned anything. This BTW is a test blog about my finish work on the FASO site.