I don’t ever crave extraordinary moments anymore. Just small, gentle hums of beauty streaming from below, above, and beyond simply from paying attention. Sound. Light. Shadow. Art. Warmth. The night. The morning. Dreams that are not faraway but exist right here — already in my days, hands, and heart.
Victoria Erickson
One of the projects I’ve started working on is actually a resumption of something I started a year ago, a series of long, slender, wood cradled panels (4×48 inches). All five boards had been painted black with some bands of color already added, but today I pulled them out of the basement, hung them on my rolling wall, and while painting a large canvas on the opposite wall (another long abandoned project resurrected last week), I used the leftover paint from that painting on the tall, slender panels. Layer by layer, band by band. I know that the swaths of color I used to create my Emotional Alignments series influenced this current project. Bands and swaths again, but a bit wonkier and whimsical. At least for today. I’ll be working on these right on into the new year.
Some close-up peeks from different sections of the five panels:
Frenzy might be an overstatement, but I have been spending more time in my studio and after a fairly long hiatus, I have returned to painting with oil and cold wax.
Since 2016, I have taught a four-day Abstracted Landscape class at Sitka for Art and Ecology on the Oregon Coast. Because of the pandemic, this year’s class, which was sold out and scheduled for August 21-24, was canceled (as were all classes at Sitka).
Somehow the idea of not teaching this year inspired me to jump back in to oil and cold wax after several months of painting with acrylics and working on a series of collages. It felt good to crack open the gallon of cold wax and whip up a satisfying mound of wax, begin choosing tubes of oil paint to mix, and dig out my R & F Pigment Sticks.
I had one deadline for a painting (so that was a BIG motivator to get into the studio and do some painting and I’ll share about that project when I can), but otherwise, I decided to pull out old boards that I had used for demos in my Sitka class last year. None of the pieces were completed, they just had fits and starts of paint and marks on them, all used to illustrate techniques and then set aside. It was nice to have something to respond to besides a plain, blank, board.
Technique demo board
I also revamped a few boards that had been completed paintings, but something was niggling at me and those pieces got a light sanding to rough up the surface, and then I started over. It was nice to erase an old painting, but know that there was that sense of history lurking below the surface.
the presence or emergence of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over.
What has emerged during my extended painting sessions is the reoccurring theme of circles. I have always loved polka dots and circles and they have shown up in my work for years, but lately I have tipped over into obsession.
obsession
[/əbˈseSHən/]
noun
the domination of one’s thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, image, desire, etc.
I’m using circles to excess and eventually I’ll reign myself in. Or not. In the meantime, here are several pieces in various stages of completion. All are on cradled wood substrates and they all have either Venetian plaster or limestone clay (the fancy name for joint compound) as an under layer. Other than that, some of the paint is from an earlier completed piece, or is from a demo at Sitka. Almost all of these have circles somewhere as a layer – in the plaster, buried in the paint, added on top of the paint, or some of the paint removed using a stencil to reveal paint, the circles serving as a window into an earlier layer.
