Last fall, I received the email that always thrills and humbles me: I had been selected by Donna Guardino to have a show in the Main Gallery at Guardino Gallery in June of 2022. I didn’t celebrate too long, but instead studied the schematics of the gallery, the wall spaces to be filled, pulled together a batch of boards, and got to work.
The getting to work initially meant prepping the boards for painting. I knew early on that I wanted to pair art quotes with vivid colors, so right from the beginning these elements were prominent.
After all the boards were prepped (with massive help from my studio assistant), they were ready for paint to be applied.
This part of the process required many layers of oil paint mixed with cold wax. The dominant theme was layers of paint with the writing of quotes in between the layers.
After several months of work, the pieces began to take shape. Some boards got scraped, some were finished, but then I decided they weren’t finished so more layers were applied. Writing was always present, but it was in the last six weeks of working that I began applying the words more boldly on the surface of the painted surfaces, and these turned out to be my favorite pieces.
And before I knew it, it was time to stop painting. The oil and cold wax needed time to dry, cure, and set before applying a final coat of cold wax. For the month of May, the paintings were in my studio, in the hallway, and in our bathroom just resting.
Today as I put together this post, all the paintings have been moved to the main floor of our house. They are being prepared to be wrapped and loaded into a van we had to rent to transport the 44 paintings (yes, 44!) to the gallery in the morning.
The show hangs on Wednesday, May 25, and opens on Thursday, May 26, with the opening reception from 6-9 pm; the show will be up through June 26. An added bonus is you can see (and shop) all the pieces by going to Guardino Gallery’s website.
We laugh and we laugh and there is nothing else like it in the world.
A beautiful opportunity presented itself last June and after giving it some deep thought, I accepted a commission to create a painting in honor of a loved one who had passed. My collector (and friend) knew she wanted the piece to include collage and paint, but was open to how I would incorporate the two. We met at my house a couple of times to look through photos, passports, music, and ephemera, which all represented an interesting and rich life. I got a better idea of what she was thinking and proposed that I include words throughout the process, along with an initial layer of collage. It was agreed that the words and collage would imbue the piece with the spirit of this person, but the next layers would be an abstract landscape to reflect the color and vibrancy of a life lost too soon.
After I had a chance to go through the stacks of materials, we met again to make a few more decisions, giving me clarity of which original documents I would use to energize the painting. I decided I would create two paintings alongside each other so my collector would have a choice between which piece resonated with her the most. I chose to work on cradled panels: 24×36 inches and 30×40 inches.
Over several months, the two boards were painted, writing added, a second layer of paint, bigger and bolder words added, and then a complete layer of collage, with just snippets of the underlying words peeking through.
The process of alternating layers of acrylic paint with words continued, and eventually I began to focus on the composition, moving toward an abstracted landscape. I was pleased, but not satisfied, so in a fit of knowing I wasn’t finished, I took both boards to the back yard and using an electric sander, sanded the surface of both paintings, revealing the various layers as I sanded. Snippets of words, paint, and even some of the earlier layers of collage were revealed.
It was around this time I decided I would switch mediums and move to applying layers of oil paint mixed with cold wax. The vibrancy of oil and cold wax and the rich luminosity of the materials seemed like the right choice. I took the smaller of the two boards with me to Sitka Center for Art and Ecology in early September, where I was teaching a four-day workshop in oil and cold wax. I taught during the day, and then when the students went home for the night, I went into the studio and worked on the 24×36 inch piece, building layers of oil and cold wax.
When I got home, I continued to work on “Trying So Hard to Listen,” with more layers of oil and cold wax.
I completed the 24×36 inch piece on October 4, 2021, and titled it “Trying So Hard to Listen.”
I had also started to add layers of oil and cold wax to the larger piece, “On My Journey Home.”
The larger piece, 30×40 inches, was completed on my birthday, October 14, and I titled it “On My Journey Home.”
My wonderful friend and collector decided she wanted both of the paintings and in mid December, the paintings were delivered and hung. It was such an honor to see them hanging, knowing that they each had multiple layers of images, words, and paint and reflected emotional energy, love, and memories of a life well lived.
A journey of discovering that I love people, I love myself, I love my secrets.
It’s that time of year when galleries like to offer smaller pieces of art at a price point that people can purchase original art as gifts — I have always loved this idea, whether for gifts, or for personal collections. I am excited to be sending small pieces of art to my three galleries: Guardino Gallery(in Portland), Salem on the Edge (in Salem), and RiverSea Gallery (in Astoria). I thought that rather than just sharing photos of the art that I have created for these three galleries, I would first share a bit of the background in creating these pieces.
When I teach my Oil and Cold Wax Abstracted Landscapes class at Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, we do warm ups throughout the week using Arches Oil Paper, which we tape (using painter’s tape) onto large sheets of butcher paper or newsprint. I give verbal prompts for things to do on these small squares of oil paper and while giving these prompts, I also follow along and do the prompts on my own squares of paper. By the end of the class, we all have several completed paintings as well as several fun starts for finishing in the future. Here are some examples of the taped down pieces of paper at various stages.
This year, I took several of the sheets of taped down paper pieces, and started tackling the small squares one at a time, adding layers, marks, creating compositions, and resolving issues, working on them while they were still taped down with six paintings per sheet of paper.
Once I resolved the paintings, I removed the tape (WATCH FOR MY NEXT BLOG POST WHERE I SHARE WHAT I DID WITH THE PEELED UP TAPE!), trimmed the edges of the paper where the tape had been, and then glued the painting onto a cradled wood panel. I applied a final layer of cold wax and varnished the edges. By the time I had completed this process, I had 26 paintings, six were 5×5 inches, and the rest were 6×6 inches.
Fast forward to today. All of the pieces have been waxed, buffed, varnished, wired, titled, photographed, inventoried, and boxed. Deliveries will begin happening over the next couple of weeks. Whew. Here are some of the completed pieces heading to my three galleries.
In addition to the 21 pieces headed to the galleries, priced at $100 each, I have five of the 5×5 inch pieces available on my website. The 5×5 inch pieces are $70 (and include shipping).
NOTE: The beautiful graphic painting at the beginning of this post, was created by Salem artist, Sloy Nichols.
I am pleased to offer an article written by guest Howard Collins. Howard is my spouse of 49 years and for the past year, the business manager for my art practice. Howard is my number one fan and his taste in art has evolved through the years, which prompted him to write this article for my blog.
“Ugh.” “I don’t get it.” “That’s weird.” “What’s the point?”
These words have admittedly come from me about abstract art.
My gradual transformation into appreciating and loving abstract works has taken time. Unlike the acquired taste for kombucha, which took real effort and perseverance, coming to love abstract art was more evolutionary than effort.
My early years of art appreciation was not as a result of education. It was more akin to “Me like, pretty,” when I saw something that caught my eye. But art has always been important to me regardless of my ignorance. My eye was attracted to precision, to realism, to clarity, and realistic portraits. In walking through museums, I was attracted to and spent as much time as I could looking at the details by various master artists. I always gave a short glance at modern, contemporary, and abstract art, but never much time and clearly little thought.
However, I subtly found myself spending more time looking at impressionist art and less realistic works. Monet blew me away. Here was realism without precision and detail, but beautiful nonetheless. This was a style of art without precision, but collectively, the strokes created beautiful compositions. My eyes began to look at the art of other impressionists and marvel at their beauty. Without warning I began to spend even more time looking at non representational art. My world of art appreciation exploded.
Dayna’s taste in art has always differed from mine. I began to look closer at pieces and artists to whom she was attracted. It stretched me to look at works that I previously would only glance at and rarely see. Vertical and horizontal colorful lines, unusual compositions, and figures in ways that had usually left me cold, now drew me in.
Modern art, cubism, angles, distorted figures all called me to view them in a way I had not felt before. I found Pollock, Kandinski and de Kooning, and a renewed interest in Picasso.
And therein lies the difference for me. I felt the art. An emotional response rather than mere appreciation of the art. Feeling what the piece was sharing with me, allowing the piece to talk to me. This was a moving experience and was totally unlike viewing realistic works. As strange as it sounds, listening as a piece talks to you is quite normal. Explaining how this works for me is difficult, but it is real. For me works of art talk to me through their composition, arrangement, color and form, which cause an emotional response in me.
My eye views abstract art and its perceived disorganization in different ways. At times I seek to make sense of the abstract lines, shadows and colors by seeing what I can see. At times I take in the whole of the abstract and free myself from my realism tendency; and then at other times, I pick a small portion to see what I can see and hear from the art. If I bring an attitude of openness, it allows the painting to express itself and for my eyes, brain, and emotions to react.
I have to interject a side story here. We recently talked to the maintenance engineer at The Dundee Hotel. I told him Dayna was the artist of many of the works hanging there and his eyes lit up. “Did you do the pieces in the conference room?” he asked Dayna. “Yes,” was her reply and he said: “I have questions for you. I’ve studied them.” We walked to the three painting and he wanted to know if the images he saw in them were intentional. He saw birds, a cow, and other animals throughout her works. Dayna laughed and said “Don’t show me, I’ll never be able to not see them.”
He was astounded to hear that Dayna had not intentionally included farm animals in her abstracts. He was trying to make sense of the abstract work though his interpretation of what he saw. By the way, he loved the works and his appreciation came from their composition and his interpretation, and not by the intention of the artist.
In my wasted youth, I thought Picasso was odd, irrelevant, and not really worth looking at. Even today not all of his pieces move me, but many do in a way I would never have thought possible. His humor is outstanding. I stood before a Picasso series created during the last months of WWII and I was laughing. They were optimistic, playful, joyful and irreverent. Yes, I was the only one laughing, but that’s me. They were simply magnificent.
Then there is the power of abstract. There is power in the stroke, texture, form, composition, and message. With or without a representational image, abstract work speaks and conveys a message. In part, the power comes from eliminating a common scene or picture for our minds to see. We are engaged to interact with the artists’ work. Just as letting our children play in a dusty pile of dirt, they create games, form roads, and valleys in their minds, which they translate into the dirt pile; just as we get to create from abstract art.
Amazingly, the power of abstract art endures beyond a single viewing but continues over time and changes as we see different elements as we change. A piece of Dayna’s work, Singed by Fire and Light, hung in my office for three years until I moved my office home. Every day this piece spoke to me, every day it gave me something. Sometimes it spoke to me as a whole, drawing me deep inside; sometimes from a small section, sometimes from hints of color revealed from the sunlight pouring in the window. I miss this piece terribly. It now hangs beautifully at The Dundee Hotel, where I am writing this piece and I’ve literally hugged it.
I still appreciate and enjoy realism and impressionism. But abstract art, with a big thank you to my wife, attracts me, speaks to me and fills me.
Artists Dayna admires:
Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler, Lee Krasner, Elaine deKooning, Cy Twombly, Robert Motherwell, Robert Diebenkorn
Artists I admire:
Mark Rothko, Willem deKooning , Jackson Pollock, Picasso, Kandinski, Dayna Collins
Last month, I wrote about my art being in a boutique hotel, along the bank of the Willamette River, The Independence, and just a 15 minute drive from Salem. When I wrote that blog post, I had three pieces of art on display at the hotel. As of writing this post, I now have an additional ten pieces there, and I haven’t even seen them yet! We plan to pay another visit (and another overnight) later this summer after their restaurant reopens in July.
I am writing now about another hotel in the Trace Hotel family, where I also have art, The Dundee. This hotel is located in Dundee, Oregon, in the heart of Oregon’s famous Willamette Valley wine country, and about a 40 minute drive from Salem. My art was installed the end of 2019, and then 2020 arrived, bringing Covid with it, and everything shut down. As things reopened in 2021, we decided to visit The Dundee. We were invited to come stay at the hotel, so earlier this month we went to The Dundee for three nights. Oh my. The Dundee has a stylish vibe and touches of luxury. Photos tell it best.
Once we were settled in, we started exploring, looking for my nine pieces of art; it was a bit like a scavenger hunt. Three of the paintings were right outside the door of our room on the second floor of the first building.
We continued our search. Right around the corner from our room, was the conference room, or Boardroom, and inside were three of my acrylic pieces.
When we were in the hallway, Jim, the hotel’s maintenance person, found out I had painted several of the paintings in the hotel and asked if I had by chance painted the pieces in the Boardroom. When I replied that I had, he said, “Come with me. I’ve studied those paintings, and I have questions for you.” In we went.
Jim’s question was if I had intentionally placed animals in my paintings. I told him I hadn’t, but he insisted he saw a bee, a bird, a cat, and a COW!
We set out again on our mission to find my paintings, leaving the first building, passing a great courtyard between the two buildings, and then entering the second building.
We spied the first painting on the landing between the first and second floors.
We had a beautiful three nights in the heart of the Willamette Valley (surrounded by wineries if you are a lover of wine) and we are already looking forward to our next visit.
So what happened to those 100+pieces of art I created from January 31 through mid May? The ones I blogged about on March 21st at the half way point and the ones I celebrated on May 12th when I completed the project?
I turned some of them into cards so I can write thank you notes to people who purchase paintings.
But I had the most fun matting 44 of the paintings and collages I created. If you aren’t familiar with the project, artists were challenged to create a piece of art or do something creative for 100 days (my entire process was documented on Instagram at DaynaLovesArt). We were encouraged to investigate a particular medium, theme, or idea. My chosen project was to create art on scraps of the lowly brown paper bag. So, I ripped apart lots of paper bags that I had stashed away, and for 100 days I painted using acrylics or oil and cold wax, or I collaged using scraps of paper, or I combined a bit of paint and collage. I ended up with over 100 pieces of abstract art. I chose 44 of them to seal with varnish, then glued those pieces to a backer board, adhered a 45-degree beveled edge mat to frame the art, wrote the day I created the piece, signed my name, and put each piece in a clear bag. Whew. I’m tired just writing the various steps.
Then the more behind the scenes work began. After the pieces were ready, I wrote a description of how I created each piece, took photos, and turned the photos and text over to my IT/business manager/website guruspecialistwilling partner for posting in my Shop: 100 DayProject. But here’s the thing/the small print/the catch. I have been trying to grow my email list so I am shamelessly soliciting sign ups by announcing when this special shop will open to subscribers ahead of when I announce it more publicly. My June newsletter is about ready to launch, so I thought I would make a final push and give my friends, art lovers, curious followers, and even my family, the opportunity to sign up for my newsletter. The newsletter will share two things in particular about this project: 1) when the shop will open for purchasing these pieces, and 2) why I am pricing these pieces at $49 (which includes shipping). You might be thinking, “Another newsletter?!?” Yawn. I promise that my newsletters aren’t too long, I include content that isn’t shared on other social medium platforms (or at least different photos), and I won’t bombard you with lots of emails. If I have your interest at all, just click on the link, which will take you to my website where you can sign up. NEWSLETTER LINK
About now you are probably thinking, or at least I would be, enough with the words, show us some art. Here are some of the pieces that will be available for sale for $49.
Each of these pieces is matted to fit an 8×10 (or larger) frame. In case you can’t envision what that would look like, I put different pieces in an 11×14 frame (with an 8×10 cutout), so you can see the power of a frame.
This was a frame I got very inexpensively at Michael’s, so you can either use a nice frame or an inexpensive one. If you want a smaller profile, these mats will also fit nicely in a simple 8×10 frame.
Thank you for reading my blog. I appreciate each of you who support me and my art journey.
Back in the fall of 2019, I was invited to show my art in a new hotel in Independence, Oregon, a small town about 15 minutes from Salem and across the Willamette River. The hotel, The Independence, was along the river and wanted to feature local artists and makers. I painted three paintings with the hotel in mind and its location along the river.
The three paintings for the hotel, oil and cold wax over plaster, and 30×40 inches each, were delivered in November, 2019. A reception was planned for the end of March, 2020.
And then the pandemic hit and everything was cancelled.
Fast forward to May, 2021, and we were finally able to visit the hotel and see my art in place. The hotel invited us to stay, so last week we planned a two night staycation. It was lovely to only drive 15 minutes to reach our destination, and what a beautiful destination.
The beautiful lobby.
Into the elevator and down the hallway . . .
Arrival on the third floor.
As soon as we were settled, we took off to visit my art.
The next thing we did was to grab kombuchas and head to the rooftop patio.
Then we did a little exploring in downtown Independence.
What a lovely location and a beautiful hotel.
In preparation for our visit, The Independence Hotel interviewed me and posted the interview on their blog. Here’s a LINK.
Coming next month, a visit to The Dundee Hotel in Dundee, Oregon, where I have nine pieces of art on display!
Yesterday I dropped off 17 new plaster, oil, and cold wax paintings at Salem on the Edge for my show Turns of the Kaleidoscope. The pieces range in size from 12×12 inches, up to 30×60 inches, all created to be hung on 48 feet of wall space! When I began working on this series, I had trouble imagining filling that long, blank wall. But I did it with one painting to spare. (If you happen to see the show during the month of May, ask Melanie to see the 36×48 inch piece, Life’s Distractions and Enticements.)
Rather than blather about creating the pieces, I’m going to share my process with a series of photos, after all, this is a post about an art show. Here we go . . . .