Abstract Painting – Page 11

Art Retreats x2

I have the good fortune to belong to two art groups: The Portland Art Collective and the Salem Art Group. The groups are very different. The Portland Art Collective has 33 members, meets monthly for a meeting where the main focus is show and tell, but they also take minutes and conduct business. Twice a year they have a retreat at Menucha and about twenty women attend. Attendance at meetings is not required and I haven’t seen a couple of members for years.

The Salem Art Group is a small group with only six members. This group meets monthly and does one of the following: 1) meet up for coffee and show and tell, 2) go on a field trip to an exhibit or museum, or 3) gets together for a day of art making. Once a year we go on an art retreat. In our small group, we have an attendance policy, which requires that everyone attend at least eight meetings per year.

This past week both of the groups held their art retreats, which meant I was gone for a week.

PORTLAND ART COLLECTIVE

PAC holds their retreat over a weekend at Menucha, a conference and retreat center in the Columbia Gorge, about an hour east of Portland. All of our art-making is done in The Greenhouse.

We arrive on Friday afternoon and the retreat concludes on Sunday afternoon, giving us two full days of making art, laughing,doing demos, relaxing, and being silly.

During our stay, all meals are provided in the dining room, and they beautifully accommodate people with special diets (like me, who is vegetarian and stays away from gluten, but obviously not from sugar!).

SALEM ART GROUP

SAG holds one retreat a year and the location and time of year vary. For the past several years we have retreated at Camp Sherman along the Metolius River. This year we chose to retreat at the Oregon Coast. Bonnie, one of our members, has a cabin at the coast and a friend of hers offered for us to use her house on the bay as our place to stay and create.

We arrived on Tuesday morning and stayed until Friday. Of course, there was no one preparing our meals, so everyone made their own breakfast and lunch, but we dined out every night at one of the great restaurants, all within a short drive from where we were staying.

ART

During the two retreats, I chose to work on three different projects. I always schlepp more art supplies that I ever use, and I panic at the idea of not having enough to do. During the PAC retreat in the Gorge, I focused on acrylic paintings and visual journaling, along with a new collage project I am developing.

At the coast, I lugged all of my oil and cold wax supplies, set up shop on a long table I brought, and spent the entire time slathering on layers, scraping away the oil and cold wax the next morning, then applying another layer. I have a show deadline coming up the first part of June, so these days were spent working on several pieces for that show. It was a luxury to have uninterrupted expanses of time to work.

Because of the intimate nature of the second retreat, I took more photos during the week. Here’s a look at our little group and some of our activities during our stay.

Here’s my two piles of packing. First to Menucha for the weekend, then to the beach for four days. I thought I took a lot to Menucha, but my stack of stuff doubled for the beach!

It was a treat to have so many days dedicated to art without any of the responsibilities of home. But now it’s time for reentry and to finish up some of the projects I started over the past ten days.

Mentorship Program: Emma

I had the good fortune to participate in Salem Art Association’s mentorship program again this year (here’s a link about my mentorship a year ago). During the program, high school students are paired with professional artists, who work with their student for several months helping the student build a portfolio of work. This year I had the pleasure of working with Emma, a sophomore at a local high school.

Emma chose to work in plaster and acrylic so during the past several months we met for Emma to prepare her boards and then do paint on them.

It was great to watch Emma work: she worked intuitively and was very confident and self-assured when it came to painting her boards. We met last week for our final session, where Emma signed her pieces and then applied a layer of cold wax to bring out the luscious and rich colors of her boards.

We loaded up Emma’s boards for transport to the reception site in downtown Salem.

Here are the five pieces Emma created during our mentorship:

Last night was the reception for all of the students and their mentors. What a fun evening!

And here’s beautiful Emma standing in front of her work.

The Artist’s Journey: An Online Class

I recently finished a four-week online class with California abstract artist Nancy Hillis. I don’t find many classes I want to take anymore, but something about this one caught my attention. The official title of the class was The Artist’s Journey: 3 Secrets of the Masters to Transform Your Painting. I was also attracted to this class because I love Nancy’s style of non-representational abstract paintings.

The class was four weeks with five modules. During the month long class, we watched video demonstrations, read written course material, worked through workbooks, and interacted with other participating artists in a private Facebook group. We even had the opportunity for a one-on-one telephone consultation with Nancy. Each week we were given a painting challenge to put the lessons into practice.

I won’t give away the class in detail, but I’ll share a bit of what we learned. Our modules covered everything from why we create art, to the importance of committing to a daily studio practice. Nancy covered a variety of topics, such as trusting yourself, the importance of practice, and allowing yourself to be surprised. She offered lots of lessons addressing various techniques, i.e., activating the canvas (making marks), to veiling and experimenting with flux (creating layers). The module on composition was invaluable, filled with game changing pointers. Module 4 covered value and how to use value to make strong and powerful paintings. The final module was a refresher of everything we covered and how to move forward. Wow. This class was worth the investment of money and time.

Photos. How do I choose which photos to share. Rather than break my post down into weekly bites, I’ll just share a sampling of photos taken throughout the past month.

About two weeks into the class, it was time for Art After Dark, the monthly Open Studios event at my downtown studio. I decided to share what I had been working on rather than display finished art like I usually do.

Palettes. I ended up with so many great pieces of paper that I used as my palette, that I saved a bunch of them!

Time to hang up my gloves? No, I’m more inspired and motivated than ever.

Tulips-ish: Let’s Just Call Them Tulips

What? Tulips? I don’t paint flowers, at least not specific flowers. In the past I’ve painted a couple of paintings that could be considered flowers, but they were wonky and highly abstracted. But amazingly, they both sold . . . . ummmmm.

My heart sank a bit when Tory, Bonnie, and I met the end of 2015 to decide our 2016 show schedule for Compass Gallery. January was Magnetic Pull and reflected what art we felt pulled to create. February was Light As Air, and I had happily been working on my Funky Junkyard Birds for a couple of months. When it came time to decide on March, Bonnie suggested we have a show about tulips. I gulped and resolved to push through the fear and just make the art.

I decided I needed to start early for the March show. On a rainy day in January, I spent the day in my studio. I was playing with the idea of painting a close up of a tulip, abstracted beyond recognition. My first go round went like this:

Then I started another one and the first layer looked like a misshaped lemon (I’m not even sharing the photo of the big yellow painted lemon!).

I decided this idea wasn’t working for me. I eventually left the studio that day feeling like I had spread a lot of paint, but feeling uninspired and unsuccessful. I was missing something. I remembered a favorite children’s book titled ish by Peter Reynolds. Why couldn’t I paint tulips in the ish fashion? I felt myself getting inspired and motivated again, motivated to get painting, big and small.

I started in using three pre-prepared boards that were a wee 6×6 inches. I had fun adding splashes of color mimicking bouquets of tulips. I felt like I was on to something.

Then I prepared four 12×12-inch boards in my usual fashion, applying paint, a layer of plaster, and then sealing them with a layer of acrylic. I was ready to paint my version of tulips using oil and cold wax. I laid down paint, I scraped it back. I told myself I didn’t need to paint exact replicas of tulips, but just to use color and texture to create something tulips-ish. It was working.

I ended up with a series of three paintings where I used black and grey as a backdrop to really make the color of the flowers pop.

I wanted to create one bigger piece for the show, so I dug out a 24×24 inch painting that had been in a show in 2013. It was begging to be repurposed and given new life.

I had fun covering the bright stripes of color, leaving the essence of a flower, which I then went in and defined using an ebony pencil, a combination of reds and alizarin crimson mixed with white to create some lovely pinks.

The result of my push/pull transformation is Echoes of Summer.

We hung the show on Thursday and I was happy with my nod to tulips. Once again, our disparate work came together to form a lively show.

Just Tulips will be on display at the Compass Gallery at Willamette Heritage Center through March 30, 2016, and the gallery is open Monday-Saturday, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm. The Opening Reception will be held Thursday, March 10, from 5-7 pm.

I Created a Zine! Wait, What’s a Zine?

Many people ask what a zine is, so here is a simple explanation: A zine, pronounced, zeen (long e’s) is an abbreviated form of a magazine, created using original text, images,and drawings. It is self-published using a photo copier and usually printed in small batches.

My Salem Art Group decided it would be fun if we each created a zine (there are six of us) and did a swap. We chose a quarter page size format and other than that, we could make our zine on any topic of our choosing.

I started brainstorming ideas for my zine. I considered doing a zine on colors, favorite words, my obsessions, inspiring quotes, but ended up choosing creativity as my theme; where and when I started my creative journey and how I keep it going.

It started to take shape in my head and I jotted ideas in my journal. I knew I wanted the pages to have the look of old school typewritten pages (and I recently won a typewriter in a raffle – I bought a LOT of tickets!). I also knew early on I wanted to use a few photos from when I was a child.

It struck me that an original piece of art would be fun to add to a page, so I painted a little abstract painting on a piece of watercolor paper.

Beyond those things, I just started making lists and recording ideas — verything from my studio playlist to what I drink during the day.

The cover was created using copies of my original abstract paintings. I made color photocopies, then cut out feathers from the copies, creating a sunburst of art. (That’s me as a child, using my original concept of incorporating childhood photos).

Once I finished the layout, which takes a great deal of concentration so all the pages line up properly, I made my copies, cut the pages in half, folded and collated (my zine is 20 pages, counting the front and back covers). While watching Season 7 of Nurse Jackie, I did a simple stitched binding using red waxed linen thread.

Another peek inside:

I decided to print 14 copies, five for my art group, one for me. My husband asked for one, so did my daughters. I’m guessing my mom and sister will want one, and I’ve set aside a couple for friends who have given me their zines in the past. Each copy is numbered, making them feel exclusive and special.

I’ve wanted to create a zine for a long time and it was as much fun as I expected. I already have plans for future zines, but thank heavens for my art group had a deadline to get this one created and published.

Post Script

The Salem Art Group met this week to exchange our zines. It was like Christmas as each of us distributed our zines and shared about our inspiration and process. My zine was text heavy, Tory’s was filled with bird idioms through text, drawings, and collage, Nancy shared her drawings of the human form, Katy produced a zine using her landscape sketches, Kathy illustrated a zine she titled “Courtesans, Witches, Camp Scouts, & Nervous Nell,” and Bonnie shared sketches of what she found when she was snowed in and cleaned out some drawers (and each of us received a special teeny tiny item from her cleaning).

Magnetic Pull

New year. New month. New gallery. New show. All of this means I have been busily and happily painting in plaster, oil, and cold wax.

I wrote about my new gallery last month, sharing the happy news that I was joining with Tory Brokenshire and Bonnie Hull to be the new owner-artists of the Compass Gallery. Our January show, Magnetic Pull, represents what art is tugging at our hearts as we begin 2016. All three of us recently wrote briefly about our individual magnetic pulls. I thought it would be fun for me to share what all three of us wrote:

Bonnie Hull

A person who makes art experiences the magnetic pull of the creative urge every day. As she goes on with it, the methods and media change, overlap . . . . collide maybe. “Mark-making” has become the single thread on which my own art practice hangs and I’m in the midst of discovering the commonality of what mark-making really means across a spectrum of activity. In 2016 my idea is to continue examining the relation between drawing and quilt making.

Tory Brokenshire

Magnetic pull is more than just a thought, it is a reality for anyone who is passionate about anything they do. I’m pulled towards the human figure, drawing, sewing, or sculpting in clay. Teaching and sharing figurative sculpture has also become a very important part of my passion. I believe everyone can feel a little bit of that pull to create.

Dayna Collins

Texture. Intersections. Excavation. Layers. Marks. Lines. Words. Color. Scratching. Scritching. These are the things that have pulled at me for the past several years. During 2016, I am hoping to dig deeper, incorporating more marks, more lines, more layers. A year of more, seeing how far I can push the processes I love.

The newly formed Compass Gallery has a fresh show in January with a fun twist. Throughout the month, weekly Wednesday – Saturday, from 11 am – 3 pm, one of us will be in the gallery working on our art and available to chat about our process, inspiration, and techniques. The show, Magnetic Pull, runs January 11-February 3, 2016.

Throughout January, join us as we work on our art in the gallery from 11-3 on Wednesdays through Saturdays. Here is the schedule:

January 13-16 Bonnie Hull will be stitching and drawing (and she invites people to bring their own projects and join her).

January 20-23 Tory Brokenshire will be creating whimsical characters in polymer clay.

January 27-30 Dayna Collins will be painting with her favorite mediums on pre-plastered boards: oil, cold wax, and oil pigment sticks.

Here are photos of some of my new work that will be included in the show:

The exhibition begins January 11 and the artists will host a simple reception in the gallery on Thursday, January 14, 5:00-7:00 pm, as part of Art After Dark, when the second floor studios will be open and Max Marbles, bookbinder, will be in his first floor studio demonstrating a publishing technique. These events are free and open to the public. Gallery hours are Monday-Saturday, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm. The exhibition will be on view through February 3.

New Love: Oil Pigment Sticks

I have a new obsession: R and F Oil Pigment Sticks. I’ve been experimenting with them for several months, mostly creating little abstract landscapes, but recently I decided to take the plunge and start using them on bigger canvases. But back to the smalls for this post. I’ve used other brands of oil sticks, but nothing, NOTHING, compares to R and F for pigment load, creaminess, and application luciousness (I don’t even think that is a word!). The sticks are made from natural wax, linseed oil, and pigment. You can paint with them as is, you can use a palette knife, you can even mix colors on a palette and apply with a brush. Versatile and beautiful, that’s what they are.

Here’s a sampling from a series I’ve been working on. All of these are 3×3, 4×4, or 5×5 inches.

Some of these Art Snippets are currently on display, through December, in my new gallery, Compass Gallery Cooperative, in Salem, Oregon. (I’ll share more about this exciting gallery venture in another post.) I regularly share new work on both Pinterest and Instagram, as well as my Facebook art page, so if you want to follow my art, take a look.

A New Art Gallery in Salem

I have exciting news to share. There is a new art gallery in Salem and I’m one of the five founding artists. The gallery, located at the Willamette Heritage Center, borders downtown and is across the street from the Amtrak Station and Willamette University. A recent press release gives all of the pertinent information:

After a successful year at the Willamette Heritage Center (formerly Mission Mill Museum), Compass Gallery celebrates its first anniversary with a transition to a cooperative gallery under the auspices of the Art Studios at Mission Mill. The gallery will represent five artists who are members of the Art Studios: Dayna Collins, Bonnie Hull, Leonard Kelly, Kathy Shen and Rollie Wisbrock. The artists will curate monthly rotating exhibitions of their artwork in the gallery space. The first group exhibition opened to the public on October 1 and an opening reception is planned for Thursday, October 8 from 3:00-5:00 pm in the gallery. This event is free and open to the public. Gallery hours are Monday-Saturday, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm. The exhibition will be on view through November 4.

On Thursday, four of us gathered to hang our first show.

For our first exhibit I created a new framed series of plaster, oil, and cold wax pieces.

"The Whisper of Truth," 8x8 framed to 12x12, plaster, oil, and cold wax. — “The Whisper of Truth,” 8×8 framed to 12×12, plaster, oil, and cold wax.

"A Quiet Confidence," 8x8 framed to 12x12, plaster, oil, and cold wax. — “A Quiet Confidence,” 8×8 framed to 12×12, plaster, oil, and cold wax.

"A Light Wind Pushed at the Lace Curtains," 8x8 framed to 12x12, plaster, oil, and cold wax. — “A Light Wind Pushed at the Lace Curtains,” 8×8 framed to 12×12, plaster, oil, and cold wax.

"All Suffering Erased," 8x8 framed to 12x12, plaster, oil, and cold wax. — “All Suffering Erased,” 8×8 framed to 12×12, plaster, oil, and cold wax.

"Forgetting is the Only Way Back," 8x8 framed to 12x12, plaster, oil, and cold wax. — “Forgetting is the Only Way Back,” 8×8 framed to 12×12, plaster, oil, and cold wax.

"The Return of Memory," 8x8 framed to 12x12, plaster, oil, and cold wax. — “The Return of Memory,” 8×8 framed to 12×12, plaster, oil, and cold wax.

"Beyond the Reach of Reality," 8x8 framed to 12x12, plaster, oil, and cold wax. — “Beyond the Reach of Reality,” 8×8 framed to 12×12, plaster, oil, and cold wax.

We are still figuring out shows and what direction we want to take the gallery, but we are going to let it evolve and morph over the next few months of experimentation.

Out of the Box and Over the Top

Lunaria Gallery in Silverton is celebrating their 20 year anniversary and as part of their celebration they are inviting former gallery members to participate in themed shows. I, along with Tory Brokenshire and Frank Lord, were invited to participate in their August show, Out of the Box and Over the Top. I wonder why they invited us to participate in this particular show (ha!).

The show is beautifully curated and is worth the trip to Silverton, but hurry, the show comes down on Monday, August 31st.

Tory and I were unable to attend the opening reception, but we made the short trip to Silverton last week to see the show for ourselves. We had both sold work, so there were a few holes, but it is always exciting to see red dots (or blank walls!). These are the two that have sold:

Abstracted Play: Creating With Plaster, Oil, and Cold Wax

I’m just home from teaching a three-day workshop in Portland at Stacey Mattraw’s imaginative, magical studio, Arcangelo Productions, in North Portland.

Our three-day workshop actually started on Thursday evening when Stacey hosted a get together so everyone could meet and get their painting supplies set up.

Friday morning, we began our three-day marathon. We spent most of Friday preparing our boards, adding paint, plaster, and more paint, so that when we started to layer oil and cold wax, we would already have a nice layer of texture to respond to.

By the end of the first day we were already applying layers of oil and cold wax.

On Day Two it was oil and cold wax ALL DAY LONG.

Of course, breaks were taken.

On Day Three we gave each other feedback on some of the art in progress, painted, then ended the day with a walkabout.

And then we collapsed!

It was a great group of artists, so full of enthusiasm, energy, and talent — and they all worked so hard. Most of the ladies had traveled quite a distance to attend: Bellingham, the San Juan Islands, Alaska, California, as well as Portland and Silverton.

A sampling of their beautiful work . . . .