watercolor and ink, 5.5″ x 8.5″

watercolor and acrylic on paper, 5.5″ x 8.5″

Acrylic on canvas, 6″ x 8″

I’m hooked on black and white checks.

5.5″ x 8.5″ acrylic and watercolor on paper

This is fun to loosen up and just paint from memory and not worry how things look.  This is a study of one of my favorite artists Stacy Dynan.

5.5″ x 8.5 “, acrylic on paper

Day 1, 8.5″ x 5.5 “, watercolor

Today’s painting … Favorite Things, acrylic, 9″ x 12″ x 3/4″

Nearly finished with a new painting.  It started out something completely different than what it is now.  The field of tulips was incredibly boring, so I decided to add a tractor.  In order to add a tractor I had to cut the painting apart.  When I started cutting it apart, I decided it needed to be 3-D.  Here’s the progress.

I’m in an art history, theory and critique graduate program.  Dr. Daniel Siedell had this to say about our 20th Century art course.  It’s a wonderful quote about how we look and feel about art, especially modern art.

“We begin our exploration of 20th century art, criticism, and theory with a turn inward and a turn away—a turn inward toward the artist’s (and viewer’s) conscious and unconscious emotional states and drives and a turn away from traditional roles of art as representation of the merely visible world toward explorations of emotion and the basic formal elements of line, form, and color that make a work of art a work of art. We’ll discover that these are much more than developments in form and content but strike at the heart of what art (and human creativity and consciousness) is and its role in a modern world transformed by Einstein and Freud, physics and psychoanalysis, complexity of the cosmos and the complexity of the self. ” ~ Dr. Daniel Siedell, June 27, 2016

Sign-up for more art classes at Richmond Art Center.  It’s a wonderful center with painting, sculpture, ceramics, pottery, weaving/textile, metal, printmaking studios!

It was a fun event in February and my “Cutting Girl” painting received the Excellence in Art Award!

“Cutting Girl” was accepted into the 30th Annual Arizona Aqueous XXX Watercolor exhibit at the Tubac Center of the Arts.  The show is January 29th – March 15th, 2016 in Tubac, AZ.

yea!

Come see our group show from our Autobody Art Gallery and Studio Bridge program.  February 6-19, 2016.  Artist reception is Saturday, February 6, 6-9 pm.

I worked on a series of new paintings in acrylic.

Classes are beginning next week, but there’s still time to sign-up.  I’m teaching watercolor and medium exploration classes.

For the past three months I’ve been working in a program with other professional artists to create a new body of work.  We’d meet once a week at the Autobody Fine Art studio in Alameda, California.  My goal was to complete a new painting each week in a more loose, more alla prima style.  I didn’t quite finish one painting each week, but I finished one every two weeks, which for me was successful.  It was an exercise to just get started in front of the blank canvas and just ending … knowing when it was time to just move on.  It was inspiring to work with four other artists; all very talented; all very different. We had critique and instruction and opinion.   It was an exercise in painting in “public” and hearing criticism of my work… some helpful, some just commentary, but all good training.  Here are some of the pieces.

Old and Young, acrylic, 36 in x 48 in

Jimmy, acrylic, 36 in x 48 in

Marcy, acrylic, 36 in x 48 in

Re-do of “Connie”, acrylic, 36 in x 48 in