Does anyone know of a better combination? I am a foodie for sure, and in my element when the food, wine and friends involve ART.

Recently, a commissioned painting combined all of the above. Oysters on the half shell, French champagne, new friends and voila, the makings of ART to tell the story! The main venue in Boulder was Jax, known for oysters and a lively bar. My storyboard for the painting combined photographs that I took of  my clients at the bar, adding a suggestion of both of their dad’s in the crowd, a few existing elements ( the wire fish sculpture) as well as a few added elements that had special meaning & memories for them. Commissions of this nature are sometimes challenging, but the end result is worth the problem solving!

   Champagne, Oysters, & Family  36x36                                                                              Winescapes Detail

Often, when working on a painting that is more representational, detailed in subject, tighter, I find it beneficial to work on a very loose piece at the same time. Something about the right brain, left brain, or perhaps I land somewhere in the middle. Winemaker’s Dozen (refer to my website) made me crazy, making sure one could tell which glass was on first, which was on second. This painting is part of the permanent collection of art in Grill 23 Restaurant, Boston. My new diptych, Winescapes I & II, is a different take on wine glasses, pushing to more abstraction. I like both and enjoyed painting both, but the approach is totally different. While working on the commissioned painting of the busy bar scene mentioned above, I worked on 2 panels, 48x36” each, as a diptych.  Loose, drippy, scraping away paint, layers of glazing, abstracted wine glasses that go beyond just painting an object. 

The subject is obvious, but the process is not. Layers of paint inspire me.  Breaking the rules…what rules? Leaning towards greater abstraction and a direction I plan to continue exploring. Perhaps the viewing jury can decide the success. At the very least, I achieved an overall floating quality of a singular object rendered in a random &repetitive manner…which is what I set out to do. Construct & deconstruct.

Dolby Chadwick Gallery (www.dolbychadwickgallery.com) in San Francisco just opened an exquisite exhibition of works by Alex Kanevsky, whose paintings I have admired for years, but never had the opportunity to see in person. What a treat! Well worth the trip to San Francisco! ART that moved my soul. He is a master painter and creates his own language with transparent layers and building up of these brilliant layers on the surface. Pure abstraction, yet he paints a representational subject, often seeming to be a collage of many observations. Brilliant in my eyes! Check it out on their website. He’s a painters’ painter and that is to say INSPIRING! We, as painters, seek inspiration from old masters and often from contemporary painters too. On some level for me, Kanevsky’s work addressed both. The underlying draftsmanship is masterful, the surface: modern.

Time….always reconfiguring TIME for the vast ideas I have relative to creating art and expanding my career. Time…is a blank canvas, awaiting artistic truths. What do I really want to say with my art? How can I approach subjects that have interested me for years, and say it in a bold, new manner.  Is it just that simple? Am I challenging myself enough?  The little voice inside that whispers what if you venture off in another direction and it’s awful…..OR, what if it’s spectacular and launches art that reveals a new voice, a new level. I have to listen to that voice as it is mine and have the energy, courage & guts to not only carve out the time, but let my intuitive nudges move that paint on the canvas in new ways. It’s not a drastic leap of faith, rather a continuation of growing as an artist and not settling for just “ what works, what sells”, but further developing  my own “lingo”, language of paint.

Lift your glass at Ya Ya’s ( Belleview in the Denver Tech Center) to the new triptych that I recently installed over the bar. The bottle is the managing partners’ choice, a Barolo, La Spinetta.  www.yayasbistro.com  YUM! The wine glasses are giclees on canvas and are a split version of the aforementioned Winemaker’s Dozen.

Stay tuned. My next blog may simply be musings of finding my language in a pile of paint, glaze, brushes, palette knifes.  What I already do, just pushing in new directions.