4/30/17
Monarch on Coneflower
Changes fascinate me. As I sit here, I can gaze out at my sodden garden. Unusual warm temperatures hastened blooms, and now it has turned cold and wet. We’re getting quite a lot of rain which seems welcome to me and my button bush. Life teaches us that all things must change, and yet we seem to resist this. Perhaps we should be asking, “what about these changes might be good?”. Just a thought.
There is change going on in my studio as well. As you can see from this lively Monarch, I want to move away from the strict reporting of the facts of representational painting toward a more intuitive response. I’ve been reading about Georgia O’Keefe and am inspired by something she spoke of. Rather than stand outside of creation and report on it, she wanted to paint from the midst of creation. I love the idea of that, and will be exploring it in my own work.
For my Monarch painting, I felt that the blue-lavender background was too static. I wanted to suggest movement and energy, and thought broken color at the top of the canvas would do that. When the paint started to drip, I decided I quite liked that and so encouraged some more colors to drip. Too fun!
So that’s what I’m up to. What changes are you noticing in your life?
