Regarding the commission of 'David', I just wanted to say that I 'turned it in'- the clients wanted a more representational background and by the end I was so tired of the piece that I didn't even take a picture of it. I did a very dark landscape with pine trees in the background. Looking back, it turned out to be quite nice, however, we'll probably never see it again.

Last week Dallas called me just as I was getting all of my things together to tell me that no one was coming to painting group. I hadn't gotten Nicole's message on my phone and was really ready to go after a very serious confrontation with my husband about the location of my child's tennis shoes, which in the end were found in the swim bag where I had put them when we went to the pool. Dallas likened our incident to and episode of 'I Love Lucy' where Desi and Lucy traded places for the day and each had to do the other ones job.

I tried to spend some of the evening painting and I seem to be whittling away at this portrait of Erica. I decided to paint over the small to medium sized canvas in the last post with this image that I have wanted to do for some time now. Ultimately, I decided that the three repetitive images upside down were just not working and I think I stated previously that no one really knew where that one was going.

From the start I felt that this portrait of Erica had a direction and some kind of objective. It felt better than the last one that was laid down before it on the same canvas. The initial 'drawing' left a remnant of a pink crocheted winter hat on the sweater of 'Erica' that I found to be interesting and felt it looked like the adornment on sweaters, shirts and the like that are so popular this season. I always love when interesting elements from old paintings come through in new ones. The trick is to keep those elements and sometimes they just don't work in the new piece.

Immediately I liked the portrait, and especially the hair which is just a quick over-layer of raw umber and black. I am liking the tones and color in the face and the shadow under the chin. I started to draw in the argyle pattern of the sweater, then hesitated. I love the white under-painting under the red grid on the sweater and was fearful to paint too much. On first sitting I painted the entire background, not leaving much remnant of a grid, which created a pinkish to purplish hue from the cadmium red light, black and white mixing together. I felt this color to be feminine and matching the adornment on the sweater.

The next step was to incorporate this image of deer in the background. I envisioned them as small from the start in the background, and thought of inverting this image of the deer/landscape exactly as it is in the second painted image. No one would believe though how many times it took to make the deer the right size I wanted, and now even while looking at them, I wonder if they should be pushed further towards Erica. However, I have worked on the deer/landscape quite a bit since this point and think that the composition looks a bit different in person rather than on the monitor. These little paintings within the painting are very time consuming as I decide how many details from this wintry landscape to include, however, it is also very enjoyable to paint these little miniature pieces. I like their little small grids. I have taken out the trees, as I feel they are an eye sore and lean too much to the left, and are a parallel distraction which leads the viewer out of the painting immediately.

Problem areas are the skirt which I hate and the right hand which I suppose I will be working on this week.

Decisions

I'm running out of canvases which means I need to build more, which means that my husband and I need to go to our workshop, which brings up the question: "When do we have the time to do this together?" These times are few and far between spending quality time together, or spending family time together.

Let me clarify that I can build stretchers on my own, however, in order to run long pieces of wood safely through the jointer and planar, having some assistance is safer and more efficient. Also, our workshop is in need of a major re-haul which is soon to come, but until then, all of 'our' wood is mixed up together and I don't want to use any of his wood.

The piece at the left was started as an attempt to accomplish one of my previous stated objectives of overlapping figures, or rather, overlapping the same figure twice. I was hoping that the image overlapped would give the viewer a feeling of falling or movement. I decided to work on this painting last night to see how some progression would look.

The image I am working from is quite blurry however, and there is not much of the face to work from. Madelaine is the model, and she is wearing a winter hat- I have turned the canvas upside-down. That is how I intended to show the piece. After some contemplation, I think I have decided to abandon this piece. I think everyone was confused by it. When working on the piece last night it somehow didn't feel right.

I have an idea that I would like to create some aloe pieces which would be smaller and hang them all together. This canvas could possibly be used for this endeavor. Then again, the canvas might be too large. At the same time, I am also deciding what to paint on the canvas with the three figures- this is a medium sized canvas so I'm not sure that a whole figure or two would work on this surface.

Also, something that is vexing me is an artist I found last week: Jeff Hein. (www.jeffreyhein.com) This is the kind of artist that really makes me want to jump off the nearest bridge. Rarely do I come across someones work that does everything that I want my work to do. His artists statement is different, however, we have VERY similar thoughts on combining modern aspects of painting while staying true to the realistic form, mainly through figurative work. His statement is eloquent in describing the marriage of contemporary concepts in art, with classical ideals. I hate him for that. Not really, however, I would like for my words and thoughts to be as eloquent as his and for my brushstrokes to convey these thoughts on canvas like his seem to do.

Regarding his work: when I viewed his images of say "The Ina" (60"x 40") or "Lena" (20.8"x 11") I felt an instant love affair coming on. This artist was combining two figures on canvas, much like I was doing, however, it seemed he was doing it in a more modern way than me, or better. (Yes, I can say that). Jeffs technique involves painting a very realistic figure/s in a manner akin to say Rembrant, where the flesh, hands, etc. are very representational- with a painterly approach. (Meaning you can see brushstrokes in the flesh of say the portrait). However, he then sets the figure against a modern context of lines or dots as if this background was created by Josef Albers. If I had to guess his influences, I would say he mixes some Hockney with some Albers, with some Uglow, with some Rembrant if you can imagine this. I mix some Giacometti with some Chuck Close, with some Italian renaissance masters such as (Giotto, Masaccio, Fra Angelico), with some Balthus and Hockney. Now do you see how I am vexed!

Plus, Jeff Hein includes some elements of 'duality' in his work without knowing it- or maybe he does... he paints two chairs side by side where one is empty, and the other holds a figure. In another piece, "Repititon" (48" x 60") he repeats the same figure twice with slight variations in clothing and facial features. Again, the background is one tone while the shadows of the two figures are all variations of muted modern yellow tones which makes the background look more like modern design rather than something that would be on canvas. Additionally, as with many of his other pieces he creates a successful analogous (read harmonious) color combination by using Reds, to yellow oranges, to yellow. I could go on, but I feel I'm getting ill from the 'sickest' work I've ever seen.

Commission of David- final stages

I did some work on David, meaning I worked on the hair a some, which still needs another layer at least, and also worked on the eyes a bit.

This morning I e-mailed the client/s with images of this piece and some pictures of its progression along with the original photo. So, it is done. We will see what they say.

I'm happy with the background, however, it does not look like the representational landscape-ish backgrounds of the other two commissions for this family. Also, I'm not sure if they will go for the shirt.

I plan to look in my book of '500 Self- Portraits' from Phaidon press.

A Brave New Piece

I am desperately feeling the need to start a couple of new fresh pieces of work. I had mentioned in previous post that I had a sketchy drawing of a piece with three figures. One of my goals for this year was to start several pieces where a. the figures are overlapping, and b. there are more than two figures on the canvas (3 or 5 would be best). With the piece that I have posted I attempted to do both of those things.

However, I felt my attempt at getting out of the box, at least with this particular piece was flimsy. This was confirmed by Nicole who noted that the piece didn't describe visually what "Duality" (the series) was. Dallas felt the figure at the top was awkward, and design friend Jen (who is in Philadelphia) remarked that the figures didn't really seem to relate to each other. Essentially all of my doubts about the piece were confirmed. It was time to go back to the drawing board...literally!

I started our session however, with doing something mindless without having to think too much about the complexities of mixing concept with form and how I would change my painting/drawing. I worked on the background of my commission portrait. I decided that I would cover the background in a yellowish, greenish, greyish color. I used raw umber, olive green, black, and yellow ochre. Painting the background surprisingly ate up a huge chunk of time. Nicole liked the final result, and initially I thought that this layer would be just an initial start for more of a glazed background, however, now I feel it could possibly be the background. If that is the case, that would be fantastic and I wouldn't have to paint David amidst a landscape of pine trees much like the work of Bob Ross. Again, I need to contact the client for their thoughts. This time I mean it, as I haven't done that quite yet.

After my background was finished I made everyone talk to me about my concept and piece with three figures. Lots of great things were mentioned and Dallas asked me: "Wasn't one of the meanings of 'Duality' a play on the twin sisters of art- form and content?" No, that wasn't anywhere in my artists statement, but now that you mention it, that is some fantastic art mumbo jumbo that needs to be in my artists statement. Dallas is like that: he doesn't say much, but there are certain moments when he spouts off something really profound, unexpected, and relevant.

As the end of our time was drawing near, I went through about a hundred 8 1/2 x 11 sheets of printed images of the twins that I have in sheet protectors. I was making an effort to find images for my next 'out of the box' paintings combining those elements I mentioned above. I try to file most of the images I have in binders, however, I have collected a huge stack of these sheets that are unorganized and not filed in their respective binders of "Madelaine" and "Erica". I separated the sheets into two stacks: one stack for images that I loved or that caught my eye in any way, the other for definate 'NO' photos. I hadn't gone through the images in quite a while, so they all brought back a bit of nostalgia. I looked at some photos that actually became paintings, and couldn't remember the actual painting until I thought about it for a while. It was interesting to look at little marks on my photos and have no idea what the marks meant. It was almost like looking through an old journal. Some deer in a wintry pine forest caught my eye. I wanted to include this in a background. Erica on a train made me want to do a modern piece with garish colors but I feared loosing the concept of the series if I created a narrative background.

In the end I felt desperate that I needed more weirdness in my paintings. As my friend Byron noted, "Should you wake up one day and want to paint one of the twins stabbing someone with a knife, then I think you should do that". In other words, don't be weird to be weird, however, if I should desire to paint weirdness that might work well.

An interesting option that Nicole mentioned was to actually photograph the girls upside down, which would change the facial features, expression, etc. I felt it was a fresh enough idea to get me excited and I started visualizing Erica hanging upside- down from my neighbors swing set....

Concept is everything

Really, what I should say is that concept is very important, however, I do not feel that it is everything. I think you need both in order to succeed as a great artist, or perhaps I should re-phrase this: I think that I need to have solid concept in my work that comes through in an already technically good and magnificently painted piece.

I feel one without the other is pointless.

My friend Jen always gets me on concept- she always is asking me in the process of painting... "But what is it about???!!!" Jen graduated from Webster University in St. Louis, where you must have your concept worked out and your plan before you even start painting. I come from Fontbonne University where old school is old school. You learn to paint first, and then you create solid concept.

The majority of my work for the past 3-4 years has concentrated on a series that I call "Duality". This series started with my two twin nieces who serve as models for my figurative works. The paintings initially started as a documentation of their age progression (think of Andrew Wyeth and his Helga series), then later came to represent a play on the term of "Duality". I started painting them upside down and the idea is to incorporate the meaning of "Duality", where the painting has two points of view or purposes. I would like for my paintings in Duality series to incorporate both of those thoughts, however, they are now additionally at times pictoral representations of personal events or emotions that viewers can interpret on a universal level.