Artists and Artisans in Paradise 2014

Tomorrow is the BIG DAY. I have been working with the Stratford Arts Guild Show Committee for the past four months to make this a spectacular must see show and destination. I think we have done everything we could possibly do. Now we just need people to show up, enjoy it and buy art!

I have also been very busy most of this month (and earlier this summer) creating work for this show. I wanted a nice body of new work for it. It would have been great to complete a few more pieces, but am pleased with what I was able to do.

Here is some of what I recently created:

Working with the drawings of a few weeks ago, I created these three 14x11 panels. 

Garden Cosmos Series Mixed Media

Wanting to work with the vintage ephemera I have been collecting (see my Instagram account for more on that), I began this new series I am entitling Natural History. I would have liked to have competed at least two more of these for the show, but ran out of time.

Natural History I

Lastly I wanted to do a few more sets of Garden Songbird Silhouettes. I really love working on these little guys. They make me so happy. Both for painting the cute little birds, but also because many of the vintage papers I use are from my Grandmother. Seeing her handwriting and other pieces connected to her fills me with joy. She was a special person in my life. 

Garden Songbirds Set 4 Completed

Back in February I began another set of collage backgrounds for the Garden Songbird Silhouette series I was working on. I finally had the opportunity to finish this set.

Evokes Springtime, don't you agree?

 

These are available for sale. Contact me via email or visit my Etsy site. Both links are to the right hand side.

 

Garden Songbirds Set 4

I have begun another set in the Garden Songbirds series. I like the background layer of book pages and ephemera so much I almost don't want to cover it up! Maybe I will make a few pure collage pieces that focus on these papers next.

More Garden Songbirds

As I've posted previously, I am enjoying creating mixed media collage paintings lately. Since re-organizing my studio last June, I had planned to spend the winter months creating collages to use as backgrounds for paintings or prints. I have more paper of all types and ephemera than I will ever be able to use up!

While working on the Garden Songbird Series, I kept coming up with different papers and colors to try. Here are two sets I've just completed.

With these, I began adding old loan payment stubs which are stamped with the date the payment was made. I found these among the papers my grandmother saved. I'm not sure what the loan was for, but it was paid off between 1977 and 1979. It looks like she made weekly payments. She probably made weekly trips to the bank to deposit her paycheck and made a payment on the loan while she was there. Since each date is unique, I have decided to use them to name each mixed media painting. Also added to these collage paintings are handwritten notes of many types which I retrieved from the recycling basket over the years. These include computer programming homework dating back to 1997 when my husband returned to school to study that. Also included are calligraphy practice done by my daughter and music notes from when my son took bass guitar lessons. I have also added pieces of the many to-do lists and other notes I write on pieces of scrap paper. These may be obscured under the colored tissue paper or the paint applied on top, but I know they are there. Working with these pieces of family history, I am connected to my family, even when they are not physically with me. 

These six mixed media collage paintings are available at my Etsy shop.

Garden Songbirds Mixed Media Collage Paintings

Enjoying the process of creating the mixed media collage paintings of the foxgloves as well as the finished product, I decided to use this technique again for some small bird images.

Beginning with pages cut from old books on birding, assorted ledger papers, snippets of decorative paper and hand written notes, these were glued to matboard.

 

Next I applied torn pieces of assorted Asian fiber papers. On top of that I added line drawings of garden songbirds. The first two came from the drawing it did for Birdsong and two other monoprints. I have also used this drawing for the title page in a visual journal. Wanting to make this a trio, I added the finch-like bird. I was originally going to paint the birds brown, but decided to make it more spring-like so used a robin's egg blue acrylic paint.

Garden Songbirds I

Garden Songbirds II

Garden Songbirds III

I am happy to say that this set of three has found a new home.