Spring 2011

If you have been following me, you know I have a new found fascination for painting on masa paper and just briefly touched on layering a tissue paper drawing over another drawing and creating a painting from that.  Recently I was gifted a book titled “Watercolor & Collage Workshop”  by Gerald Brommer.  The above is my first painting following his first assignment in this book.  I was to lay down initial washes bridging them across the format. The next step involved glueing  (using matte fixative with a little water mixed in) torn pieces of  different rice papers.  The third step was to begin drybrushing color over the rice papers. I was to watch the rice papers for their different properties and level of transparency or opaqueness.  He stresses that I need to learn what each paper can do for me in the way of texture as well as transparency so that I will know when to use them to create my future landscapes. Oh what a mess I created, at first. I kept telling myself to look for something to create a center of interest around. That was strongly encouraged. He suggested I splatter and create lines somewhere. I even needed to lay more rice papers over rice papers to change certain passages. Then back to the paint. 

 Somewhere in this whole process I began thinking about this spring and the Tsunami, the landslide blocking a road in Big Sur, the flooding and the awful storms in the south this week. The fractures in this abstract began to represent the tragic circumstances some people have had to face and our land has suffered. That prompted the opaque white streaks in this as it began to represent water falling washing, moving. The spring greens I added at the very end to signify the hope and promise that the land will renew itself in spring this year.  My heart goes out to all of you who have suffered this year. I think and shed light upon your renewal and dedicate this abstract to you.

I am to do three more of these before progressing furthur in this book. I think I will do just that as I am truly interested in learning how to incorporate these papers into my paintings.

A heartfelt thank you to Eva, Kathleen, Jackie, and Linda for sharing their work in the abstract. It has helped me immensely to have read your blogs and viewed what you do in the abstract.

Thank you to Chris and Sandrine for sharing your techniques and exploratory natures throughout your blogs.  I needed a  lot of that kind of energy to keep going with this .