RI Art Show Reports

[alwyn]

Finally uploaded some photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/25144033@N ... 677825291/ I think you can get there from here. Glad the artists posted theirs...I had a little too much wine, and missed some, and boy, straightening out my inebriated shots....arghhh....

[Col. Quisp]

waagh...sorry I missed it. You all are so hip and cool. Looks like lots of fun was had by all.

[Peregrine]

Oy, my apologies, miss Willow, I sorta took a break from 'netland when I got back. Plus I've been super busy. And yes, I'm cool with you posting any of me, too! And thank you so much for hosting the show, it was amazing & I'm glad I got to meet such awesome folks. I would love to do it again & maybe next time enter something myself...

[LilyPatToo]

I've been back for most of 5 days, but just now got up the courage to look at my "experimental" photos of the opening and the after-party--oh, are they blurred! I used my iPhone for most of them (no flash) and just took a couple with my camera at the after-party that are actually in focus. So, while I photographed everyone's art work, you'll do better to look at the other slideshows that have been posted if you want to see them clearly. Still, the crowd shots and a couple of us RI folks are interesting enough to perhaps be worth a look -- The Opening and The After-party

Several people asked about my painting process and I wasn't able to explain very well, so here are both a photo of The Pool, finished, and as a work-in-progress and a very brief list of steps:

And here's background info on how I came to paint as I do:

Painting “The Pool":

When I say I’m “self-taught” it actually means that I’ve spent my life learning from every artist I’ve met and from multitudes of art books. The ones that stand out as major influences are Coy Ludwig’s great technique section at the back of his classic “Maxfield Parrish” book.

Then came two of Robert Vickrey’s books -- “New Techniques In Egg Tempera” and “Robert Vickrey: Artist At Work” both of which are usually available used at Amazon. In fact, here’s the Vickrey page there - http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_at_ep_s ... evancerank

And, more recently, I found an amazing step-by-step how-to book called “Painting The Secret World of Nature” by John Agnew (though he uses the airbrush a lot more than I do).

I currently tend to work almost entirely in acrylic paint on canvas, but occasionally use either alkyd paints (fast-drying resin/oil paints) or Atelier slow-dry acrylics for areas that need extensive blending. And I’ve used supports like gessoed masonite and rag board too.

Many of my backgrounds are airbrushed astronomical subjects that are painted over the foreground objects, which have been frisketed (protected) with a coat of liquid latex (mold-maker’s latex). This frisket sticks even to canvas and can be rubbed off with a finger or with a rubber-cement-pick-up when I’m ready to paint that particular element.

The Pool is the fourth in a series of surreal paintings that show parts of my past in symbolic form. I hope not to have to part with the originals until I’ve shown all of them in at least one local show, but I’m currently in the process of having 2 series of giclée prints made of each image—one on canvas and one on rag paper, so hopefully I’ll be able to sell high-quality reproductions of them by the end of May 2010.

(Hopefully that's clear and will make up for my lack of coherency at the opening)

LilyPat

[Cordelia]

I love Maxfield Parrish too, and thanks, LilyPat, Free; I also love to read about the creative process and techniques artists use to construct their visions.

So, risking a presumptuous assumption that others feel the same, I'll describe working with collage, which I believe to be a wonderful vehicle in which to travel into the unconscious and let the mind wander through its maps of images and symbols. (It's also the most forgiving medium, because screw-ups are so easily corrected, and the pieces are literally movable compositions-in-progress. A collage I had the most fun with, and was the most challenging, was of a woman standing in front of an ornate dresser, looking into a real mirror that reflected back her 'real' face.)

My pieces (images of which I can't upload, so thanks to those who took photos!) in the show are constructed on gesso panels. For the interior collages, I drew the floors, rafters, woodworking, etc., in pencil and, to enhance a 3D effect, scored the lines with a woodworking knife, before painting the rooms with acrylics mixed w/gesso, or sepia ink. I added 'windows' that are (literally) cut from the panels, behind which is a painted landscape, or another collage.

The fun part of constructing room collages was filling the scenes, like erecting small stage sets. I 'sculpted' 3-dimensional figures and still life, using rice papers, fibers, veneer strips for furniture, and other materials, applied to pictures of figures and animals cut from books. I found that figures and objects painted by Renaissance artists to be especially transferable to collage; perhaps because many painters of that time used the camera obscurer as a tool.(David Hockney researched the use of ancient optical tools and wrote a wonderful--and controversial-- book, "Secret Knowledge". When I bought his book, I promised myself I wouldn't cut it up, but I broke my promise.)

I've drawn people and painted landscapes for as far back as I can remember, but architectural renderings come neither naturally nor easily. I never mastered perspective drawing, with its laws of vanishing points, perpendicular and parallel lines, etc., and I greatly admire (and envy) those who have. Instead, I've spent hours with pencils, rulers and plenty of erasers, applying simple math, rather than geometry, to 'measure' and draw rooms while studying photographs of monasteries and old farm houses. Drawing interiors became a kind of focused meditation; something to look forward to, rather than a frustrating task or just a means to an end.

I've stopped making collages--just the idea of cutting, assembling and gluing countless pieces of paper is exhausting. Besides, I've cut up enough books. Maybe someday I'll go back to painting gesso panels, the smaller the better; tiny, postage stamp sized painted tiles....

[Perelandra]

LilyPat and Cordelia, thanks very much for posting about your techniques and more. Both of you do impressive work. So glad I was able to see it IRL and to chat with you, Pat.

[elfismiles]

Wow! Congrats everyone!!

[semper occultus]

yeah they're all great - particulalrly like the cute retro robot - pop-art lives !

[Metric Pringle]

holy fajesus, incredible work. SO damn gutted I couldn't get up there... was even in your lands, lalalands, but the trip up was pricey, and LA broke my finance. money just seemed to be sucked out of my pockets, with nothing to show for it but a couple of weeks of feeling like an alien here in London. Such great work, had a look at the pics, will read the thread thoroughly soon...

When's the NEXT one?!

[anothershamus]

Boy, I have got to get out of GD more often. Well done!