Thinking Small with Rock Piles

Rock Pile #1~ Balance~ 6x6 ~ mixed media
(pardon the silly watermarks... sign of the times, sadly)

Rock Pile #4 ~ 6x6~ mixed media
I am happy to have these two paintings juried  into Lawrence Street Gallery's "Think Small" show. The opening is tomorrow night. (Dec. 6, 6-9 pm) It's always an interesting exhibit... all works must be less than one square foot in size...easy for holiday gift giving...  ho ho ho! :)

Going in Circles

#73 Going in Circles ~ 20x17 Mixed Media on Board
This one started as a trash painting...and I mean that literally.

At the Mary Todd Beam workshop last October, Mary had us collect collage material from the trash can for use on a painting. Under the paint is plastic paper towel packaging, bits of doily, classmates failed paintings, foil and other trashy treasures adhered with matte medium. Today I wanted to clean my palette so I used what was left on there..to play around on the highly textured surface... I guess you could say that I used trash paint too. hehehe.

#73 Going in  Circles 20x20 Mixed media (c) 2013
Not sure if it's completely done... I've cropped it a bit on the right side (with Photoshop, not actually) And I might try to make it work as a square composition, my favorite. I'll look at it again tomorrow.


Worked some more and ended up here... (on the left) Calling it finished. :-)

Poppies Abstracted

#66 Poppies Abstracted ~7x5~ acrylic on collage
I have a larger (24x18 inch) one of these begun...I decided to test out some background colors on a smaller size. (Getting smarter in my old age, right?) This process has no do-overs. Gesso won't help. (Though it would make an incredibly textured surface to do something completely different on.) But these watery pure and transparent effects...it's a one shot deal. Yikes stripes.