Apr 11, 2010

It's the paint silly!


I painted this little 8.5 x 11 piece this weekend. Just moving around the gesso and the molding paste and the colors I don't normally use. Micaceous iron oxide. Payne's grey, anthraquinone blue. Painting for the sake of painting, not as a means to some other end, not simply to add color to some other project. Exploring my beloved color and texture. Soaking in the joy of pushing paint around with my fingers.

It seems I am a painter. Artfest has been trying to tell me this for a couple of years now. Not that I have some kind of talent or skill for painting, but that I have a passion for it. It is always in the painting classes, the classes where I am plunked down and expected to paint for several hours, it's in those classes that I lose myself. I get so absorbed in what I'm doing that I lose track, even of the passing of time. I'm completely in the zone. It's a glorious and joyful place. A place where I work spontaneously and confidently, just laying down color and texture and then responding to it with more color and texture. Expressing myself.

My heart is firmly and happily placed in the mixed media world and this little painting is no exception, incorporating rubber stamps and graphite pencil. There are more bits and pieces in the studio waiting for more layers, some of which will undoubtedly include collage and stencils and even stitching, but I am ready to focus on the paint and see where it takes me.

1 comment:

Judy Merrill-Smith said...

Yup, there is something really freeing about paint. But I'm still a fiber girl at heart. I saw your "Dirty Martini" quilt in Post Falls this weekend. Nice piece! I really enjoyed the whole show.