Change is Good.

After years of taking a straightforward approach to my acrylic plein air painting, I am developing a new style based on mixed media, represented  by the attached photo of my art, completed in January, 2011.   Instead of working on canvas, I am creating on masonite now, beginning with a complete pencil drawing that shows values and details.  I then add color with watercolor pencils.  After spraying the masonite panel with water from a spray bottle.  The colors bloom in a most fascinating way.  I then use colored pencils to "tighten up" the image, and enhance the colors further.  It's an interesting approach with which I'm experimenting. 

Common Ground on the Hill

I attended Common Ground on the Hill, a summer "art camp" at McDaniel College in Westminster, MD, this past week.  For completing three classes per day for the past five days and 100 hours of work outside of class, I will receive 3 graduate credits.  The three classes I took were Watercolor Painting, Photoshop, and Manga (Japanes cartooning).  I felt the most success at Watercolor, because it was very like work I am doing in my studio with wet-in-wet acrylics on paper.  The teacher, Ellen Elmes, was great, and taught me a lot.  We started with the concept of "home", and Ellen encouraged me to think beyond my initial ideas and to develop symbols for them.  We worked through a process approach, where you don't fully design the work ahead of time, but develop it one stage or layer at a time.  My art is included.  It's entitled "The Number 5", and it contains images important to me as symbols of my childhood.

The Gettysburg Festival was great. About 17 of us painted for the 10 days of the festival. I painted threed days myself, and completed 2 paintings. "View from Sachs Covered Bridge" is pioctured here. Started on Monday

21, it was a sweltering day, so immediately looked for a shady view of the bridge. When I walked through the dark tunnel of the bridge itself, I noticed the lattice-like sides and the diamond patterns through which one could view the world outside. The fisherman ouside through one of the diamond shapes sealed it for me. I painted this scene using acrylics on watercolor paper from about 9 am until 1:30 pm, and finished it at home on June 26, the day before our art show at the Historic Gettysburg Railroad Station.

Frederick Barnstormers Create Amazing Plein Air Work

Yesterday, June 19, was the date of the Barnstormers tour, a local event hosted by the Frederick County Landmarks Foundation. Each year the barns in a different part of Frederick County are selected for visitors to tour. The tour fees collected support the FCLF's efforts to preserve the barns, a vestige of our county's agricultural heritage.

Artists are also invited to paint images of the barns en plein air (in the open air). People touring the barns can see the artists in action, and can see the completed paintings at an exhibition at the end of the tour. Yesterday's tour was of the barns close to Frederick City, and the exhibition was at the Schifferstadt Architectural Museum, which is right in Frederick at the Rosemomt Ave. exit of Rt. 15.

Each artist is assigned to a barn which he/she paints a picture of. I was assigned to a unique structure because for the first time the Barnstormers Tour featured a building which was NOT a barn, but a mill. Kelley's Mill sits right next to the Cersville Mansion at the intersection of Rt. 26 and Rt. 194 in Walkersville. Upon arrival at 8:30 am yesterday, I was met by one of the vultures which inhabit the building's top floor. I was immediately struck by all the detail (read junk) in a corner of a garage-like structure attached at a right angle to the mill itself. I focused on this corner because it reminded me of a painting I had created in the alley behind my dad's antique shop in Kensington back in the 70's.

I drew lightly on Arches Watercolor block paper, and then I sprayed the paper with water. I dripped, and spattered very wet acrylic paint. I watched the paint spread, run together, and eventually dry before repeating this procedure. Once I had established some of the local color in this unique and very loose way, I began drawing structural elements and foliage with color Sharpies. The last step was to draw the vultures, one of which I saw at the beginning, and others which came to visit during the middle of my painting session. I worked on this painting from 8:30 am until 1:30 pm.

We had a lot of people touring the barns - not so many at the exhibition. Other artists I know who were there included Deborah Lovelace Richardson, Harry Richardson, Linda Zvolenski, Anne Gibson Snyder, and Donna Timm. My painting is entitled "Vulture's Roost - Kelly's Mill".

Frederick Arts Council Member Aty Show

I am entering two pieces into an art show at the Cultural Arts Center at 15 W. Patrick St. in Frederick, MD. The two pieces are "Purple Coneflowers" and "Christmas Day Sunset". You can see these two in the pictures attached to this blog entry, or at the Cultural Arts Center, from Dec. 3 to Dec. 21, 2009. You'll also get to see some pretty great art from other Frederick area artists. Right before the holidays is a great time to show fine art. I hope you can make it.

I have applied for and been accepted as the artist of the month for September 2010 for the Weinberg Center for the Performing Arts in Frederick, MD. I am excited to be working on art which is a new direction for me. I've been creating some works with "wet-in-wet" acrylic backgrounds, and with brightly colored images rendered in Sharpie markers over the background. I was inspired to do this through a class in abstract acrylic painting taught by Ed Ramsburg at the Delaplaine Visual Arts & Education Center in Frederick. I was doing a lot of work based on pouring wet acrylics on paper or canvas, letting the wet paint dry, and then pouring some more layers. I was thinking about making some gifts for parents who were helping me with an art show at my school, and I came up with the idea of the wet-in-wet backgrounds with brightly colored drawings over them. The parents seemed to really like their gifts, and I enjoyed making them, so I began creating more art of this sort for myself. One of my chief sources of inspiration was our pet guinea pigs, so at the Weinberg Center next September, performing arts patrons will be treated to artwork whose subject will be Brownie and Double Stuff, our two pets, as well as landcsapes and various other subjects.

I'm planning on having around 25 pieces for the show, at sizes like 18" x 24" and 16" x 20". I still have quite a few to complete, but as I am an elementary school art teacher, I have my summer vacation to look forward to during which I can create full time. I hope you can come to see my work at the Weinberg Center in September 2010!

"Battlefield Reflections at Frederick Cellars

Four artists including myself are having an artshow at Frederick Cellars at 221 North East Street in Frederick, MD. I, along with Rebecca Jackson, Deborah Lovelace Richardson, and Glenn Souders have on display plein air landscapes of local battlefields such as Antietam, Monocacy, and Gettysburg. In 2008 I encouraged other artists to paint en plein air and so we started in March of that year at Monocacy Battlefield in Frederick. This is a lesser-known battlefield, and it's an undiscovered gem in our area. We painted together with many other artists from Maryland and Pennsylvnia in June 2009 at Gettysburg, as part of the Gettysburg Festival. Then we hit on the idea of having a joint show so we kept on painting separately and together at Antietam, Monocacy, and the South Mountain battlefield. We organized the show with about 30 pieces, all paintings, at Frederick Cellars for the month of November and it was very well received.