This past week month has been crazy. I still cannot fathom how my life gets busier instead of calmer. What am I doing wrong? Right now the only me time I am getting is my 3 hour oasis in my abstract painting class each Sunday. This is my painting from last Sunday. But the time I got around to photographing it today, I had forgotten where I stashed it. Life is THAT crazy. This one I do love. I am enamored with my new palette of colors, bright clear colors. We have the choice of painting in acrylic or oil. I was planning on only oil, but I was running late last week and just couldn't wrap my head around oil since it had been about 15 years since I used them. So the painting was started in acrylic and then by the end of class I was fully present (be here now) and pulled out the rich blue oil paint. Ah, the smell of oils. Bev (teacher) is right. There is nothing like the richness of  oil paint.  It has a sheen, a glow that you just don't get with acrylic. PS. That blue circle at the top of the painting is actually the clamp holding it up. Funny how it matches the color of the blue oil paint.

The assignment was to paint the negative spaces in the room, paint them as masses. I am good at massing color, well at least when it comes to fabric. Line is not my strong point and it's one of the reasons I am in this class.  As a quilter, line is of extreme importance, so I must learn to work with line if I am to meet my goals and personal expectations. So moving on to Week #3, today's class…

We had a model today doing 2 and 5 minute poses and the assignment was to fill first our newsprint page and then later our very large (to me) canvas, with gesture drawings, overlapping, both massing form and working with line. I took figure drawing years ago, so I am not afraid to do this (I was scared to death in that first class), but I am not very sure of myself. I too suffer from perfectionism, but as a habitual repeat offender, I do know how to overcome my habit.

The canvas was to be prepared with a dark ground, hence the black background. We drew with gesso and then later color. I cannot do more than 2 or 3 things at once, so I used only the 2 colors. other students more experienced with abstract painting did glorious color-filled canvases of gesture, line, overlapping figures, hidden figures, suggested figures, in essence more abstracted. But if you're reading this, then you are familiar with my work and where I am coming from. This painting was a huge stretch for me.

I'm not loving it, but I'm learning from it. I was surprised to hear Bev say that something I was trying to do was hard and yet I had done it successfully. All I remember is the word successfully. She thought that the shadow figure in the upper right corner that I had painted over and then wiped away the paint, should be painted out. The dark in that corner will balance out the rest of the canvas. I thought so too, but I was trying to be more abstract and do something that wasn't to my liking. I do like the upper left figure I carved out of the negative space. And she also pointed out the good way the figures increase in size from lower right to upper left. I had not even noticed that. It was unintentional, or shall I say, intuitive. Some things do happen intuitively when you learn to let go. Compared to others in this class, my painting looks tighter, more contrived, but again, Bev said it had a nice loose feel to it. It's hard to recognize things in your own work.

It's a hard call to know when you think something looks good, is it because that's your usual way of doing something and you are comfortable with the look, or if it really does look right for this particular painting. I LOVE these questions. I love the challenge of this class. I love the escape it gives me from my frenetic everyday life. It opens the window on my dream, it allows me to breathe. It makes me feel alive.

This week and next, I'll be preparing for 2 quilting events, the big Quilt Festival in Houston at the end of the month, and next Friday and Saturday, my guest appearance and book signing at the local Nimble Fingers Quilt Guild show. I'll be there on Friday from 10:30 to noon and on Saturday from 1:30 to 4. Please stop by and say hello if you're local to the Washington DC metropolitan area. I'll be doing demos, bringing several of my quilts and my Self-Portrait Collaboration book with artwork by the likes of Lynne Perrella, Nina Bagley, LK Ludwig, Claudine Hellmuth and more!