Paint, Paint, and More Paint

In an earlier post I remarked that I was ready to paint again with vigorous, big strokes. That meant OIL PAINT.
I haven't used oils in years.

When I began using encaustics in 1996, I was smitten. I left my old medium, oils, for a new one. I loved encaustics then and I still do, but the limitations of the hot wax make it challenging to work in a larger scale. The wax hardens before I can make a long stroke of paint.

Then I unpacked my oils. Yikes! Absence did not make my nose grow fonder. The odor was so pungent that my allergies rebelled.

But, I reasoned, oil paint is compatible with encaustic paint.

So I squeezed out some oils, heated up the wax, and painted. The painting was awful. The surface of the painting was gobby, the design poor, and the smell of the oils made my head hurt! I'd been away too long, and now the odor was a problem. I put the painting away.

Still yearning to paint boldly, I remembered an old stand-by of mine---black and white tempera paint. Powdered tempera is a liberating medium since it is quick to dry, can be made thick enough to have some heft, and it's cheap.The flip side, though, is that it can be brittle when dry. The first "Brain-Drain" painting, Study #2, was crumbly and fragile when it dried.

©2011 Kathryn Dettwiller  Study # 3, Charcoal, Acrylic on Paper,

26 x 20"

Since I had acrylics on hand, I thought they could substitute for the tempera. Here I worked some black and white as well as colored acrylic into the charcoal base layer. The finished work is now mostly acrylic paint without the brittleness of tempera.

Water, Water Everywhere

 © 2010  Kathryn Dettwiller    Flood  Encaustic on Claybord  12 X 12"

Water can be so destructive. The people in Japan know that firsthand. Nearly a year ago, Nashville was flooded...not by a tsunami, but from torrential rain.The Metropolitan Nashville Arts Commission put out a call for submissions for their juried show, Spirit of the River, and my painting (above) was accepted.It will be on display in their Metro Arts Gallery until May 6th. Stop by and see what 14 area artists visualized about the Nashville Flood of 2010.

Series or Cereal? That is the Question (pardon me, Mr. Shakespeare)

Artists create their work in many different ways. I prefer to work in a series format, while others like to be more random in their subjects, styles, and content, like many cereals.

What is a "series?" you may wonder. A series is a group of like-minded, like-themed, on-topic works that explore a central idea. To work in a series format allows you to spend time with an idea, to develop it or to abandon it for something else. For me, creating in that fashion allows the process of making art to unfold in a personal and meaningful way.

How do I decide what idea to explore? First and foremost, the idea has to have some personal resonance for me; it has to substantially relate to my world. When something speaks louder than the rest or when Sera (short for serendipity, or the Holy Spirit, if you will), keeps reminding you again and again, that topic has  significance for you. For example, many years ago my husband and I thought about a taking a trip to Santa Fe. As never before, the city came up in conversations, in print, and on television...others were mentioning Santa Fe before we had a chance to say that we might go there!

Zola on the Couch ©1992 Kathryn Dettwiller, Oil on Canvas, 18 x 24"

From 1992-1995, I painted my dog, Zola, a brown standard poodle. The Zola Series was a time for learning about myself and channeling those various facets into a surrogate form, Zola. She appeared in almost 50 paintings, ranging from serious representation to downright wacky portrayals.

Portrait of Zola, Frontal  ©1992  Kathryn Dettwiller, Mixed Media on Paper, 28 x 21"

   

I Don't Think We're in Kansas Anymore  ©1992   Kathryn Dettwiller, Oil on Canvas, 36 x 36"

Cleaned Up & Fixed Up

A Cleaned Up & Fixed Up corner in the studio. This makes me smile!

I feel lighter and ready to go to work.

Who would have guessed that this is the same corner that I photographed on August 18th, before the closet was built?

Blogging for You and Blogging for Me

I have been blogging since May 2010 to the World-Wide Ether, just trying to get a feel for the process and the commitment. Having a wandering commitment hasn't served me well. Like learning a new skill or technique or, more to the point, learning to use the "new technology", blogging has been a challenge.
Since blogging is a self-driven activity, it has been very easy to avoid...until now.

I have signed up for an online course, Blog Triage, which #1, I paid money for, and #2 requires homework completed timely. Why? I needed the incentive to proceed.

Fresh out of the gate, our fearless class instructors Alyson Stanfield and Cynthia Morris, have started with a basic question: who do I want to visit and read my blog?

Initially, I am writing to keep friends, family and collectors up to date on my work and my activities. By providing a glimpse into my world as an artist I want to share the influences, the inspirations and some of the challenges that are addressed in the final product, the actual art itself. I believe that this kind of information will enhance their experience of viewing not only my work, but the work of other artists.
As time goes by I hope to broaden my audience and connect with curators, other artists and art professionals who would support my work.

In my initial post, A Painter Speaks, I wrote about my focus for this blog, which is informing viewers while informing myself. I would like to become more proficient in verbalizing about my work, both orally and in the written word. Since composing with words is far more difficult for me than composing with shapes and colors, this blog will hopefully engage the reader in some measure while it engages me in a different language of expression.

I've Missed Painting

Is it the fall air? I've missed painting. The stand-up kind. I had a discussion not too long ago about working methodology. For several years, I have worked with encaustic and it is most agreeable to work with the work flat, that is, parallel to the floor. The arm/hand movements are necessarily short and contained. After all, the wax cools so quickly that a short stroke is all you get, unless you heat it and move it around. Oil painting, though, is so different. The strokes can be however you like them to be. And if you change your mind, well, you can just do it differently. And I am a "stander" when I paint.
A couple of weeks ago I began some encaustic paintings on Claybord, smallish ones, 12x12". Before I realized it, I was dancing with the paint and an electric spatula...all over the surface. It was fun!!

© 2010 Kathryn Dettwiller Desktop Stack, Encaustic on Claybord, 12 x 12"

For a good while, I have made contained work. Easily contained on the surface of the board. But these, wow, these spilled all over the edges and I used some thread to visually rein in the shapes. To contain the bedlam of color and shape, I put a tiny thread fence that is useless. 

Visual Clutter...Ugh

It seems that everywhere, visual clutter is overwhelming my eyes. From electrical lines to billboards to roving vehicles, my eyes have no place to rest. Even in my studio, piles of books, files, papers, compete with racks of supplies. I feel like I'm drowning in STUFF.

What to do? Clean up, straighten up, and throw out. I have begun to attack the weight of things, both done and undone. My desk area is straight, and I'm leaving it that way each day when I turn out the lights. That's a small step in the right direction to lighten my load.

I am having a closet built to hide all of my supplies. I have stripped the walls of those  myriad printouts of sayings, of cartoons that spoke to me, of photographs and assorted other visuals that make my eye dance. I like the empty white walls. It is peaceful and inviting. Soon, the whole room will be like that!

Today's Menu: Take it or Leave it

A while back I chatted with Jane Braddock on the phone. We compared health notes, as we both had had some major hospitalizations, and we concluded that we were fine and healthy now. She invited me to her home for lunch and more conversation. I couldn't refuse!

Jane is a good cook and a hostess with the most-ess, despite this plaque over her cooktop:

If I had invited her to my home for lunch, I'd probably have given her a sandwich. But Jane grilled salmon for me. I am really lucky!

And it was yummy.

Jane graciously gave me the first class tour of her wonderful home. It is chocked full of fabulous art from her friends, her travels, and her African collection, not to mention her own work. Impressive does not fully describe it!

Next came the studio... Jane and Birdie. 

 And in her living room...a large diptych. On the left is a painting from her Shakti series. It is married with a newer work, Sweet Cold, from her text series.

You can see more of her fine work at http://janebraddock.com

More from Martha Christian

Martha sent this updated photo of the tapestry with this note:

"Hi, Just to prove I finished sewing slits and blocking the "rough" version!"

Martha

Isn't it spectacular?

A Monumental Masterpiece

I know very little about weaving besides warp ( the vertical strands) and weft (the horizontal strands that rhyme with "left".) But on April 25th, I was invited to Martha Christian's studio to witness the cutting of her tapestry from her 80" loom. What a treat for all of us who gathered to be a part of the process. Her studio, dominated by the loom, is a spacious room over the garage in her home.

 Isn't this a HUGE loom?

After sampling the refreshments and chatting with the other guests, we listened to Martha speak a bit before beginning the cutting and tieing procedure to remove the tapestry from its birthing place.

Martha Christian is a tiny person. The photography makes her seem much larger than she actually is.

Here she is talking to us about the process. She holds the cartoon drawing of the finished work. The "cartoon" is the design of the work. 

A closeup of the loom with lots and lots of knots

 

Lots and lots of string  

That must be cut precisely and knotted

To free the tapestry from the loom

  

 

   

Then, it took several people to move and position the tapestry on the wall where we all could see it better. That "we" included Martha herself, since the weaver doesn't get to see more than a 6" swath as she weaves.

Martha with her creation

explaining the connections

And the completed work

The wools are wildly intense and saturate the senses. It is magnificent in color and scale,
don't you agree?



Last week Martha sent me this photo of the tapestry blocked out on the floor

with this note:

"Finally I finished sewing the slits. Now the tapestry is pinned to the rug pad and ready for steam pressing. Wish you were here to crawl around with me.  Martha"

Hot Time in Cool Mass

The 4th Annual Encaustic Conference heated up Montserrat College in Beverly, Massachusetts, from June 11-13, 2010, and beyond. It was a jam-packed four days of panels, lectures, demonstrations, and for me, one day of art making in Miles Conrad's class, Off the Wall: Encaustic in Three Dimensions. Here http://montserratencausticconference.blogspot.com/  you can find numerous accounts of the goings-on. The conference was informative, empowering, and exciting. On top of that, it was FUN. Kudos go to Joanne Mattera http://www.joannemattera.com/ for organizing and directing the conference and to Montserrat College http://www.montserrat.edu/ for implementing and supporting the events. It was outstanding!

Best Foot Forward

One of the features of the conference was a presentation area for each participant who wanted to display one of their works. The organizers carefully delineated a one foot square section of wall for each conferee.

This is my work, The Day the Line Broke, which I completed before the flood in Nashville in May. How did I know that Nashville would be flooded?

Hot Wax, Cool Wax

Following the conference I took a workshop with Miles Conrad on Encaustic in Three Dimensions. What fun!! We dipped all sorts of objects, like wire, a paper towel, muslin, corrugated cardboard, foam strips, and seed pods into a container of hot wax. Our objective was to fashion orbs out of those unlikely materials. These are (clockwise) baling wire, monofilament with cable ties, and a strip of corrugated cardboard.

The entire class curated this grouping.

Our final assignment was to choose more than 2 of our "creations," combine and attach them to our substrate panel, and pour hot wax onto the panel, which had been taped to provide a containing "fence."

Here's my "creation":

Seed pods, twine, and jute combine with the monofilament line and corrugated cardboard strip on a field of wax.

And our final exhibition.

That's Miles!

Blue Like the Depths of the Unknown

I wrote three posts for this blog back in April and May. But a funny thing happened on the way to becoming “live”, life got in the way. In mid-May I decided that I needed a good beginning post. The other posts that I had drafted are here, too, in the Archive.  “Isn’t that just like an artist,” a friend commented.

Over May 1st and 2nd, Nashville received 15” of rain which flooded our city. If you ever thought about building an ark, this would have been a real test of its worthiness. The rain just kept coming. Places flooded. Places that never flood. It was an astonishing amount of rain, and the televised coverage of what was happening painted a picture of misery all over our city. Streets became rivers. Homes filled with water up to their ceilings. Basements soaked up what the saturated ground could not contain. People waded in water up to their chest. Soon, boats rescued trapped citizens. Cars washed away. People died. It was a shocking sight.

Here is a link to a YouTube video of the flooding:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFjaQoOdJvI&feature=email

During the flooding, my church had a river running through it. On Sunday May 9th as I was sitting in my pew, I surveyed the aftermath of one week of professional cleanup. There were no prayer books or hymnals, no cushions, no baseboards, nor drywall from 2 feet down. But there were a gracious plenty parishioners who partook in the communion of bread and wine and mourning for two beloved parishioners who died in the flood. They were on their way to services.

Mixed Media on Canvas on Panel          24" x 24"

As the rector was preaching, I was struck by his words and realized that the painting that I finished yesterday was influenced by the floodwaters. Earlier in the week, the upper part of the painting had been mostly fleshed out with overlapping pieces of encaustic monoprints printed on Asian papers. But the lower part (textured with hydrocal) was quite a challenge to integrate. After many starts and a variety of colors, I settled on Prussian blue. The darkness and deepness of the blue set the tone for the finished painting. Blue like a body of water. Blue like the somber stillness of nightfall. Blue like a saturnine mood. Blue like the depths of the unknown.

Heart Ache

On Saturday May 22, our oldest poodle, Zinca, died at home. I knew that it was coming. I stayed with her until she finally breathed her last. She would have been 13 next month.

I miss her terribly.

Losing a pet is so hard. We invest so much of ourselves in them, and they in us, that when the time comes to say goodbye, it is wrenching to the core.

In 1997 our first standard poodle, Zola, died. Some time afterwards, I painted this painting.After I finished it and looked critically at it, I realized that I had painted my feelings about losing Zola.

And now it is heartfelt again.

Heart Ache      Encaustic on Panel     24 x 24"    1997

A Painter Speaks

I am a visual person. I see what many people miss. But I miss a lot, too. Such is human nature.
To commit to writing a blog is a challenge to my expressive skills. Writing is not my preferred mode of communication. Writing is way down my list of aptitudes. Writing is not fun for me. But I concur with many other artists who maintain that blogging informs their art practice. So, I am writing.

I have always considered myself a painter, even though I occasionally stray off the page. Two dimensional painting is more familiar to me. Working in the round (three dimensionally) is like dancing with an accomplished dancer. I feel quite uncomfortable and intimidated.

Many years ago I taught art in junior and senior high school. There I learned to verbalize numerous possible solutions to the task at hand. Sometimes it took ten different ways of saying the same thing to connect with a student. The tenth variation might be the ”aha” moment for them.

May all of us, you, the reader, and I, the artist, experience many “ahas.”