by Susan Lobb Porter | Art
I’m sitting on the sofa, feet up on the coffee table. Big exhale…I’m tired, a good tired. Been a good day, spent a lot of hours in the studio. I stocked up on canvases last year. They were on sale locally, 70% off if you bought a case. SEVENTY PERCENT. So I bought them by the case. All different sizes, from 3X4 feet to 5X7 inches. Big fat gallery wrapped canvases. CASES of ‘EM.
Ahhh…
And then I spent the summer and fall painting on wood. That’s just a little bit of it, up above. Plaster and wax (both hot and cold) need a solid substrate. Something that won’t flex and crack. So I built cradled panels, so many I can’t even tell you. I almost sorta forgot about all that canvas. The elephant in the room.
Not any more. The studio is chaos right now. So many works in progress. They’re all in acrylic. Not my favorite medium, not after the juicy lusciousness of oil or the richness of beeswax. And plaster is just plain old fun. But then acrylics mixed into glaze medium and layered and layered and layered and then turned into something magical…ah, I can handle that.
So I spent the day painting backgrounds. Just backgrounds. Random strokes, random colors. Filling the canvas. It’s fun, really. No ego involved, just me and the music. And with all the canvases I have, I could be doing this for the next month. Eventually the paintings will come to me. And when they do, I’ll be ready to go.
For a look at how a painting evolves, check out my recent post ‘Making Peace’.
by Susan Lobb Porter | Art, Life |
Big, big sigh of relief. Show hung. Postcards out. Last minute details done. Look at that picture over there (to the right). Sister M and her coffee. We actually SAT down this afternoon to eat. OK, so it was fast food. Thing is we sat. We savored. Slowly. We lingered over coffee. Chatted. Imagine that, just chatted. Like we had nothing better to do. We talked about growing up. About our grandmother. About the family summer cottage on the Long Island Sound.
About my new haircut. Very nice, by the way. A total stranger came up to me in a store today and told me how much she like it.
We did NOT talk about art.
But this is an art blog so let’s talk about art here. A little tease with a couple more photos. Things I finished the day before the show. Nothing like cutting things a little close, eh? Well, they were almost done, just needed the words. And more wax. They started life as oils on cradled wood. There’s some plaster involved. They’re from the “Portals” series.
Crappy photo alert. Should’ve adjusted the color. Too green.
“Chronicles”
“Messages from Home” Or maybe it’s just “Messages”. I don’t remember….
by Susan Lobb Porter | Art |
Heavy on the carbs tonight and now I’m nodding off to Z-Land. Or maybe it was the yoga with weights DVD I did this evening, which happens to be my new favorite workout. Comes with cool little weights and a foam prop and it’s even on sale. No one is paying me to say this either, just my thighs. Which are screaming, by the way.
Or maybe I’m tired because I was in cleaning mode all day. Got half the studio done, the room where I make my boards and paint. Thought that was the most logical place to start since I had boards to make. And plaster. And/or gesso. The boring-but-gots-to-be-done prep work before painting.
Normal people reading this are probably thinking what the —? It’ just a bunch of unArt. There’s nothing there but white stuff. Please, don’t think of it that way. Think of it as…possibilities. As masterpieces waiting to happen. And then raise your hand, jump up and down and say, “Oh! Oh! I WANT one of those when it’s done!!!”
And FYI, Art Peeps? There’s MORE of these in the wax room! But I’m not going to show you the wax room right now because it’s such a mess. It will be cleaned tomorrow, so I can get down to business with Judy Wise’s new encaustic class.
One more photo before I trundle off to bed.
More magic waiting to happen.
by Susan Lobb Porter | Art |
Studio day! Yay! All day in the studio!!! Pinch me pinch me pinch me–I can’t believe I got to make art ALL DAY–except for the part of the day when I was loading up at the feed store and then back here unloading a truckload of hay. All by myself. But the rest of the day, well, most of the rest of the day… I WAS IN THE STUDIO–
Burning, torching, scorching, playing with fire. Literally. Experimenting with some new (to me) techniques. I love love love trying new stuff. Allowing myself to make mistakes…which is a good thing since I make them regularly. And often.
Some samples from today–but first the disclaimer:
- That picture up above–that’s just part of my wax counter. No burning was done in that room.
- I did NOT burn anything down. Like a building. Or the mountain.
- I
used proper ventilation had all the fans going, blowing out.
- And I wore a respirator. Which proves I value self-preservation over vanity.
- Yes. I HAD A PLAN. I didn’t just go in there with a torch and start firing away. I had a book, “Encaustic Mixed Media” by Patricia Baldwin Seggebruch. I read it (looked at the pictures) and then I started firing away. Sorta knowing where I was going. Art by the seat of my pants.
So this is a closeup of some texture attained by burning wood glue. It was on a cradled board and there was plaster involved. Looks like there was some green paint too. But that unfortunate lapse of judgement came after the fact. It will go away.
Reminds me of a toasted marshmallow. Haven’t had one of those in years. I had a two part marshmallow technique. Stick it in the flames. Burn it to a crisp. Eat the charred part then toast the sticky wet inner part to a nice bubbly brown.
But no mistaking this for a marshmallow, especially after I added some more plaster, leaving the texture alone. Can’t do any more until tomorrow so the plaster can dry. Right now I’m thinking I’ll sand the plaster smooth and sand off the paint as well. But who knows what I’ll do when the time comes.
It’s butt ugly right now but, like all of us, it has potential. I’ll post a photo when it’s finished.
The second piece I did was the same technique sans plaster. Just glue and wood, fire and wax. And a few beads.This one might be done, might not. I’ll live with it and decide later.
