Trying new things...
In my studio again... I wrote this weeks ago, so the publish date is a little off!!!
I have been on a journey of exploration this year. Since my late 20s or so, I have been a classic oil painter. My style has ranged from realism to impressionism with a lot of landscape and still life work. I have also worked a bit in water color. I have been in a funk with my creativity for a long time, feeling unsatisfied with my work and creating a random assortment of things and a lot of total rubbish! I have gone months to years at a time without creating anything. Early in the spring of 2020, I had a too much time for introspection with the Covid-19 shutdown, going through an emotional rollercoaster over the pandemic and the realization of my shrinking time left on this earth... with my hands and my eyes working functionally enough to create art. I decided to try my hand at something new. Acrylics and and abstracts.
This past year has been an exploration of materials and styles. I started out with a plan to have fun, to paint looser and more freely, painting by intuition with a minimal vision of a final product. I started using acrylic, charcoal, oil pastel, and pencil, working primarily on paper.
I took Louise Fletcher's free workshop, Find Your Joy, in mid-June of 2020. After that course I created the work right and below.
I thought changing my style and painting abstracts would be easy. WRONG! It is so hard to just create with no idea of what I want to do or where it is headed. I have created a lot of really ugly art since starting this adventure. When schools reopened and I went back to work (I am a full-time school psychologist) my art practice dwindled away again for the most part. When my husband and tween/teen boys started skiing every weekend, I used that precious quiet time to get back in my studio to paint.
Over the winter I have continued to practice and explore, creating the works below in recent weeks. I feel like I may be on to something, but need to keep moving forward and see where a regular art practice can take me!
Glacier 1 & 2 - mixed media (acrylic, pencil, charcoal, and oil pastel) on paper (Jan/Feb 2020)
