Boxes, Boxes, More Boxes

There is not much to share in my blog this weekend. It seems as the holidays approach, it gets to be tougher and tougher to find art time, but I did manage to squeeze a little time in.

I finished the second two of the four 12x12" blue encaustics I needed to complete before next Saturday's holiday luncheon with art friends, where we will be doing a critique on this project. The first two are shown in an earlier post in my blog. All four of these were along a theme of some object in your bedroom. I picked a pile of boxes in my room and just played with that. I was supposed to paint in only one color - blue or red, but clearly I did not stick to the rules. Always the renegade...



Technorati tags: art , painting , encaustic painting

Sausalito Open Studios

On Saturday, I went with a couple of friends to the Open Studios at the artist community in Sausalito, in a building called Industrial Center Building (ICB). There are about 80 artist studios in the building. One artist, Sherry Miller, is a friend of mine. Here she is in her open studio space.

And here is the incredible view out the back of the building (as you can see from the light, it was getting to be late afternoon...)

I really enjoyed the quality of work there, the beautiful light and incredible view in many of the studios, and I am considering renting studio space there (I probably won't get the great light or views, but even the small spaces are enough room to paint in). It certainly seemed like a great environment for artists.

One really poignant moment was we went into the studio of one artist who was creating interesting work with glass - full featured stained glass, but on mirrors and without the copper foiling or other bordering. Just glued. Some were 3-D reliefs and were quite impressive. The woman in the studio said the work was her husband's but it took a little bit (particularly because she was struggling with figuring out how to answer the cell phone she had that was ringing and we were trying to help her) and it turned out that her husband had died three days before and she was there trying to sell some of his work. His partially completed projects were on his work table and it occurred to me that she must have been having a tremendous challenge concentrating on *anything* at all.

As artists, we create until the day we die.

Okay, on Sunday I did get back into my encaustic work. I worked on #3 of the 4 paintings I'm doing on the box series. I didn't quite finish it today, so I'll post a picture when I get it done.




Technorati tags: art , painting , encaustic painting , Sausalito Open Studios