Art Chick Shtick

pre-heART of WinTer

Glitter, Garniture and other Tricks

So about that freshly stripped table..

Shockingly, I ended up painting it.

I really was going to vinegar paint it but all of my dry pigments are in New York. 

So while I was paint-shopping at Sinopia I noticed they have some cool stuff in their clearance section including Iron Glimmer from Morocco.  I probably need some, afterall if you're going to use an iron oxide god knows it's always better when it's from Morocco.   

(If you have no idea what to do with Iron Glimmer from Morocco stick around because as soon as I get my hands on some pigments I'll do a demo here.  I'll do demos here occasionally as time allows.  This blogging is really cutting into my naps)

I know the table looks hideous now but just wait.

Honestly I think most of what I paint looks hideous until the final days.

Case in point:

By next week they'll look less Edward Gorey-inspired.

Frightening, aren't they.  They look like me in the morning after I've been up all night painting.

Actually it is kind of like looking at yourself in the mirror in the morning.  Well, maybe it's just me but I cannot survive without a small boudoir-type lamp in the bathroom.  I can't say enough about how much my disposition improves when the first image I see of myself is in low, chiaroscuro-esque lighting.  Try it if you don't believe me.

I'm not saying it makes you look ravishing or anything.  But looking less freaky first thing in the morning can seriously set the tone for your entire day. 

I swear I look like this if I don't do the lighting trick:

So instead of doing the final-finish paint job on the table I'm getting myself back on track with my stuff, for the HeART of WinTer show which is like next week.  I'm so seriously not ready.  As per usual.

And now it's time for make up for me then glitter and garniture for these girls...

Obsessive Creativity Disorder: We can hardly control ourselves!

"My darling girl, when are you going to realize that being normal is not necessarily a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage!"    --Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic

Do you ever find yourself in the midst of a Obsessive Creativity Disorder -style creative frenzy and suddenly do something so bizarrely normal that no one believes you did it?  How often do you ask yourself, "What was I thinking?" 

Sophie and I cleaned out the armoire in the room-formerly-known-as-the-dining hall.  I'm not saying that this doesn't happen often but this is the armoire Joe Thomas was found in--alive--after he had been missing for three or four days.

--insert image--

In another highly controversial act, something else as equally uncharacteristic occurred:

--insert image--

I stripped the paint off a table.  True story.

Understand that this is groundbreaking.  Ornate Bavarian dinner plates, full services of silverware, centerpieces and requisite food is more likely to be painted on the table top than to have something colorful removed.

Babette's Feast has been on my mind for the past week--possibly fueling some sort of Gustavian fantasy where my life suddenly becomes cool, ordered and serene.  And my upholstered furniture is all professionally linen-covered and frumpled. 

Professionally frumpled.  Now that's some kind of goal.

And the wood furniture is stripped and waxed or painted a rainy Scandinavian grey.

Is there a possiblity that I have Seasonal Affective Disorder and I'm secretly getting depressed?

Who am I kidding?  I think I'll get Bob to finish stripping it so the surface is even.  And then maybe I'll vinegar paint the table top next week. 

Something more vivid and compelling than grey.

Last month at the Country Life Gallery in Warwick, NY, I had a conversation with Cheryl Kuhn about grey--it's her favorite color!

and PS, Joe's armoire is now filled with paint and I donated the armoire's former contents, a bunch of the fabric and yarn, but I'm not giving up my stash of Noro...never!

completato!

the colors are way off--cupcake wrapper is pink

more sweet little girls at their party are off to Earth Angels

Colette in the studio

***a couple new paintings for Jen will be posted this afternoon

Technical problems this morning:

Colette let's me know when she's not happy with my choice of brushes...she's a Japanese cattle dog (1/2 shiba inu and 1/2 australian cattledog or something like that) and always watching my brushes.  She never touches my paintings but if I don't show her the brush before I use it she grabs it.  I'm easily amused.

I do sit around painting on a cushy pink velvet sofa in a big purple room but that cord behind us is a heating pad for my back--painting is hard work!

Okay so back to work--I'll be back later with good stuff...

Happy Glitter Day!

This is an especially exciting day--it's snowing here in the blustery Ohio cornfields AND it's a GLITTER DAY!!!

One of the keys to my happy marriage is keeping the mica and glitter under control since I don't tend to stay in my studio and there's usually a trail of sparkle following me.  I like to think of it as a flurry of little fairies fluttering after me--but maybe it's just me. Bob thinks my little addiction (...you know, g-l-i-t-t-e-r) isn't good for the environment so I've agreed to massive glittering only on Thursdays.  Maybe it has something to do with him needing the weekend to get it vaccuumed up. (He thinks I don't know how to use power tools--like shop vacs and that sort of thing--heh heh heh)

A Day Alone...

(sigh)  I'm finishing paintings to send to Jen--the studio smells like warm beeswax and I'll need a big cup of coffee to get me through this afternoon.  This is not a day for Redbull.  The rain is pending.  I'm drowsy.  It's a fine day to be alone.  No kids just a big sleeping puppy to keep me company.
                                          
More paintings uploaded to the albums--I'm sure none of the dates will be accurate.  It's difficult to care about that sort of thing--it's kind of like balancing a checkbook--you know they're there so who cares when and how much.  But it's interesting to go back through these images--I can tell the paintings that were done on days when I was being crazy with all the kids at home, cozy little paintings of baby sheep (I'll be out driving the back roads of Ohio looking for newborns in a couple weeks hopefully) and chickens (I LOVE chickens!),  days when I was terribly lonesome--especially when I desperately wanted to be back in New York--and then there are the days when I was ovulating!  Seriously!  I'm at my wittiest those days.  Well. at least I find myself terrifically amusing--see "I Would Explain It To You (But There's Too Much Math Involved" for example--I still like that one.  Sophie saw that one last night and laughed--she remembered when I painted that one and now she wants me to paint one like that for her--but with her big fat cat Joe Thomas looking at her homework. I never really thought about the possibility of the kids remembering specific days that paintings were done.  I know my adoring husband Bob keeps an eye on what I'm painting--I painted cakes when I wanted to have another baby--and i tried to warn the people that bought them that they were symbols of fertility and someone would get pregnant.  Bob was so happy to send those off--he knew exactly what those were all about.  He's a clever one.

welcome to my studio!

Welcome to my studio blog--finally!  This isn't so difficult to do and i think it will be fun--starting with going through old images and uploading them into albums--if I'm making this more difficult to navigate than it needs to be then please let me know--otherwise stay tuned--i haven't looked at this stuff in years!  I hope you all like the polka dot background--it took me about an hour to figure that out.

Now to the photos...