ORGANIC TEXTURE AND NEW TECHNIQUES

I have started a new art piece. There is a local show coming up calling for figures at one of our local community art centers. I began by prepping a birch board panel 24 x 24 with various colors for the background. Then I painted her body. But as I sat with it in my studio, I decided it was just too common. There will be a lot of painted figures submitted and I wanted to do something different. So I took my favorite medium: dictionary pages and dipped them into a mix of water and mod podge. It's cheaper than using matte medium.. and works very similar. I layered the crushed wrinkled pages down and filled in her shape. And I thought about the complexity of our lives, how words become so jumbled up in our heads.. it's hard to read yourself in our hectic crazy world. So now she is complete and I like the symbolism. She is really really wet, so now she needs to dry for days..luck we live in a dry climate. But in the meantime, I have a lot more to do on the piece.

I want to make a tree branch hanging over her with leaves. To continue the idea of using recycled paper, I am going to make the tree out of small rolled up paper beads of different colors of magazine paper. Then I can lay them in a linear fashion which should create the lines of bark. That's my intention. I realize that will be a lot of rolling. The beads are various lengths but generally 1 to 2 inches long. And I have a cool idea for the leaves, but more on that later. I also want to have her holding a bird nest in her outstretched hand.

The full intention of this piece came to me while I was rolling beads this morning. When I am feeling overwhelmed, I often turn to nature to calm me. So, she sits still in nature and soon she becomes one with the beauty and the simplicity,, so much that the birds have adapted to her presence and she has become part of the landscape. She reminds us to take the TIME to be in nature and tap into it's wonderful healing and nurturing powers. I like this idea and it will excite me to continue to roll all these beads!!!! This is when art is for me at it's best. When the ah-ha blossoms and the creativity brings me closer to the universe. And always, I am humbled by the power.

namaste