It’s my birthday!
And it’s a perfect spring day here in Austin. It’s sunny and warm, and the trees are all leafing out in a lovely shade of fresh green. My bougainvillea, lantana, and various other flowering plants are in spectacular bloom. My garden presented me today with the 4 beautiful calla lilies you see here.
The house is clean; the laundry is done; the taxes are paid, and there’s nothing pressing on my calendar today; I’m getting close to finishing the design of another website; I’ve just gotten two new clients for web design, but at the moment, I’m not swamped with work; and my office/studio is more organized than it’s been in a long time.
Today is San Jacinto Day — the celebration of the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836. It was the final battle of the Texas Revolution where Texas won its independence from Mexico. Good thing, or I don’t know where I’d be living now!
Also, on this day in 753 BC, Romulus and Remus founded Rome (traditional date).
Read the rest of this entry
Here is a sample of some of the small sketches and paintings I have been playing with over the past couple of months. Most of them are 6″x6″; some are oil crayon or water-soluable pencil on paper or canvas paper; some are acrylic on canvas paper; some are oil on canvas. I consider one or two of these to be completed works; most of them are just stretching my fingers and my imagination; who knows where this exploration will lead?
Traces
Encaustic and Mixed Media on Paper Mounted on Birch Panel
12″ x 12″
I think I started this painting almost two years ago! I was never quite satisfied with it, though. There was something about the left-hand side of the painting that I just could never resolve. In the process of my attempts to resolve the left-hand side, some of the crispness on the right-hand side got literally blown away, since it is encaustic, and I am using a hot air gun to fuse the layers of wax. The air tends to blow the paint around and blend it together, which I used to my advantage in the nuclear bomb, tornado and poppy paintings, but I had carved the stems into this painting, and carefully filled them in with oil paint. Subsequent workings blew those lines around, the little ball-shapes got smushed or distorted, and I eventually put the piece aside until a couple of days ago.
Read the rest of this entry
“Tornado – Erie, KS – November 27, 2005″
Encaustic on Masonite
8″ x 10″
I have thought of creating a painting based on this one, but much larger than it’s 8″x10″ size, and more abstracted. It could look something like this.
(from this fun little site: dumpr.net )
