“Hortical Mambo”
Oil on canvas
16″ x 20″
© 2011 Marilyn Fenn

Another little breakthrough!

I worked on this until 2am one night last week, then evaluated and made more changes the next day.  I ventured way out of my comfort zone in this painting, color-wise and otherwise, but in general I like the direction.

Ostensibly, this is a painting of flowers, but the idea of flowers is really just something to give a bit of shape to the stuff of the painting–the paint, the colors, the shapes, the interactions.

What I love about working abstractly like this is that I cannot know what my painting will look like when I finish.  There’s no way I could make this painting happen except by painting it! I can make a few plans, but something in the work takes over and demands adjustments.  In this case, the adjustments were major. I love all the beautiful little moments and the unexpected, unplanned color mixes that happen when I work this way.

Maybe it’s just because I tend to be so literal when I work representationally.  When I begin a representational work, my aim is to make what I paint look like what I’m painting from. So I sort of know when I start what I expect my finished work to look like, and I know when I’m done.

This, on the other hand, is a journey into an unknown universe for me, and I love it!  Onward and upward in 2012!

no actual flowers were harmed in the making of this painting

“Flowery Night” (working title)
Oil on canvas
18″ x 18″
© 2011 Marilyn Fenn

My husband brought me a flowers for our anniversary a couple weeks ago.  I got enchanted with the idea of using flowers as a way into shape creation for continuing my abstract paintings, but I was seduced by the representation of the irises and alstroemeria.  The vase in this painting is part representation, part abstraction; around the vase are some abstractions of some frog and snail toys (that you may or may not be able to discern), plus some shapes echoed from the abstracted reflections in the vase…and then there’s just some paint jazz.