Tag Archives: abstract art

Chapter Nine: Abstract to Divergence

Here are the three beginnings I made:

One of the beginnings chose to upend itself and try anew from that angle:

And then the beginnings resolved themselves, in very different ways.

Take a look at before and after.

Chapter Eight: Abstract to “We’ve Been Friends for a Long Time”

Now there is only one painting left to move on with, in this grouping – the one on the far right.

I had no idea what I wanted to do. So I turned it upside down, like this:

After messing around with it some more, I got an idea in my head of three chairs, and a starry sky. No idea where that came from, but that is what I painted. I made a start on it in class and finished up at home. Here is where it landed.

Truly this sequence of creative events was a more convoluted path than usual in terms of where it started and where it ended up. But I like the way it turned out. Sometimes the painting tells you what it wants to do and refuses to be deterred.

“We’ve Been Friends For a Long Time”, acrylics and acrylic marker, 11/22, 20″ x 16″.

Chapter Seven: Abstract to “Gathering In, Letting Go”

You might remember that I said in my last post on these paintings that I thought there were a couple that were finished. I took them to class for another opinion. One was fine as it was. Done.

The other, just a little tweak… Val saw the same adjustments I had identified, so I took my brush in hand and, then as you know, sometimes things take an unexpected turn. By the end of the session, I had gone in a whole other direction. *

That was ok. I took the painting home and finished it.

Why did this happen? I have an idea.

In the studio we had been talking about memories of fall, and I mentioned one involving my grandmother and me as a very little girl. My grandmother’s yard had many trees, and our house, set in the middle of a former farm field, had none. In the fall, I felt it very keenly that we had no mounds of fallen leaves surrounding it as my grandparents’ house did.

My way to fix that was to take some home from their house and scatter them in our yard. My grandmother helped me gather up a bagful and I went home fully confident that I’d be covering the lawn with them. Imagine my shock (and I still remember this moment, how it felt) when I emptied out the bag and realized my offerings made not a dent in the empty space of our yard.

What kept me from being utterly downcast at this sight, and what I remember now, is how patiently my grandmother helped me, letting me know she appreciated my initiative and desire to solve a problem. Because of that I knew it was a good idea, I gave it a try, it was just a bigger job than I had thought!

So I think the painting became what it is because of this memory. It’s called “Gathering In, Letting Go”.

“Gathering In, Letting Go” acrylics and acrylic marker, 20″ x 16″, 11/22.

Chapter Six: Abstract to “Clever”

Well, here we go again. I’ve thoroughly bought into the idea of multiples. As I said earlier, that’s how I work most of the time anyway, so…no decision. Multiples.

By now in the studio I’ve hit my stride after a slow start, and I feel happy and in the flow of painting. In each session, I settle in quickly and get to work. I have finished up those earlier paintings and I’m ready to start on a new set.

I decided to begin in a way that works well for me: paint and draw and do whatever I feel like, just fill up the canvas. Then I have something to work with, rather than a blank expanse of white canvas glaring at me.

Here is what I had at the end of a session. You can see that I photographed them on my table – my legs and feet are peeking in at the bottom of the pictures!

I went home and did a little more scrawling on them. There were a couple of them that I thought looked pretty good at that point. Could they be finished? I took them to class and asked Val what she thought. Yes, she agreed, there was one that was all done.

Kind of a departure for me, this one. But I like it.

“Clever”, 20″ x 16″, acrylics and acrylic markers, 11/22.

Chapter Five: Abstract to Two Fully-Constructed Homes

In a recent post in this series I showed you a painting of my house and I told you that I did another one, simultaneously, on the same subject. I guess I was fulfilling both the idea of “multiples” and “landscape” that Val had mentioned as themes, in one fell swoop.

I worked on them side by side, painting first on the one and then the other. They are not twins; more like cousins, I guess. Here they are together:

My house is a mid-century modern split level with a lot of trees and bushes in front. The driveway comes right to the garage on the right side of the house, and there is a big picture window to the left. Another feature of the house is a large chimney in the middle of the roof.

In the first picture, I’ve parked my little car in the driveway and my living room is on view through the window. In the second one, I’ve depicted me bringing in a letter from the mailbox, and I’ve shown the details of the stepping stones in the yard. In both pictures I have included a large three-trunk birch tree on the left front.

I like the way these turned out. I love my house and I feel my area is a great place to live.

Here are the two paintings each on its own. Each is 20″ x 16″ on canvas.

At Home

Here You Find Me At Home

Chapter Four: Abstract to Transformations

Here is a gallery of the three abstract paintings I used as starting points along with their finished versions.

Chapter Three: Abstract to “At Home”

Well, some time passed, and I did some other projects, and then Val gave us another suggestion: landscapes.

I’m not much on landscapes in the traditional sense ( I tend to drift off into Trees Trees Trees Sky Green Stuff Brown Stuff Trees …), but in this case, the idea was to take some element of landscape, macro to micro view, and see what we could do with it.

For some reason, I was interested in painting my front yard and my house. I have no idea where that thought came from, but I decided to go with it.

You know which painting I pulled out to work with: Example #3.

I worked on this painting simultaneously with another painting of the same subject. Again, I don’t know why I did that; in fact, I don’t think I have ever painted two versions of the same thing at the same time.

I’ll show you both paintings together in another post. For now, here is what I finished up with. I did most of it in the studio and the rest at home over the next few days.

“At Home”. Acrylics and acrylic marker, 20″ x 16″.

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Here is a gallery of the before and afters, just for fun.

Chapter Two: Abstract to “In the Eleventh Month”

Now I started to work on the second of the three multiples. Here are the original three, as a reminder. Take a good look and see if you can see which one of these I started with*.

I worked on this one at home, too. It took some time for me to get the shapes just as I wanted them. Here is what I ended up with.

I named it for November, the month in which it was painted, and my birthday month!

“In the Eleventh Month”. Acrylics and acrylic marker, 20″ x 16″.

Chapter One: Abstract to “Coming Home in the Snow”

In the fall of 2022 I participated in studio painting sessions at Woodmere Museum of Art. The class was called Exploring Abstraction and was led by Val Rossman. If any of this information sounds familiar it is because I have done previous sessions in the studio with this group. And that’s because I like being there!

But moving on. In our first session back in the studio, Val suggested a theme for working under, if we didn’t have ongoing projects already in mind. I had not done any painting since the spring, having focused on other art forms, and so I was ready to try it.

“Multiples,” she said. “Do multiples.”

OK. It fit with my usual way of working on more than one painting at a time, so I was all set.

After all this time away, I could not settle down. So, I decided to just get out 3 canvases, 20″ x 16″, and slap down some color. Here they are.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I thought. Colors, bla bla. Now what? But I was ok with where I was. I knew these paintings were not going to last in these forms. They were just getting me ready to paint.

Over the next week, I worked on one of these paintings from above. I wonder if you can tell which one? and here is the painting that resulted. Now I’m happy.

“Coming Home in the Snow”, 10/22, 20″ x 16″.

Abstract Painting Class at Woodmere Museum, Spring 2022 – Part Five

This week was the last full painting session we did in the class. For the sixth and last class, we did a little bit of work but spent most of the time in Critique Day – we brought in our painting(s) and chose one for the class to talk about. It’s a nice experience when it is done as we did in our class – we learn and we get to talk about our work and what it means and what and how we worked to accomplish our aims.

But I digress. In this the fifth class, I did two works. One was a reworking of a painting I did in the landscape class I had taken the previous summer. I just do not like doing landscapes and this painting always felt very forced to me:

So in this class I turned it into this:

It’s called “Fugitive” and is 18″ x 24″. I still don’t much like it but I am not going to do anything else to it.

I also did this painting:

It’s called “Interrupted Journey” and is 24″ x 18″. I keep wanting to add to it and then not doing it. I think that means it is finished, even if I feel an unfinished something about it. So that is why I named it as I did. Maybe this painting’s journey was meant to end before I thought.

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Well, that’s it for this session of abstract painting. I’ll be taking studio sessions again this fall of 2022 – let’s see what I come up with! I’ll show you when it happens.