In January/February 2021 I took an online painting class at Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia, PA. The class was called BLENDING ABSTRACTION AND REPRESENTATION, and over six sessions our class explored the continuum between these two endpoints of a line.

The class was structured so that we worked on our individual artworks in our home studios while participating in discussions and vewing demonstrations by the teacher. I did quite a bit of work and I’ll be showing them to you over a few posts.

Thanks to my instructor, Lesa Chittenden Lim, and my classmates, for a good experience.

Here’s a painting I did. It’s called “Complementary Granny Style”, and it is 20″ x 16″, done in acrylics on canvas.

Our class was given the assignment of doing a work using two complementary colors (green/red, blue/orange/, or yellow/purple) plus black and white.

I struggled with this assignment. I use color by eye and the idea of following a rule or a plan is foreign to the way I think about painting. It would never occur to me to classify colors or to arrange them in a system; to me, colors just ARE.

I tried a few things and got very tangled up. Finally Idecided to divide the canvas into three sections and designate a color pair for each section. That way, I could be a little more free in how I went about the process of painting.

I used the photo below for a reference to keep me on track. I feel the exercise was useful in what it taught me I do not want to do – paint while thinking of theories or frameworks – and what I do like – the interactions of color, and the trust I have in my eye that I will find the way to use the colors and make the painting shine.

I don’t like this painting much, and maybe some day I will return to it and paint out the parts I don’t like and substitute something else.

Or maybe not. I’ll just go on and make another new painting instead.

In January/February 2021 I took an online painting class at Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia, PA. The class was called BLENDING ABSTRACTION AND REPRESENTATION, and over six sessions our class explored the continuum between these two endpoints of a line.

The class was structured so that we worked on our individual artworks in our home studios while participating in discussions and vewing demonstrations by the teacher. I did quite a bit of work and I’ll be showing them to you over a few posts.

Thanks to my instructor, Lesa Chittenden Lim, and my classmates, for a good experience.

Here’s a painting I did. It’s called “Winter Night”, and it is 20″ x 16″, done in acrylics on canvas.

This painting is entirely from imagination, but I am sure I was influenced by the weather at the time I did the work – we had several good snows and it was frigid cold at night.

In January/February 2021 I took an online painting class at Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia, PA. The class was called BLENDING ABSTRACTION AND REPRESENTATION, and over six sessions our class explored the continuum between these two endpoints of a line.

The class was structured so that we worked on our individual artworks in our home studios while participating in discussions and vewing demonstrations by the teacher. I did quite a bit of work and I’ll be showing them to you over a few posts.

Thanks to my instructor, Lesa Chittenden Lim, and my classmates, for a good experience.

Here’s a painting I did. It’s called “Casey Key”, and it is 20″ x 16″, done in acrylics on canvas.

It’s memory painting. When I was very young, about 4 years old, right before I went to kindergarten, our family went to this location near Sarasota, Florida. My mother, father, aunt, uncle, and one cousin and I drove from Nashville, TN, to Florida. It took us two full days to get there. We stayed in a small house perched above the beach on a high dune. At that time, very few people lived in the area, and the beach was usually empty. We had plenty of room and space to enjoy the sky and ocean’s vastness.

This trip was memorable for so many reasons – first time I ever got up when it was still dark (we left very early each day because the trip was so long). First time I ever stayed in a motel. First time I ever saw the ocean – one of the most memorable things that has ever happened to me, as I look back.

As soon as I could, I got out to the beach and the water. I swam in the ocean when no one else wanted to go in the water. I made sand castles and yes – this is the trip when a tiny fish swam into my hair. (You can see the artwork I have made about this incident and read the story here.)

I loved everything about this trip. The memories are very clear almost 60 years later.

In January/February 2021 I took an online painting class at Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia, PA. The class was called BLENDING ABSTRACTION AND REPRESENTATION, and over six sessions our class explored the continuum between these two endpoints of a line.

The class was structured so that we worked on our individual artworks in our home studios while participating in discussions and vewing demonstrations by the teacher. I did quite a bit of work and I’ll be showing them to you over a few posts.

Thanks to my instructor, Lesa Chittenden Lim, and my classmates, for a good experience.

Here’s a painting I did. It’s called “Reading at Breakfast”, and it is 20″ x 16″, done in acrylics on canvas.

I read a lot, and I read at every meal that I eat alone. In the usual routine, that is breakfast and lunch each day.

My cat likes to crawl up and get into my lap when I sit down, and if he can’t manage that, he gets right on the table and snuggles up to me.

There you see it, a slice of my own life.

In January/February 2021 I took an online painting class at Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia, PA. The class was called BLENDING ABSTRACTION AND REPRESENTATION, and over six sessions our class explored the continuum between these two endpoints of a line.

The class was structured so that we worked on our individual artworks in our home studios while participating in discussions and vewing demonstrations by the teacher. I did quite a bit of work and I’ll be showing them to you over a few posts.

Thanks to my instructor, Lesa Chittenden Lim, and my classmates, for a good experience.

Here’s a painting I did. It’s called “Please Stop Talking”, and it is 20″ x 16″, done in acrylics on canvas.

I painted a background first – the main feature of it being that red area to the bottom right and the checked section in the top middle.

There was a shape in the center that looked like a sofa. I drew it in, and added the flowers, and then the person.

But that bottem left area was a mess. I tried a few things. Finally I put in this person sitting in a chair.

Now what is going on? I don’t know. But I think there are several stories this could be telling. I have some personal ideas, but I won’t tell you. I’ll let you decide on the story yourself. That is something a painting loves to do, present itself, and let you put yourself into it, I think.

In January/February 2021 I took an online painting class at Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia, PA. The class was called BLENDING ABSTRACTION AND REPRESENTATION, and over six sessions our class explored the continuum between these two endpoints of a line.

The class was structured so that we worked on our individual artworks in our home studios while participating in discussions and vewing demonstrations by the teacher. I did quite a bit of work and I’ll be showing them to you over a few posts.

Thanks to my instructor, Lesa Chittenden Lim, and my classmates, for a good experience.

Here’s a painting I did. It’s called “Deciding”, and it is 20″ x 16″, done in acrylics on canvas.

First I painted the background, and then the shapes at the right. Then the sofa. Where was I going with it?

Suddenly I knew. It was a revolving door to the right and a store window, with the sidewalk in front. I placed the figure.

I remember my mother or grandmother walking along the sidewalk, me straggling along behind. They they would stop and look in a window, taking the opportunity to call to me to hurry and catch up. I think in this picture I am out of sight, but I’ll come running into view, and then we’ll have to go inside the store and…sigh…look at a sofa.

In January/February 2021 I took an online painting class at Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia, PA. The class was called BLENDING ABSTRACTION AND REPRESENTATION, and over six sessions our class explored the continuum between these two endpoints of a line.

The class was structured so that we worked on our individual artworks in our home studios while participating in discussions and viewing demonstrations by the teacher. I did quite a bit of work and I’ll be showing them to you over a few posts.

Thanks to my instructor, Lesa Chittenden Lim, and my classmates, for a good experience.

Here’s a painting I did. It’s called “Black Vultures”, and it is 20″ x 16″, done in acrylics on canvas.

I had seen a group of black vultures gathered around roadkill, and it made an impression on me because of the birds’ air of confidence mixed with a bit of a sinister aspect.

We often see these birds gathered in groups; I remember a large flock of them sitting on the wire backstop of a softball field near me.

There is a quality of stillness and bulk to them that is intimidating. I find these birds fascinating.

In January/February 2021 I took an online painting class at Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia, PA. The class was called BLENDING ABSTRACTION AND REPRESENTATION, and over six sessions our class explored the continuum between these two endpoints of a line.

The class was structured so that we worked on our individual artworks in our home studios while participating in discussions and viewing demonstrations by the teacher. I did quite a bit of work and I’ll be showing them to you over a few posts.

Thanks to my instructor, Lesa Chittenden Lim, and my classmates, for a good experience.

Here’s a painting I did. It’s called “Bedtime Story”, and it is 20″ x 16″, done in acrylics on canvas.

This painting reflects memories of spending the night at my grandparents’ house. My grandmother would read me a story before bedtime, usually a fairy tale. I still have the book she read from.

In January/February 2021 I took an online painting class at Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia, PA. The class was called BLENDING ABSTRACTION AND REPRESENTATION, and over six sessions our class explored the continuum between these two endpoints of a line.

I really enjoyed the class. Over its sessions I was prompted to dig into the concepts, where my work fit in this spectrum, and…are there alternate paths for me to explore? I feel my mind was opened and that down the line, my work will continue to reflect what I learned.

The class was structured so that we worked on our individual artworks in our home studios while participating in discussions and viewing demonstrations by the teacher. I did quite a bit of work and I’ll be showing them to you over a few posts.

Thanks to my instructor, Lesa Chittenden Lim, and my classmates, for a good experience.

Here’s a painting I did. It’s called “Afternoon”, and it is 20″ x 16″, done in acrylics on canvas.

One characteristic I identified as important to me in my future work is the idea of each painting being meaningful to me. No paintings done just because the subject was pretty or decorative.

No, to me this generally means conveying some emotion. It can be based on something personal, such as a memory. Or, it can just be something I am thinking about. The pictures are not meant to depict an exact representation of the experience but to let me paint it out, whatever it is.

Maybe to me the experience of painting is getting to be more important than the results.

*****

Anyway, this painting, “Afternoon”, refers to a childhood memory. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents when I was growing up. On summer afternoons, we would sit outside on a large shady patio. My grandfather would read the paper, and my grandmother would just relax. I ran around their large tree-filled yard – there were so many things for a child to enjoy there – and every so often came back to check in, get a drink of water, and tell my grandparents what I had seen or was doing.