"Late Afternoon Clouds" is a triptych I created on request for our new R & D building as a nod to cloud computing.  Each canvas is 36x36", acrylic on canvas.  I asked my colleague to airbrush the sky for me to create that smooth convincing depth and height.  These took about 6 hours and my left shoulder was actually sore from all the quick and dynamic brushwork.  I enjoyed painting these... white is never really white, is it?  Especially in clouds. 

"Quotient I and II" are 12' x 9' each, acrylic on canvas, and were created specifically for two large atrium lobbies in the new R&D building on campus.  The building design is clean and modern; these pieces are meant to compliment the geometry in the architecture of the space.  Each one is constructed of 3 panels (4' x 9' each).  They took a total of 50 hours or 13 sessions to paint.  I worked on them in our shop using a scissor lift (I had to get special training!).  The goal was to create a simple composition with lots of depth and interest in the surface.  The different shapes have a variety of surfaces that can be experienced in person.  Some of them have sand in the paint and look almost like fabric.  Others (the more linear elements) have a gloss finish.  This was fun but I think I'm ready to work on something small.  :)

 

Me sketching in the shapes on day 1...

 

 

Underpaintings completed on day 4...

"Axis Series I & II" are acrylic collage on paper, 22x22" each.  I had the idea when I was trying to fall asleep the other night.  I knew almost exactly what I wanted them to look like so it was a straight-forward process and I thoroughly enjoyed creating them! 

"Intersection Series I, II, III," are acrylic paintings on paper.  The center piece is a full standard sheet, 22x30."  The side pieces are half sheets, 15x22" each.  These are very active, energetic pieces done with a chaos-to-form method I learned from Carole Barnes.  Sometimes we like to place lively work like this in a war room or conference room where design and brainstorming happen. 

"Sunlit Balcony," 40x30", acrylic on canvas... my first painting since before baby #3 (almost a year ago)!  I took this photo in Villefranche Sur-Mer where I did an art workshop in 2002.  I've always wanted to paint it because of the wonderful warm light bouncing around up under the balcony.  It feels good to be painting again!

"Wind in the Pines" is a pastel painting, 28x22".  It was painted over an old pastel I had started and lost interest in.  With pastels, you can only apply a certain amount of material to the surface before it won't stick anymore or you begin to pull up the bottom layer.  That limited my options for content, since I needed to accomplish the piece with very few strokes.  I took this picture of a silhouetted pine tree in Pisgah National Forest back in the early 2000's.  I have always loved the shapes and lines of the branches.  The tree, however, was entirely backlit and thus a very flat dark shape.  That was uninteresting to me so I improvised light hitting the trunk and branches.The result is textured with lots of movement and visible strokes of the pastel, again letting the medium have a prominent role.  Happy Thursday!   

Autumn Breeze I & II are 15x22" mixed media collages on watercolor paper.  They started out abstract with a vague linear underpainting and random pieces of collage paper applied, actually with a vertical orientation instead of the horizontal one you see here.  I let them sit for a while to see what they might tell me about where they should go.  Sometimes that takes a while and then one day, I suddenly know exactly what I want to do.  I realized the shapes of the paper reminded me of leaves blowing around in the wind.  When I rotated the images, the brushwork in the background became a forest with light dappling through.  From there, I used acrylic paint to define and explain the backlit leaves with their veins and shadows.  The result is not highly realistic but an impression, letting the materials themselves have as much presence as the imagery.  As you can probably tell, I really enjoyed working on these.  Happy Tuesday!