Explosion of Ideas and Colors

Inspiration comes from the work; if you wait for inspiration to work, you won’t produce very much.

Every working creative person knows this. Creating is work, in the best sense. You do it regularly, even if you don’t feel like it. And somehow, at the end of the day, the month, the year, you look back with wonder at what you have achieved.

This work, this creative process, sets you up for the unexpected, the ideas that might have been lurking below your consciousness or maybe in the universal conscious that we are part of.

I don’t call that consciousness god, or God, as “god” is a word both too limiting and too culturally distorted to have any useful meaning. At my creative best I am connected and caught up in a flow, more the instrument than the originator of what I produce.

Rearrange

I used spray neon enamel over black mat board to create a background for swirling marks made with acrylic markers. It was a pretty cool design, reminiscent of some early work I did with simple markers that faded with time.

But these marks won’t fade. And I cut up the design, rearranging the pieces into something unexpected, then mounted the pieces on wood panel before making some final cuts and tears and new markings to complete the work.

It was by design, but also intuitive. I made dozens of decisions, consciously and not, in shifting these pieces around to create something new. I can’t explain why something looks better to me one way than another. But it always does, and I have learned to trust my intuition.

Red Moon

This time I worked directly on wood panel with enamel, acrylic and acrylic marker. I actually created a piece underneath very similar to Attraction, also featured in this blog. But I kept layering over that piece, to where there are just hints of earlier versions lurking behind the surface work.

Again, I used short strokes of acrylic to create a flow out from a red moon. Then another set of strokes, swirling, to create another layer and enhance the impression of depth, dimension and movement.

These two pieces use more red than anything I have done before. I don’t see reds as well as most people, due to my limited color vision. But I think red worked here, and I really appreciate the great online response people have given to this new direction.

Attraction

This was supposed to be the beginning of something else, just an underlying design that would peak through another design layered over it.

It’s crude, intuitive, and created in a whirl of movement as I sprayed acrylic colors, section-by-section, lifting pieces of mat board I had cut in an offset pattern.

Before I could create the next layer, Sixstar founder Jason Hackenwerth asked me to just leave it and look at it. I did, overnight. And the next day I knew it was done, as it was, another step away from “nicely finished” collage and painting into something more raw and revealing.

Stalactites

With my new use of aerosol acrylic, I am producing a lot of interesting material as almost a byproduct of the process.

This piece demonstrates how that can work. The interlocking pieces come from patterns created from spraying other pieces, including several from Attraction. I think the result still has the dynamic sense of direction I always try to achieve, but with unexpected juxtapositions.

Do you like it? Would you like to see more of this kind of work? Please let me know!

Fragments 1

I am beginning a new series of small works on  8” x 8” wood panels. This, the first in the series, uses a portion of the design that became Rearrange, but in its original form.

There is a lot happening here, lots of motion and color, again dominated by red. I think this piece stands on it’s own, and its a great and affordable way to enjoy my art.

Shift

I had two recent photos, of sunrise and water, that I wanted to use in an abstract composition. I cut and combined the prints diagonally, then sliced and rearranged the combination on wood panel.  It’s a bit of a puzzle, a shift in perspective, using simple elements to build a complex and balanced structure. I hope you like it.

What’s Next?

Art Walk will be Saturday August 9, from 6-9. We will also auction pieces to benefit local charity in the afternoon: viewing with champagne begins at 1, with the auction running from 2-4.

Next month’s blog will have more about the new direction and new use of color in my art. Stay cool, see you in September!