What DO You Want

A meditation exercise inspired this page for Journal 52 2014  prompt.. A spiral seemed like a simple place to me. Art is a simple choice for me.  ART is the only way to run away without leaving home.  A single flower can be simple. Of course, it depends on what you want to do. As the artist you set up the question and how complex the answer is.

Somewhere A Simple Place

A thought popped up that nothing is simple. Maybe a place could be simple. I think I was going within to find a simple place. Sort of the idea of hiding in plain sight. That is why I put art. It is a simple place where art is in my mind. It is quiet, much of the time peaceful and a safe harbor. My art is where I go to relax, to heal, and often to survive. For years art has been my life raft.

I featured 3 of my sunflower painting series for the prompt: "You Make Me Smile." Sunflowers are cheery happy flowers and working on this series of paintings makes me smile. I smile because of the flowers and because I have created the images which other people enjoy too.

Sunflowers Make Me Smile

When more sunflower paintings are completed I will post them too. Please leave comments so I know you have stopped to visit. Thank you.

Sunflower Series On Display

He we are folks! The three works of my sunflower series are on display in the Kishwaukee Valley Art League Group Traveling Show in "the gallery in the making" at  Home Bound Healthcare located on Bethany Road, Sycamore Illinois open 8 to 5 weekdays. The work is not traveling; various KVAL artists will rotate work in or out every three months. Current work is on display until the end of August.

Sunflower From Sue's

 I am very excited to be showing all three pieces in the same venue.  I like each composition for different reasons, but a common factor is the interesting shapes in the negative space. Other Images are lurking just under the surface as in some of my other paintings, but have not shown themselves clearly.

Two Sunflowers from Sues's

Sunflowers Three

 "Sunflowers Three" finally made it to an exhibit and has been declared done. These three paintings may provide a launching pad for derivative works and I may continue on to four, five and six flower groupings. Actually sketches are in the beginning stage. Like many of you my full time job limits my time for my art work. I always laugh and say I am like a turtle crossing the toll way. Just keep trucking along one foot at a time.

"The Sunflowers Three" is making progress.

The blue sky is underpainted.

The under painting is complete with the blue sky and yellow flowers.

"The Sunflowers Three" is making progress. The under painting is complete. Now to get on with applying the glazes. I love doing this layering of color. It wakes up the painting and wonderful things begin to happen. To me this is part of the magic of art.

A glaze is a thin transparent veil of color applied over the under painting or over another glaze. The purpose is to enhance the color creating jewel like tones and it can make the colors brilliant.

A glaze can be used to tone down a color patch that is popping or too noticeable. A glaze will enhance and add depth and life to shadow areas and push colors further into the background.

Warm colors are applied to bring an element forward on the picture plain. To push a color toward the background cool tones are glazed over an area. The complementary color grays down the color beneath it. To add luminescence a veil of a transparent white is applied over a highlighted area then more color is glazed over that.

In this stage of my work there may be from 5 to 15 or more layers of glazes applied. I keep adding glazes until the effect is pleasing to my eye. After that happens I will refine the the painting, possibly adding yet more glazes. I will get the glazes resolved and take another picture to post for that stage.