Fear-Slayer

Fear-Slayer

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Fear-Slayer
oil on artboard
16 x 20 x .25
This item is unframed
(click on the image to purchase)

One by one she slew her fears, and then planted a flower garden over their graves. - John Mark Green

Empowered females continue their reign in the studio, determined to slay lingering fears and adorn themselves in feathered finery.  I let them have their way, grabbing a few feathers floating down from their extravagent garb as they perch upon the skylight above my creative lair.

We live in a feathered home.  Inside, where feathers gathered on our wanders (crows, wild turkeys, eagles, hawks, pelicans, osprey, egrets, herons) appear in vignettes around the rooms, and outside where our own crow family leaves feathers of delight.

We also live in a house of bones - found and gathered, collected and curated, real and sculptured imitations, highfalutin and kitchy both.  Bones on the inside (inside our home on shelves, inside containers, inside our bodies) and on the outside (skeletons guarding the castle).

And over the last year or so we've  created a house of stones as well.  Agates and other beauties gathered in and by the sea, tumbled, polished, stacked inside, tossed outside, in our Little Free Library for passersby.

​These things are exquisite on their own, each a treasure to be gently held and admired, but also reminders of the places we've been to find them, the beauty our eyes have beheld, the sweat and seawater and poison oak and bug bites and scrapes and falls and tangled hair and sunburned shoulders and frozen fingers and toes.  Sometimes recalling those times with awe - wait, did we really go there and do that?  WHOA!

So off we go on another adventure (while we can, while the world allows it, while our bodies are strong) to return with treasures outside and inside, laden yet lightened of world and worry.

​Blog and blogger will return in October!  Just in time for the spooky season....muwahahahahahaha.

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About the art:   taking the idea of grounding a painting against a bit of black (which I have been playing with on the pen and ink drawings) and adding both color and a bit of negative space play, I used a mask to place the form of this piece onto a piece of artboard gessoed in white by using black gesso around it.  I then sketched in the details with a pencil to deliniate color blocks and shape changes.  Over several weeks, loading the color in layers and layers with small brushes and a bit of precision (similar to pen and ink work).  Then layers of mixed darks to deepen the parts deliniated with black gesso, and warmer white for the left side of the background.  A wet brush for background swirls and paint drips from the black wing, followed by a final layer of  Gamvar to seal the piece and add a little shine.  Voila!  She's brave and flamboyant all at once. 

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Congratulations to Marta and Dotty!  Wonder Mike chose your names as winners of the August Reader Giveaway!  Send your mailing address to [email protected] and your prizes will be in the mail pronto!

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