Strength and Wonder

"Strength"

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"Strength" oil on paper, 12 x 20.5
"Wonder" oil on paper, 14 x 20.5
These pieces are unmounted and unframed.  (click on the images to purchase)

If we are to save the mind we must ignore its gloomy virtues and celebrate its strength and wonder. Our world is poisoned by its misery, and seems to wallow in it. It has utterly surrendered to that evil which Nietzsche called the spirit of heaviness. Let us not add to this. It is futile to weep over the mind, it is enough to labor for it. - ALBERT CAMUS

Here we are, the world beginning to surrender to the spirit of heaviness that is our current situation and how can it not?   Yet our job, yours and mine, is to find joy and fill our pockets with it - stuffed to overflowing if we can.  

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We must, as Camus says, ignore [the] gloomy virtues of our own minds.  

I've been told my art can be rather dark - and so it is, as I feel drawn to shine light on things we often wish to look away from - things that are heavy and dark and hidden in corners.  And life itself can be rather dark at times, shadowy and menacing.  But within all of that malevolence there is a mischievous joy, a whimsy, a spirited sense of play, a game of tag if you will (in life and in art) to be seen, heard, felt and magnified.  

So to combat gloomy virtues this week I give you dark ballgown bots with baked goods.  There are times when even a cyborgian femme fatale wants a little something sweet.  Infused within these pies are not blackbirds or witchy spells - rather wonder and strength - a reason to indulge in a pastry or two. It is good for you, after all.

"Wonder"

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About the art:  once again beginning with a large acrylic painting on 300 lb Arches watercolor paper (let's murder that piece!) and taping it off into two sections.  Drawing directly on top of the acrylic painting with a brush covered in thinned oil paint to get the basic forms.  I painted away the existing painting around the figures first, working from the outside in to remove the distraction of the old painting.  But those layers underneath add texture and interest to the background - valuable real estate!  After a good bit of drying time, working on the inside beginning with the dark sections and preserving some crisp edges to keep the figures themselves a bit mechanical and hard.  I created geometric blocks of shadow and light, resisting the urge to mess with them too much.  The pies were roughed in with a brush, then finished with a laden palette knife to give the texture of frosting.  Finally (and most fun!) the pinks - many thinned layers painted wet into wet, then allowed to run over the edges with linseed oil-thinned light pink.  A long long drying time with all that oil, but these ladies say it was worth the wait.

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The February Reader Giveaway continues!  Leave a comment (or more than one) on any blog post this month to be automatically entered to win a free piece of original art.  And thanks to all those who have already commented this month!  Your enthusiasm and heartfelt feedback is a real treasure to me.  Thank you. :)