There was an old mill building I used to work in that had a strange effect on me. I felt a past era in this space, somewhere around the late 1930’s and 40’s. The room was long with rows of desks to one side next to large windows which I imagined ships to be docked. Unfamiliar memories flooded my mind when I’d walk into this space. When I started to put the painting together, I felt at the time, like a factory worker devising my dreams and my escape from someone’s “system”.

"bleedthrough it"

Sometimes the intent is driving really fast in your mind and you have to put it down as fast as you can. With this idea of the figure giving itself  into the world around it, I wanted to get lots of static, I wanted to have a kind of blurry, dreamy feel, so it would  appear soft and glowing.

As for the finished piece, the figure turned into a more literal image, but the background fell into place with soft hues merging into one another. How ever the wax dripped and whatever the thickness the gesso got, I accepted it and molded it into place with the rest of the texture.

The idea was to get the sheets to lift off because of an impending storm. There were lots of forced errors with this one that worked out in the end, as far as melted wax and oils thinned out with turpentine.

Hoping to get the feeling of being out of control, I let the background grow in dark swirling hues contrasting just random bright spots of white wax.

Using oil pastels to create really stark imagery for what I thought would translate well into an abstract painting,  turned out to be quite different after all. The body in the sheets concept is within all of these.

Finding which way to go with the figure in this painting has been one of my tasks lately.  She appears ghostlike in the first rendition, and for the other , she is painted in a bright, lime green. Preferring to be somewhere in the middle, I’m going to lighten her up and keep it a matte finish. The walls and windows will be added to.

Indoor lighting without a flash

Afternoon light without a flash

A painting someone bought, but unfortunately, it was crushed in the delivery. All it needs is a good stretching, some stitching and of course re-framing. I painted it thickly in Veridian Green and a top layer of Rose Madder, so that under tungsten lights the surface takes on this metallic sheen. It was the year 2000.

oils, wax, high gloss varnish, thread and silk

For the sketch, I got this idea that a couple would be drifting down, weightless, with the sun still shining and maybe disappearing the deeper they got. The painting got darker quickly and a slight shadow of a figure on the left side showed up. I went with it and tried to lighten up the entire image, although that didn’t really happen. The darkness, I think makes the lighter shades of green look like bright emerald.

oil pastels

"Attachment I"

"Attachment II"

Both painted in 1999. I was on a roll with these. The idea was about bonding to something you could never let go of, but you would have to at some point. It was only after I completed them that I understood the subconscious matter I was dealing with. At the time, my husband and I decided not to have children and the feeling of sacrifice was there in the background.

“There were eight of us” was very first one I painted using wax. The idea was off the cuff and I liked the results, but it was the stitching through the wax that ended up finishing the piece. Later on through the years, the paintings were deconstructed more by using a pallet knife. If there is any influence, it would have to be artist, Russell Mills. I found out about his work through Nine Inch Nails, The Downward Spiral. After looking him up, inspiration took a firm hold. His paintings have ritual and mystery at the forefront and such a solid base of emotion behind them.

"one of us was born in the middle of the afternoon"

This one came out so fast, I got the concept, sketch and painting done in a couple of days. It hasn’t been this way since. “One of us was born in the middle of the afternoon”  got published in a “pure abstract” magazine, although, I still think it appears narrative and not completely abstract.

The plan was to make an escape with as much special artillery as possible. So painting it was. To create a world of your own is close to sublime.