“Beep, beep.”

The Roadrunner

When I was pulling together the Mixed Media Gallery, I was surprised by the number of times, and the diverse ways, that I have used a particular subject matter. Among the many instances is this mono print, and a three-in-one colored pencil drawing:

Plus, there is this gallery installation, and then this guy shows up in a mixed media piece, and here’s a fellow incised in stone.

Oh, there’s more, lots more. All I can say is, great balls of feathers, I think I’m going to the birds! While I haven’t deliberately set out to be a bird illustrator, (that I will leave to those who follow in the wingspan of John James Audubon), it appears that I have come down with an avian attachment of sorts.

Artists commonly produce multiple works of the same subject matter. Think of  the magnificent Georgia O’Keeffe, repeatedly using flowers and bones as subject matter, playing with composition, color and scale, series nested within series. Still, why do artists perseverate on a theme when there’s an infinite number of subjects to tackle, notching each completed image as a tick on a bucket list?

Sometimes the subject is one that resonates on a symbolic level with the artist. So the moon becomes a stand-in for the Feminine Divine and the painter explores several versions of what that might mean. For another, form has a strong pull on the artist’s sensibilities, therefore she completes several drawings on the mutable of clouds to fulfill that urge. Or it can be something more indefinable, such as the quickening “oh my” when encountering the beauty seen in the structure of trees, and there is hunger to capture that time and again.

Keeping that one constant, the repeated image, allows freedom to explore, and the subject, like a music motif, dances, changes, circles back around, spins off into new directions. And so I’ll keep flying with birds, symbols of strength and delicacy, seeing where they take me as I venture into new places in 2016.

Meanwhile, this week in the studio:

I felt very productive as I finished preparing cradled boards for upcoming projects, going so far as to actually apply a cadmium red ground on them. Oh, joy! Oh, red!

As for the self-portraits, they continue to vex as the painted grids remain wet, preventing cleaning up the interior of each rectangle. Perhaps it’s a combination of Mars black with too much oil medium and the cool studio air temps. I’ve decided to set them aside and let time take care of the curing process. But the hats are done! Huzzah for small victories!