New Year

LOTS of New Paintings

I have been nose to the canvas since the turning of the year. I am preparing for lots of shows that are coming up. I have been writing a post about the ethics and of Visionary Art as I see them but I’ve been painting too much to write much. So I want to share everything I am working on with you all. I personally, love seeing works in progress from artists. It’s an invaluable learning tool and you can see the process in these progress shots. I am definitely not one of those who like to hide away their piece until it is finished. I believe that people, artists, buyers, and art lovers alike, should know how much work goes into a piece. In a day and age where everything is set to lightning speed, painting for many of us, still remains in a space where time is everything and it takes time to create. I don’t just snap my fingers and ask the AI in my mind to generate something. It take hours, days, weeks and months to complete something - often years for my larger paintings. This is a radical defiance of our speed culture and I want to encourage others to fight against the crazy pace we are all expected to uphold and do something that takes forever to finish. If nothing else, it’s a balancing and grounding gauge to compare unrealistic expectations to.

Ok, now that that’s all said, I am excited to share what I’m working on.

This little 10” x 10” painting is going to be hung at Faultline Artspace in Oakland for their 10xTen Women’s Only art show. The opening is February 22nd. This is in the last phase of the underpainting. I just painted the blue glaze and I’ll be applying the final layer of white egg tempera on here before starting the color glazes.

These next two pieces are for a show coming up in April called The Birds and the Bees at ARC Gallery in San Francisco curated by the two incredible artists, Diane Hoffman and Natalie Fabri. The top one is finished being painted, but I am going to create a golden yarn tassel thing that will embellish it. Hard to explain but it’s going to be really cool. This one is titled, Méh (Hungarian: Bee, Womb).

This next one is also for this same show. Hawk helped me create the back ground for this piece so it really is a collaboration. I am doing the white casein over the beautiful background then I’ll start to glaze the layers of the mische technique on it. This is definitely a different way to work than I normally do. I’m making several YouTube videos explaining this process for my channel along the way which I’m excited about.

This piece is about the generativity of Africa’s Forest Elephants. I wrote an entire post about that last year where I had this incredible vision about flourishing and you can read it again here. Since then, I knew I had to paint this idea and I’m so glad to have the opportunity to share it for this show.

I’m doing something different this spring. I signed up for an art fair. I’ll be one of the artists at the Superfine Art Faire. It will be March 6-9th at Fort Mason Pavilion. SO I’m trying to finish several pieces that are “low hanging fruit” so I can offer them for sale as well.

This centaur piece is an oldie. I created it as a mixed media drawing initially but I’ve loved the image too much to cover it completely over. I always knew it just needed a facelift. I’ve attacked it with ghesso and started the mische technique layers on here, repainting parts that need it as I go. The kittens really need a but of reconstructive surgery, as you can see, since one of them still doesn’t have a face. We’ve been watching the Pastorale segment from Fantasia on repeat in our home since Hawk has become obsessed with it so I just needed to go with the flow here and get this finished.

I’ve also got this painting of Olympias, Alexander the Great’s incredible and badass mama, almost complete. She was a political force, Dionysian snake witch extraordinaire and an unapologetic mother to Alexander. This is Angelina Jolie who played her in the (terrible) movie Alexander made a few decades back.

And last but not least, here’s the current status of my Eleusinian Mysteries painting. This is the first layer of color glaze. This is what it looks like right after the first layer of color and you can really see how your underpainting has worked for you. This always feels like there is so much left to do but in reality, the piece is almost finished at this stage.

I hope your year is starting off well. I think it’s certainly going to be a wild one. My heart has been breaking for everyone affected by the LA fires. I am participating in a fundraiser art auction. The auction will take place on Instagram and includes 60 artists over 6 days starting this Friday at 11am PST. @111minnagallery and my friend Britt Henze @ladyhenze are running it. Hope onto the ‘gram and give them a follow if you’d like to get some incredible art as well as support Grief x Hope. The funds from the auction are going directly to their efforts to help LA’s most affected artists.

I’ll be auctioning off one of my Awakened Mushrooms, The Midnight Mushie. I will share this specifically when it’s live.

Much love to all of you,

XO