Music, Art, Creativity: Come Compare on October 5th

At Second Street Gallery 

On October 5th from 5:30 to 7:30 there will be an opening reception at Second Street Gallery and the featured artist is Lana Guerra from New Orleans. She will also be presenting a puppet show at 6:30.
My work will be in the "Backroom" which is really the office area, but I am still very excited to have a presence at this gallery. When I moved to Charlottesville seven years ago, I wanted to do art that was contemporary and could be shown at this gallery. Now after working these years to find my own voice in abstraction, my wish has come true. I am happy to be working in a manner that is abstract, intuitive and feels good to create.
When you go through the gallery you will see that Lana and I use some of the same bright colors such as fluorescent pink and teal but the over all feelings of the paintings are so different. Her art is like punk rock and mine is like jazz. I wonder if my art really is like jazz? I looked up Jazz on Wikipedia and maybe Lana's art is more like Jazz, both originated in New Orleans. I do not know much about music, but I thought Wikipedia would say that jazz was improvisational and playing with the elements of music. However, it didn't really say that, maybe I should ask a musician how they feel about it. I am in love with the art and design elements and I feel I do intuitively play with the elements to make finished compositions. Lana is working in an intuitive stream of consciousness, letting her creativity run wild. I hope to find out more about the narratives she creates on October 5th. She may have purposes and reasons for the stories or she may create them and the meanings emerge. I feel pretty sure the need to create is another common bond between the two of us and not just the same bright colors.

WATER. POISON. DRINK. DIVE. LANA GUERRA 9.7.2018 TO 10.20.2018

"Melt My Heart" 2018 © Carol Barber

Gallery Tour

Check out my Fruit Roll-Up "glass" vessel on the food table.
I hope if you are in the Melrose area that you can visit the gallery during the month of June. It will be open regular hours.
Melrose Bay Art Gallery
103 SR-26, PO Box 36 - Melrose, FL 32666
ph. (352) 475-3866 or 871-5633 (cell)
hours: Fri 3-7pm, Sat 10am-6pm, Sun 1-5pm (call on weekdays)

The gallery looks so pretty right now. I was blown away by how some of Sarah and Sky's color combinations matched the colors of the paintings.

Spring Paint Out

Bunny Hide and Seek

This was my piece for last week's Paint Out in Melrose, Florida. Any media is allowed in this paint out.

The week was exhausting especially since my husband was out of town and I was taking care of my children and working on my piece during the night. But the reception was exciting and fun. Now I am sorry it is all over. My mixed media got first prize in the garden category and was also purchased. So it was well worth the effort. I transfered color copies of pictures I took on to canvas and then worked on it with acrylics, paper and a little oil pastels. Then I sealed it with a UV protecting varnish. I choose this mixed media route because I thought it would be easier with my limited time. I couldn't work on site much because it is 4o minutes away and I also helped sit the gallery a few hours. But the process turned out to be laborious, especially to get the isolated pictures to come together as a whole.

Now what to do next?

Spring has sprung

I am playing and having fun. I can't decide if the painting is any good or not but when all of the Spring shrubs and trees start blooming I must react. We have lived here seven years and it still surprises me when we start having Winter and Spring at the same time.
I have decided to limit my internet and email time more. I think looking at so much great art everyday is making me want to tackle too much all at once. I want to do abstracts, collage, mixed media, serious, decorative, fun and dramatic work. I think I just need to stay with one thing for a little while before moving on. I am doing some sketches of the environment around me and thinking of shape and pattern. Doing shapes and patterns makes the sketches lots of fun. Where as trying to capture realistic light and shadow and correct size relationships seems like drudgery.

Going Digital Again

I am excited about combining my painted elements with digital photography on the computer. When I was in graduate school, I would do a digital piece then a painting and work back and forth. Then, I did not put paintings into my digital composites but mostly found textures and digital photographs. I was discovering how to work with paint media and texture with those explorations. I was very concerned about how to make things subtle and integrated. With my new work I believe I will learn about forms and shapes. I think going back and forth into the realistic elements of digital photography will be beneficial to my painting. I took a photo of this face when I was starting a painting. I proceeded to paint over this so I am glad that I grabbed it with my camera and was able to go back to it on the computer. Now I am adding photo elements to it. It might be hard to tell what is photo and what is not in the face. It is still a work in progress.
As I continued with the original painting, I overworked it and lost it. I am going to scrap it off and start over on the board. I recognize the mistakes of the painting because I have made them before. I had the idea I wanted to make a mythical beast so I drew the shapes and then tried to integrate it into the painting or space around it. Whenever I do that, it seems the painting falls apart into pretty marks and no form. The forms and images need to emerge from the process of painting almost like a sculptor building forms from clay. Tightening and defining towards the end of the process instead of the beginning. I am still not sure how to begin the entire process, although thinned out media seems to work well. When I do start with lots of thin medium, then finding good compositions and shapes is the challenge. But I see so many images in the tonal changes of color created from working with fluid acrylics and mediums.

To Plan or Not to Plan

Today
Well, I am finally discovering that if I plan the direction of a painting that it takes longer to paint it than if I work with out a set plan. It is a revelation for me because I thought I was somehow making things easier by having a plan. With a plan, I do guarantee that I will have a better composition in the end but the process is not as satisfying. When I did California Poppies I made some shapes for composition, had some vague ideas of color and how I wanted to work the media but the imagery and subject matter developed toward the end of the process. A delight for me. Of course if it doesn't come together then it is very discouraging but if it works, it is elation. With Tree of Life I keep revising the colors, the marks and the media. It feels two inches thick. I have done this before, just when I think "okay it is going to work" and I make plans to send it somewhere, then it falls apart and I have to bring it back. Yesterday, I took a picture of it to post and discovered it looked worse than the last post and I thought it was surely done. Last night, I worked on the tree again, I felt it needed more outline marks to make the whole painting come together. In the previous version, I was trying to take the emphasis off of the tree and put it back on the atmosphere imagery around the tree. Too much thinking. I have been working on this since early August,ugh. But now it must be done, the show opening is just days away.
Yesterday

New Images, Positive Directions

I am so excited to have lots of new images to post. First I have the two sketches with my son's art materials that pointed me in a new direction for my paintings. It is a way of working with varied lines and shapes and thick and thin color applications until a form emerges. I attempted some of the methods from them in a large painting of a bird, I entitled "Looking for Home". The narrative developed during the process which is fun. I like the painting but think maybe I should have attempted a smaller one first, this is about 3.5 feet tall. I am pleased with it though. I am also posting a plein air painting I did during the Paint Out my cooperative gallery is hosting. This is not my usual genre but I was pleasantly surprised how it turned out. All in all, getting out of my comfort zone and trying some new things was stimulating and hopefully beneficial to my work.