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Thursday, August 18, 2016

Peace Love and Yupo



My painting for today is pen and ink flowerdy peace sign on Yupo paper with watercolor mush around it. Yupo is WEIRD y'all.  Not sure I like it.  May need to play more.  I think it might be cool if I did a thick, permanent resist with puddled colors in the center, similar to THIS painting, but in watercolor on Yupo instead of acrylic on board . The cool thing is, this stuff comes in transparent form, so there are ideas for that.

 
 

Yesterday my (art major senior at TTU) son Brandon and I had an artist's date of sorts... my husband is in Nashville for his NRLCA Union convention so we went to have dinner with him and spent the day in Nashville.  This entailed a trip to Jerry's Art-a-Rama, and to the Frist Center for Visual Arts, where their rotating exhibit is currently Italian cars.  I took a TON of reference photos, since I'm mildly fascinated with painting cars lately.


Also on exhibit was the work of surrealist Inka Essenhigh.  I didn't think I was a surrealist fan but I thoroughly enjoyed her work, especially this painting, called In Bed . I'm sure my little thumbnail does it NO justice, but its subject is splayed out in bed with gremlins pulling her eyes open and spilling her guts.  Haven't we all had nights like that?  One thing I was particularly fascinated with was the source of light in several of her paintings.  In this one it seems to be the center of the subject and the center of the painting (the "guts") -- see the shadows the gremlins cast and the bed, as well?  I also love the way the blinds add a touch of the mundane and lead the eye into the painting.  The colors are impossibly vibrant, too... no photo of it could possibly do it justice.  If you're local, take a trip up there, it's worth it.

   
Russ's convention was at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel, which is an amazing place.  It's nine acres of gardens which are INSIDE the hotel, with the rooms built around and overlooking it, complete with waterways (you can actually take a boat on one of them), waterfalls, gorgeous fountains.  The hotel was all but destroyed with the horrible flooding we had in 2010.
I took a lot of reference pictures there too, but walking through the lobby I spied this glass sculpture and rushed over to it, thinking:  CHIHULY!!  It wasn't, it's done by Ludech Hroch, and once again, my picture does it no justice.  If you get the opportunity to visit the grounds of the hotel, you should take that too.  The sculpture's name and theme are totally appropriate for the hotel and its return from near destruction; it's called "Resurgence."

  



I dropped by Hobby Lobby looking for a frame for the picture I did of Nick's car, having not found anything online that I really liked.  They had a 12" square frame with a 5x5 opening but nothing with 6x6, but then I saw this "floating" frame that is truly perfect.  Nick liked it, too.  I'm pretty happy with how it came out, considering it's the first time I've painted anything reflective in watercolor.

In a final bit of news, the little painting I did of Oldham Theater this week prompted a friend to commission me to paint the entire theater (not just the marquee), with "Star Wars" on the marquee, because he has fond memories of seeing Star Wars there.  Since I planned to paint the theater at night anyway, I'm looking forward to that challenge.  I think I might go for an evening/sunset theme, just to give myself a headache.  

Lots of news today!  Thanks for reading. 

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