Gallery Show Opening, Saturday, November 2nd!

I'm so excited! The date has been set, and I'll be gathering up my art for Saturday's Opening Reception. Stop by and see my latest works of art... whimsically playful paintings, drenched in bold, fun colors, with layers and layers of paper, paint, pastel, vintage ephemera and modern day embellishments. It's a mashup of visual texture and playful characters... with a few surprises thrown in! If you're around, come on down and enjoy Asbury's First Night gallery crawl festivities, and stop by to see what I've been up to!

The Art of Whimsicality

featuring mixed media creations by me!

at The Paint Place

605 Cookman Avenue

Asbury Park, NJ

November 1 - December 31

Opening Night Reception

First Saturday, November 2nd

6:00pm - 9:00pm

Light refreshments

What Does A Deer Dream Of?

I had this idea to create a painting featuring a deer girl character and needed something to fill the open area over her shoulder. I put out a Facebook poll and got lots of fun answers like: clover, butterflies, romping in the sun, ancient elk, bejewling their antlers, several eating-the-flowers-in-my-garden references, and few deer-hunts-people suggestions, including a twist on the old "Hunters Stew"! But in the end, I decided that my cloven-hoofed girl was dreaming about a pair of pink Mary Jane pumps. Sometimes we want what we cannot have!

I began by creating a two-toned sky using a funky number stencil. I figured she'd be dreaming about numerous pairs of fun shoes.

I created the impression of flowers, grass (and clover) by using layers and layers and layers of all shades of green paint, applied with foam stamps from Claudine Hellmuth's Studio collection (my all-time favorites!).

Then I transferred my image onto the completed background. I confess that many times I'm still not brave enough to draw directly on the canvas. I don't want to mess it up! This method suits me just fine though, and now I have a template to create lots and lots of deer, dreaming of lots and lots of other stuff.

A layer of white insures that whatever cheap acrylics I paint over top will keep their color integrity without a lot of wrestling with tons and tons of layers.

The faces always intimidate me and I end up working on them somewhere in the middle of my painting process. She was the first girl I did in this style with her eyes closed and it really came out very dreamy looking. Hooray!

My favorite shoes are Mary Jane's and they make an interesting-looking illustration as well. Making them obnoxiously pink... well, I couldn't resist!

A few swirls of pink in the flowers to pull it all together and a few dots of white on her body to create more texture and the painting is complete. I'm totally in love with her. And hey... if I were a cloven-hoof girl, I'd be dreaming of high heel shoes too. And maybe a few bucks. Oh, deer!

Fishing With Love...

When you are fishing with love... you can catch whatever you wish! And so catching a few hours of paint time this weekend was exactly what I was fishing for. After all, if I don't love myself enough to let myself play every once in awhile... who will? So I gave my permission!

I couldn't wait to get started! I had these oddly rectangular canvasses for awhile and wanted to do something interesting with them. A whimsical fisher-girl seemed like just the right subject for this substrate. I began with a bluish-greenish monochromatic palette and let it fade into the background, so the girl and fish would stand out!

I'm not sure why I made her eyes so big! They looked a little more proportional in the sketch... but I went with it... chalking it up to a bit of whimsy. Whimsy never hurt anyone!

The pops of color were exactly what I was looking for, and the fish turned out even sweeter than I thought he would. I must confess though... that I drew him on a separate piece of tracing paper until I liked him. This little goldfishie is the 3rd iteration of my original attempt, and a sweetly creative expression of exactly what I was fishing for (with love)! You see... I'm trying to discover my own personal style. And like any good fisherwoman...patience and perseverence is what I need!

Braaaaain Freeeeeze!

There once was a girl who wandered through the ice cream forest... but all she came back with was brain freeze!

For my most recent jaunt into journaling... I sprayed inks, made marks, pasted ephemera, painted swatches of color, and stamped 'til my heart's content. The pink overpainted map and placement of the ice cream cone got me thinking.

I'll make that her nose and she can really be a brain freeze girl! Can't you just feel the ice cream headache? Owwwww.

The page and the girl evolved as I went along, evening out the color scheme and blending elements together, while adding new ones to the page as well.

I figured I'd give her some pistachio hair to match the ice cream.

And then I added some funky Brain Freeze text. Although, I must have had brain freeze when I wrote it... because I spelled it wrong!! Oh well. I'll just pretend I was doing what the quilters do and putting one mistake in my piece "on purpose". Hee-hee!

I had a lot of fun with this piece and instinctively knew when to stop messing with it. I also used a color palette that was out of my comfort zone and I'm actually happy with the way it turned out. On to the next project... hmmmmm, what's next?

Cloudy With A Chance Of... Ragdolls!

This past weekend was spent distressing and stuffing and sewing... and sewing and stuffing and distressing my motley crew of modern vintage rag dolls!

I used a wash of two different brown acrylic paints to give the dolls an aged and distressed look.

Not enough room for all my dollies to dry...they're all heaped up on top of each other!

The paint actually ended up drying to a strangely mottled, greyish hue. That's what i get for using linen purchased at a rummage sale. But hey... they look really old and distressed now!

I tried to make each one unique and utilize a few unconventional embellishments... like this dishcloth nose (shhhh... don't tell mom... it was a gift from her!).

Of course I had to make some sweet treats... and these 3-tiered cakes were no exception. Yum! I tried some distressed and left some plain... just to see which style looked better. I think they both have their merits. 

And I'd have to say that even though I left some things to chance... they all measured up to my expectations! I'm excited to introduce them at my first Art Show of the year in two weeks... hurray!

Thoughtful Thursdays: The Color Pink!

Ahhhh... the color pink. So pretty. So girly. So whimsical. So happy and flirty. It's my favorite color in the whole Universe, and it definitely inspires what I do in my artwork... in an almost amusing way!

You see... for awhile, practically everything I made was pink. I tried to get away from it, but I just kept going back to it. A little soft pastel pretty pink here...

 A little in-your-face, bright magenta there...

Or a spot of pink... even for hair!

I don't know what it is about pink. I guess it's like a favorite old blanket or that perfectly worn-in pair of shoes. On those days that you just want things to be a little more relaxed and go just right... you turn to your good old comfy stuff, and just sink right in. I know whenever I have trouble with a project, I add a little pink... and I know everything's going to be alright!

What's your favorite color and how does it inspire you?

Practicing Whimsy...

On the third day of Art & Soul I took a class called Practicing Whimsy. In this workshop, Carla Sonheim took us on a drawing journey of learning to let go a bit... something I totally need to do! We did exercises using our non-dominant hand, drawing without looking, drawing with one continuous line, making objects with wire and more. Some with props and sometimes just from memory. In the afternoon we practiced our watercolor and charcoal skills, then created a small "series" of paintings. I did the fish and the bird which were tied to the wire technique and then made them cohesive with color. My favorite thing are the kitty-cat clouds in the bird scene. Hooray for whimsy!