Making meaningful art

Have you ever watched as you back up your IPad photos?  I just saw my life over the last four  years flash before my eyes.  My IPad 2 turns 4 in nine days.  It just won't hold its charge any more.  I see parallels with my own life especially with art production.  I am all intention and I quickly dwindle.

But back to the photos.  There were a lot of photos of my work and vacation pics.   As they flitted onto the computer I understood why there is so much blue in my recent work, and why water and sky have begun to dominate my imagery.  Many of the pics were of a Mediterranean cruise out of Venice and various shots from the south of England = sky and water.

Minack Gardens, Cornwall

View from Doc Martin's House, Port Issac, Cornwall

Grand Canal, Venice 

And of course my summer place is always about the scene in front of me, sky and water.


And from those experiences work springs forth.  Some make it to the Leyton Gallery and others are experiments....

 Above and Below 10 x 12 in. 2012 encaustic and paper on cradled panel

Lost fishing nets floating in the vast ocean under a moonlit sky

Experiment...  Water on sun lit pebbles in a shallow pond, encaustic monotype, later chopped into squares and rearranged into a grid

 Experiment (Gulch Duntara), encaustic, just to the left of my house looking down from the road into the water

On the bay, 2012 encaustic monotype applied to hardboard

This work is a direct response to sitting  in my rocking chair looking out the bay for hours over many days.  An artist friend now has it on his wall.  That makes me very happy.  Of course having his work on my wall makes me even happier.  

So my work is becoming more landscape oriented.  I didn't plan this; it just happened. 

Some artists are  very focused and develop a "look" that is recognizable. They strive to achieve this and many buyers like this predictability.   My work is not like that;  I am an intuitive responder to all that is around me.  One of my friends often points out  (not in a negative way) how different my work looks from year to year, but I admit, it makes me feel like a bit of an artistic fraud at times.

 While these land and sea pieces have a coherency, they are very different from my  Remnant series and my Reading a Garden work. But, when I stand back and consider this I realize that to the untrained eye it might appear that way, but woven into everything I do is my response to the passage of time, and no where is it more obvious than in nature.

How about you?  Is there a tight coherency in your art making or does the work evolve without your planned consent?

Full moon series

Whew!  Just got back from a whirlwind trip to close up the summer house and say good-bye to my wood assemblages until May. Living on the edge of the Atlantic this time of year is cool and noisy. The sound of the sea's movement gets louder and more ominous.  Winter there is not for the faint of heart. All those things help me pack it in  sometime around late October or  mid November.

And here I am, officially a townie again.


It's been a busy couple of days getting  ready for a group Christmas show at the Leyton Gallery. The series of work in the show is called Full Moon, Duntara.  Living in this magical place  in the summer months  puts me in tune with landscape and nature.   I rarely paint landscape, but it has been creeping into my work in different ways over the last several years.


All five pieces in this series to date are mixed media encaustic.  They are small snippets of reflection about one of my favourite time-when a full moon rises over the hill across from our  summer house. The whole harbour lights as the moonlight  plays across the hills, water and grass.  It's pretty spectacular.

Margaret Ryall, Full Moon, Duntara #1 (2014) 6 x 6 in. mixed media encaustic

Margaret Ryall, Full Moon, Duntara #2 (2014) 6 x 6 in. mixed media encaustic

Margaret Ryall, Full Moon, Duntara #3 (2014) 6 x 6 in. mixed media encaustic

Margaret Ryall, Full Moon, Duntara #4 (2014) 6 x 6 in. mixed media encaustic

Margaret Ryall, Full Moon, Duntara #5 (2014) 6 x 6 in. mixed media encaustic

And now I have to wait until the opening to see them again.  

OOps!

When I create encaustic monotypes I usually work with  mulberry paper on a roll and sometimes this paper is joined.   I get so caught up in the excitement of my creations I don't notice I have to move into a seam.  Now that is truly disappointing because I love this piece where the sun is nestled into the hills.

Would you mind a join in the paper?  

Sea and sky

 

More  new work from my summer encaustic monotype marathon....

Northern Lights, 2012, 3 (3.5 x 7.5 in. ) encaustic monotype on mulberry paper

Every now and then  in the late fall I get to see the Northern lights at my summer house.  It is the only place I see them so they are part of the fabric of my experiences there. I often connect them with the ocean, only because the ocean is part of my experience there too.  I'm quite pleased with these bursting pulsations.

Interpreting landscape

 

From my summers in Duntara, a small coastal community in Newfoundland, I have learned to observe the landscape closely.  When you are removed from the hustle and bustle of regular city life and are forced to rethink how you spend your days, you realize all the small things that pass you by. My already relaxed viewing of the landscape there is further enhanced by the  ocean sounds and visual rhythms.  

 When I travel now, I  give the landscape my undivided attention.  On a boat trip  last summer up Western Brook Pond in Gros Morne National Park, NL,  I was instantly in tune with the landscape around me. A fjord is certainly a structure that makes you feel enveloped by water and land.  Here are some of the shots from this trip and the art work that was created in the weeks following my return to my studio by the ocean.

To get to Western Brook Pond you have to hike in for about half an hour on a very well maintained trail.  The scenery is stunning and although the terrain is flat it is visually interesting. When you look over this small  bridge into the water  your imagination gets the better of you. 

 Slow Drift (2012)  6x8 in.  encaustic monotype on board

Looking to the land ( 2012)  2 (3.5 in x 7.5 in.) encaustic  monotype

If I were standing in the pond looking toward the landscape this is what I imagined it would look like. You may notice that my composition of choice in may of these pieces allows the scene to run off the page.  This is intentional because I had the feeling of a landscape exploding around me and running on forever.

 
Looking back from the boat you see a merging of land and water.  The water is deep here and even on a sunny day the water remains dark and somewhat ominous.  

 Merge (2012)  3 (3.5 in x 7.5 in.) encaustic  monotype

Immersion (2012)  3 (3.5 in x 7.5 in.) encaustic  monotype

What if you were in the water looking up?

And there are so many more to show...

The new landscape

Guess the mystery material for this very abstract work.

 My eyes  always wander once I've had a good close up look at something.

 I shot this in Berlin.  It seemed appropriate with my I Pad weighing down my shoulder bag while I looked at remnants of the Berlin wall in Potsdamer Platz. The unusual material for the abstract work is on the wall.

Linking to Landscape

 I'm a wanna be landscape artist who never seems to paint landscapes unless they are close up versions of what I see.  I'm talking about the sprawling distance that can be captured so well by many artists. I've certainly connected to landscape and landscape artists, but so far it's all just fuel for the old creative juices. One of these days I know something will come out of all this looking and thinking, but as of yet there's nothing that I want to show.  On to the artist of the day...

Beached Boats, Mixed media, 14 x 22.5 in.

Harbour Cottages Cornwall, Mixed media , 15 x 19.5in

Devon landscape seems to ignite  the imagination of  many artists who respond to it in diverse ways. Installment 2 in my Devon  landscape series highlights Mike Bernard whose work I also saw at Marine House at  Beer for the second time.  His collage painting style using paper cuttings attracted me because it uses  elements similar to my own technique. Layers and texture immediately draw me in.  His paper applications appear to be used to create an overall structure for the composition and then he paints into it using various levels of detail. I enjoy his work that is more abstracted with less colour, where texture and subtle hints tell the story.  These  quick introduction gives you a sense of his work.

 

Morning Grand Canal, Venice , Mixed media,  18 x 24 in.

 

Venetian Doorway, Mixed media, 15 x 17 in.

Venice, my favourite city in the world which is currently being challenged by Prague, also offers great subject matter for his work. If you're interested there's  a short YouTube video about this series.

Feeling like getting away from it all to paint?  Mike Bernard also offers self catering cottages at Nutcombe and there's a studio. This is news for me.  Oh the missed opportunities from my past two visits to Devon.  I'm feeling a holiday coming up.....

And last but not least, I've enjoyed reading his book available at Amazon.

Hopefully, I've written about something that strikes your fancy.  Let me know.

It's that time of year

Everybody I know is hurrying and scurrying about to accomplish this and that.  I'm one of them. Not much is being accomplished in the studio over the last few weeks.  I walk through it on the way to my husband's workshop where things are happening. We are in the middle of renovating our family room. Yes, we choose odd times to be productive .  Now that the room is almost finished (waiting for Don to make a new table) I've been thinking about creating a new piece of art for the room.  This morning while I had my coffee I had an inkling of what the work will be.  My inspiration is a series of bare branches on the tree outside the window which will hopefully lead to an abstracted image.

 This will be the second time I used the view outside a window to inspire a work that hangs inside. This is my other one that hangs in my summer house.  It is the bay outside my window there painted from memory.It's one of my few landscaped and even fewer ones that show a vista rather than a close up examination. I've captured the feeling of serenity that Duntara gives me.

New work

Untitled so far (16 x 16 in.) mixed media on canvas

It's time for the great unveiling of my new landscape series. I will write more about my intent and thoughts in the next post. Right now I'm just throwing the piece out there for any response you might like to give. Enlarge it to get a close up view of what's going on. There's still some final shadows to do on the fishing box and boat but all else is complete.

Moving along

I've finally begun a new series of work after several weeks of drawing and fun painting- the kind that I don't have any high aspirations for, the kind that I created before I wanted to really say something through my work. Fun painting usually brings me to the next stage because it clears my mind and allows room for new ideas to creep in. It worked for me again.

I recently photographed the layers of wallpaper on another old home that is being renovated near our summer place. This got me thinking again about wallpapers as holders of family memory as well as their historical and social significance which I explored in a previous series of work called Remnants. I've extended my explorations from that series to consider wallpaper as interior landscapes and combined remnants of them (in photo transfer) with exterior landscapes that have connections to my family history. I'm excited about the explorations and I'm still figuring out how to meld the two but I know I'm on to something that makes my bells chime!

The spaces in between

Many people are attracted to the skeletal structure of trees. Trunks and branches have a strong presence that demand attention. But for me the real action happens in the spaces between the branches where the intricate play of leaves produce delicate patterns.

Messenger, 2009, mixed media on board

Messenger is a mixed media painting from my Reading a Garden series. The sun shining through the vines that sheltered this statue in the Millennium Garden reminded me of stained glass. My mind wandered to consider what would happen to this scene over time. Voila! a painting is created.

There are many landscape painters who have interesting ways of rendering "the space in between". Two of my favourites are Canadian artists Jennifer Woodburn and Mandy Budan.

Spring Light (2009) 11 x 14, acrylic, Jennifer Woodburn

Jennifer Woodburn grew up in Saskatchewan and now lives in Ontario. She is primarily a self-taught artist, who has relied on occasional workshops and classes for her education. Working usually in acrylics, emphasizing line, shape and colour Jennifer creates simpler forms from what she sees in the landscape.

Jennifer says:
Mine is a graphic take on life. Through the relative chaos, I find the design in nature and organize it on canvas. Using line and simplifying what I see, I look for interesting shapes and colours, and explore the spaces in between. Rhythm is found, and exaggerated. With an upbeat palette and a bit of whimsy for good measure, I capture Southern Ontario landscapes and rural architecture in acrylic paint on canvas.

I am attracted to Jennifer's work for its lively colour combinations and the rhythm she instills through her use of line and colour. This less is more approach helps the viewer to see the strong rhythms and patterns in nature. Her ability to synthesize the landscape makes me realize how much detail I could delete from my work. Jennifer has many more works on her blog and website.

Fall Again (2009) 12 x 12, acrylic on canvas, Jennifer Woodburn

Mandy Budan paints abstracts of the landscape. She emphasizes and rearranges elements in very unexpected ways. Her colours are strong and she relies on repetition of colour and shapes to create intricate patterns. One of the most amazing aspects of her work is that when you look at it up close it appears to be random, colourful shapes but when you see it at a distance it looks very realistic. How do all those little bits and pieces of bits create realism?

Summer Morning (2008) 24 x 30, acrylic on panel, Mandy Budan

Spring Light (2008) 11 x 14, acrylic on panel, Mandy Budan

I find it quite amazing that Mandy can break each painting down into such patterned parts and then create a realistic painting in the end. Her colour usage is so vibrant and often unexpected when you take a close look. While I've chosen two paintings featuring trees, Mandy paints different aspects of the landscape.

Also check out the paintings of Alison Dunhill, a British artist, who uses colour and fluidity of expression to convey the emotional impact of the landscape. There is a balance in focus between the more obvious structure of trees and the spaces in between in her tree paintings.

Are there other "spaces in between" that have been explored through art?

Forming inspirations

I'm a firm believer in giving the past equal consideration when exploring new avenues for work. In my life, the Christmas season is always a time for merging the three aspects of time- past, present and future. I thought I'd share how I get some of my inspirations for new bodies of work.


Trees have always been in my life. From my earliest days when I could venture from my yard to the woods behind our house, I knew I had a secret place to walk, hide, and play. I loved the smell of damp earth, the moss covered rocks and the rough bark tickling my hands as I moved furtively from tree to tree playing childish games.

Some trees beckoned more than others...

with their tangled roots creeping along the ground,

their low hanging canopy of branches making an inviting cave,

their hanging lichen beards,

their perfectly spaced limbs for climbing,

I even loved the old, bare, ghostly one long past its prime.

There are new trees in my life too, ones that have been around for hundreds of years, those windswept relics that refuse to give up the survival battle.

I know that my love of texture comes from my early contact with the natural world. I crawled into, over or on so many rocks, lichens, branches and pebbles that the memory of their touch stayed with me. When I look at photos of my past haunts I still get tingling in my hands and the exact smell and feel of the place is conjured up immediately. The sensory memories are so strong that I am grabbed and thrust back in time.

Sometime in the future I know there is a body of work to be discovered in these experiences. What it will look like and how it will be executed remains a mere thread in my mind, unformed but tugging gently.

Compose: Critique to learn

There was a time when I created credible landscapes using good instincts and not a lot of knowledge. This work called "Summer Fire" created early in my career , was based on a view from my art teacher's house window. I love fireweed in summer because it creates such a blast of colour in the environment. I wanted to capture this energy in the painting.

Using your understanding of shapes and how they are used in composing, critique this composition. The next post will summarize what I have learned since I created this work and I will suggest how I think it could be improved.