Giant Catch-Up

So I've totally dropped the ball on this project and I have neither the ability nor the inclination to recall exactly what I've done on which day (things truly have been crazy of late).

I can remember the approximate order, though, so bear with me - this will be rather a lot of scrolling.


24"x30" oil and latex on Masonite panel - in progress

I've updated this piece a little bit - the brighter, more orangey areas are more solid (I have yet to get to the darker red bits), and I worked the green latex back over the surface to break up some of the red areas. Not sure where I want to go with this one, so I've been fussing with the surface. (Originally from here)


16"x20" oil on canvas - in progress

Started this piece, very similar to many others. The red is pure cadmium scarlet and really quite vibrant in person. This evening I went back and made the red solid and consistent. I was thinking of using a light greenish blue in the white areas, but I don't want this to be standard two-tone.


5"x7" oil on canvas board

I did this little study to play around with paint which was more mineral spirits than anything else. Cadmium lemon & cadmium scarlet. I wanted to approximate some of the forms and feeling of my water-based work.


9"x12" oil on canvas board - in progress

At the same time as above study, though this one is not as complete. I think this method has potential though I worried about the instability as a paint layer. I'll probably work this one up more.

I really like red and turquoise / teal in contrast.


16"x20" oil on canvas - in progress

This was my little Impressionist moment. I've been checking out a lot of Arthur Dove lately and I got fed up with everything else I'd been doing, so I just indulged myself in some pleasant greens and illustrative natural forms. I like the way the blue line functions in this, and I will probably work on it when I miss painting flowers and the like. It put me in a spectacular mood, which gave me the courage to tackle the silk project that I set up for myself.


22"x72" ink on silk, with 2 detail views

I spent quite a lot of time working on this piece, as it was a brand-new method for me. In addition to playing around with it aesthetically, it was quite a challenge to get the right studio set-up to keep from spilling ink all over the floor or have the silk stick to the table and such. I really enjoyed this process but I have mixed feelings about the (possibly) completed piece. I want to think about it and work with this technique more.


9"x12" ink on paper - in butcher's tray

Done without thinking while I was working on the first silk piece. I left it in the tray and it adhered to the bottom - tore it when I was pulling it up. So careless.


silk paints and ink on silk - in progress

Even though this is a studio blog, I just couldn't bring myself to photograph what this actually looks like right now. I spent a really long time screwing around with watered-down magenta silk-paint and dried pieces of yellow, making subtle washes which I later obliterated with sumi ink. The silk is larger (maybe 36"x72"?) and I had previously tinted it a greenish yellow color. With the gray of the ink washes and the sickly psychedelic tones from the silk paints, this is one sorry state of affairs at the moment. Of course this means I am resolved to pull it together, somehow some way.


24"x24" oil on canvas - in progress

We had a guest lecturer in my thesis class today, and she gave critiques. Mine was more than a little negative, and she particularly took issue with this painting, which she dismissed as "merely a doodle." I wasn't terribly pleased with it myself, so I decided to map out solid forms and use the circles and curves as guidelines for new forms. I'll have a long way to go before this gets interesting.


24"x24" oil on canvas

I started outlining a new painting, trying to vary the type and energy of my lines. There are suggestions of heartbeat rhythms and diagrams of the shape a bird's wings make, but nothing too interesting. This painting stayed in this state literally only an hour or so.


24"x24", oil on canvas - in progress, 2 detail views

I took a good look around my studio and started feeling adventurous. Two of my professors had seriously railed against this painting, and I was stuck with it, so I slathered some juicy carmine crimson over it, followed by large swathes of blue. Because it was flat on my work table, it was a lot more effective to drip and spatter mineral spirits and thinned paint over the surface.

I really got into the shapes which were emerging and went in with some white to begin blocking out forms and ideas. The detail views remind me of bacteria, and I had this whole micro/macro sensation of both an interior immune system war and a cosmic space war.

This is the way I started paintings before grad school, and I think it has a lot more potential. I felt unblocked finally, and I'm excited with all the potential I see in this.


24"x24" oil on canvas - in progress

This is the same canvas just above the blue and purpley one, with the red lines. Emboldened by my mineral spirit fueled liberation, I went at this one with cadmium yellow and a lot of thinner. Again I think more interesting things are starting to happen than was originally going on with the red lines, so I'm also looking forward to carving this one out.

Whew. That was a long post. This gives me major incentive to stay more on top of this project! I'll start again tomorrow at day 39.

Day Thirty-Eight

9"x12", acrylic & pen on paper / detail view

I started this piece with the ballpoint pens I most like to write with, and I really enjoyed using the stripes to create these weird Dr Seuss kinds of forms.

The pink I added later, and I'm not sure it's appropriate. I'd initially thought to use paint instead of marker because I wanted a more even surface, but I found the acrylic was drying too quickly and becoming clumpy, accumulating layers and surface effects that I hadn't intended for. Then again, there is a nice contrast between the slickness of the pink areas and the cool, smooth black and white forms.


9"x12", acrylic & pen on paper / detail view

This second piece I feel is much less successful than the first. I had a large quantity of pink paint leftover (after sweating every drop, sure I would have to remix on the first piece). I inversed the process on this one, first applying pink forms and then going back in with pen to create stripes.

The stripes function weirdly here, flattening the background with pattern without really elucidating the pink structures or giving any sense of growth or dimension.

Something I'd been thinking about when I started this was the backgrounds of scientific and mathematic diagrams in black and white textbooks, the way that pattern would be used to set off areas, sometimes achieving kind of crazy unintentionally psychedelic effects. This might be something worth pursuing, even though it's a very literal, kind of tongue-in-cheek aspect of my interest in math and science.

Day Thirty-Seven

9"x12", marker on paper / detail view

In this piece I was thinking about the individual stitches in knitting, imagining many different colored rows forming a sort of dizzying fabric. I tried to relate the scale of the "stitches" to the size of the marker tips, though I still found a lot of variation within the strokes.

A few drops of water fell on this piece, creating blurs or sort of visual snags. Though I'm not wild about them, they do create an interesting effect that breaks up some of the austere monotony.

I do really enjoy working with marker on smooth Bristol paper, particularly the way it flows with just the right amount of absorption and no bleeding. I'd like to find a way to make paint handle with the same kind of comfort I find in drawing materials.

Day Thirty-Six

9.5"x12.5", watercolor on paper

After so much watercolor-style work on flimsy paper, I decided it was time to buy some real watercolor paper and try using actual watercolors. Given my current obsession with bright pink, I suppose it was natural that I went for "fluorescent rose."

I was really enjoying working with the watercolor, especially its mutability and the way I could build layers of transparent color. I enjoyed the texture of the paper, the way it took the paint... basically everything about it.

I think this is not necessarily a finished piece, but even if I don't elaborate on it, I will definitely work more with watercolors.

Another Note

Yes, I am a horrible recalcitrant blogger.

I am still keeping up with this project, but I've been obviously more focused on making art than photographing it and posting it.

On one hand, I'm inclined to think "Well no big deal, so long as I'm painting," but a secondary aspect of this site is to maintain a record of the development of these pieces in a series (hence, "serial art"), which becomes murky and indistinct when abandoned for weeks at a time.

For example, today I can look at the pieces in my studio and know which came before another and trace influences and accretions of meaning... but in several weeks or a year, it will probably be impossible to recall.

Maybe it's not important to keep such a rigorous catalog, but since I am in the midst of trying to develop a thesis, I want to have this kind of grasp for the time being.

Point being, I will photograph what I've been up to and back-post as accurately as possible, as well as redouble my efforts at staying on top of the day-to-day.

Thanks for your continued interest!

Day Thirty-Five

9"x12", oil pastel on paper - in progress

This evening I went to see the Kiki Smith show before it closed at the Whitney. In a somewhat related discussion, I asked my boyfriend why he thought so many grad students make a dramatic declaration that they are no longer painters and instead focus on installation or so-called conceptual art (I'll maybe get into that another time). He countered by asking "Well what are you doing there that's so important?" while I was working on this sketch. My only answer was the truth: "I was thinking about watermelons and Lee Krasner."

We continued talking, and it occurred to me that often when I begin paintings, it's just with this idea of something I'd like to see. I look at the paper, think "I wonder what that might look like?" and then make it. Does this make me a very dumb artist, or maybe not an artist at all? Am I just making designs? Would I be better off designing fabrics? I can't really say.

I do know that I love painting though.

I was smoothing the edges of this piece with mineral spirits - the upper edge and pink areas show the chunky, granier appearance the oil pastels had before this treatment. I eventually had to stop as the fumes were bothering my boyfriend (a hazard of working at home), but I liked some of the effects I was getting, so I'll probably bring it back to my studio to finish or elaborate upon.

(This entry was back-posted on 2/10/07).

Day Thirty-Four

9"x12", marker on paper

Sometimes you just have to play with a lot of colors.

I found an old art kit that I'd had as a child with all these gorgeous markers in it - and astonishingly, they still worked really well. I got into that childlike set of mind and just went with it, picking and applying colors capriciously.

I worked on this piece upside-down from how it is now, but when I was hanging it to photograph, I realized how much more I liked it this way. I noticed that this happens often with my abstract pieces - when my professor takes them off a table or from a stack to look at them, she tends to always look at them upside-down from how I made them... and they usually look better. Something to think about.

(This entry was back-posted on 2/10/07).

Day Thirty-Three

9"x12", oil on canvas board - in progress

I had more of the green I mixed up yesterday - actually quite a bit more - and I kept thinking about stripes. I imagined creating a landscape out of stripes which modulate with other colors in a spectrum (specifically pinks, oranges, and yellows in this piece).

Once again I drew it out with pen, which I think gave me a clearer sense of things. I'm kind of attracted to just the green on white - it feels crisp like awning stripes - though I still think I'm going to play with colors in the background... perhaps more muted than I'd originally envisioned.

(This entry was back-posted on 2/10/07).

Day Thirty-Two

12"x12", oil on canvas board - in progress

Because my other paintings were still too wet to work into, I started a small piece. I usually don't sketch out what I'm doing beforehand because I don't like when pencil, charcoal or similar mix into the paint - it hadn't occurred to me until today to sketch it out with ballpoint pen (which dries quickly and doesn't interfere) - I was much more comfortable drawing this way.

These shapes remind me of eyes or olives at the moment, but I'm planning for them to be a bit more complex. The centers are actually a deep purple-blue (I'm nuts over that color lately). They will then have a ring of cream or off-white (probably titanium buff), the green which is there, then a very light dove gray (most likely Payne's gray mixed with a lot of white). Once that's together, I'll have to see how it looks and reevaluate.

(This entry was back-posted on 2/10/07).

Day Thirty-One

I spent my studio time cleaning, reorganizing, and getting ready for preview at my school. I went in expecting that I wouldn't pass, but I still wanted to make some kind of effort to present myself well.

Looking around, I was more than a little disappointed with myself, so I am looking forward to reading more, writing more, and thinking more about what I'm doing. Above all, though, I can't keep letting days pass me by without getting serious painting in.

(This entry was back-posted on 2/10/07).

Day Thirty

24"x24", oil on canvas - in progress

This came directly from one of my sketches yesterday. I want to keep the rings related to blue in some way, and at the moment my palette is a sea of blues. I'm looking for more complex colors, less optical arrangements, and a more emotional approach to geometric abstraction.

Somehow these shapes remind me of oysters. I was also really attracted to the deep indigo centers with just plain lines around them where I sketched out the rings - I should remember that it's okay (and probably preferable) for my paintings to resemble my drawings sometimes.

(This entry was back-posted on 2/10/07).

Day Twenty-Nine

approx. 5"x4" & 5"x7", ink on paper - from sketchbook

I started reading some really great books on Arthur Dove and one particularly amazing one (Arthur Dove: Nature as Symbol) went into all the math and geometry of his paintings which dealt with nature. I started mulling over these ideas and sketching things out, though I became so consumed with reading (and other obligations) that I didn't get to paint anything.

(This entry was back-posted on 2/10/07).

Day Twenty-Eight

24"x24", oil on canvas

This painting started with the grapey purple-blue color, and I looked around the studio at the canvases I'd prepared in various bright colors, finally decided this phthalo green one would be a good contrast.

I'm not thrilled with the all-over feeling, as it begins to feel like wallpaper or fabric. I was thinking about going back in and repainting the green a more opaque color, but in fact one of the few things I'm pleased with is the way the lighter green at the bottom modulates the purple in different ways. I can kind of see painting it in a subtle spectrum so that it undulates a little more in the background.

(This was back-posted on 2/10/07).

Day Twenty-Seven

16"x20", oil on canvas

I photographed this really badly, but it's a very optical bright pink and turquoise. I feel unresolved about this, as the two-color limitation I've set up for myself doesn't seem to encourage very interesting developments.

(This was back-posted on 2/10/07).

Day Twenty-Six

(not pictured)

Today I worked on the green and red piece from day 22, but neglected to photograph my progress.

Basically I began introducing the green into larger areas of the red, breaking some of it up and giving a more fragmented feel to the red lines.

(This entry was back-posted on 2/10/07).

Day Twenty-Five

5"x7", ink on paper

During a lecture I started this meandering line drawing and something about its meandering complexity really spoke to me.

I usually only write with this type of pen (Uniball Micro), so it follows that I would enjoy drawing with it as well. I think I should do something larger with it.

(This entry was back-posted on 2/10/07).

Day Twenty-Four

Today I spent my painting time writing a preliminary statement for my thesis class. Though this is a very rough first stab, it proved to be a worthwhile exercise in focusing my thoughts and recognizing the central ideas around which my work forms. Though this whole website would seem evidence to the contrary, I'm very dodgy about writing in any kind of first person tense (when I have to hand it in) and this statement perhaps suffers a bit of over-cautiousness in adherence to words.

Nevertheless, it may put some things in context:

Buckminster Fuller is often quoted as saying, “When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”

These paintings look to the sprawling, tangled organic growth of the natural world and reduce it to linear elements, modular forms, and rhythms. By repeating one aspect of the vast complexity of the perceived world, one can gain access to patterns and systems previously hidden in detail.

Acts of meditation seek to discover simplicity and clarity amidst a super-saturation of information and experience. Mathematically, living in this world is akin to a profusion of outlying data points when one is seeking a smooth trajectory curve. The density of influencing factors is overwhelming, confusing, and frustrating, and one could regard cultural angst as the inability to recognize patterns and meaning, or the failure to derive pleasure from them. A method of abstraction which hones in on one aspect of movement, development, or perception provides a focus of organization, around which data sets demonstrate new meanings and altered trajectories, more beautiful for their idiosyncrasies.

The geometry is simple, using familiar curves and archetypal forms such as circles and intertwining lines to form branching compositions reminiscent of both the microscopic interior and macroscopic exterior worlds. By allowing a system to propagate organically as a collection of objects or ideas, these paintings become living things themselves, exemplifying the phenomenological experience of set theory. The overarching principles of organization which take over become both a definition and extrapolation of beauty.

If spirituality is considered as a problem-solving expedition, one can say that finding order and understanding one’s place in the greater whole is solving a significant aspect of being. The harmonious connection of oneself to nature and the systems and cycles of life has long stood as a powerful driving psychological force. An intense clarity emerges in this painting process when undulating, intertwining masses of people, objects, time, geology, and forms of energy are abridged and condensed into a small shift on an elegant curve.

Science being merely a system of aesthetic preferences, order is not the only measure of truth and beauty. The methodology of the scientific method, however, provides a starting-off point for other kinds of exploration. By controlling the data set involved, particularly by limiting the colors within mathematical relationships or restricting the relation of objects to scale, the painting process mimics the initial steps of variable controls. In these limitations and further reductive measures, one can translate – and in some ways transcend – what exists in the world, becoming able to view them in an elemental way.

Many artists have dealt with organization and modular organic forms, notably Eva Hesse, Brice Marden, Terry Winters, Alexander Ross, and Matthew Ritchie. This work is strongly influenced by eccentric abstraction and the linear compositions of countless contemporary painters. It is also imbued with a sense of 1930s and 40s American modernists, including Arthur Dove and Georgia O’Keeffe, following a method of abstraction based in looking as closely as possible and focusing one’s concentration to the simplest moments within the greater whole.

(I really would love feedback about these concepts, even if you think it's complete nonsense - don't be shy - chime in.)

Day Twenty-Three

12"x12", oil on canvas

This is a rather small piece, with wide stretcher bars. When I was preparing the surface with the purple, I painted the canvas edges purple as well, so I regard the entire thing more as a box or an object than a surface. I created this meandering line composition with a peachy tan color made largely from burnt sienna and titanium white. At present, it is just on the front of the canvas, but I think I will most likely extend it over the edges to reinforce the three-dimensionality of this painting.

I learned an interesting thing about the color purple this past week in my Materials, Techniques & Conservation class: it is the only secondary color which cannot be represented by a single wavelength of light (only a mixture of red and violet). The color wheel is kind of an artificial relationship to light anyway, but this stood out as a unique property to me. Additionally, purple is one of three words in the English language which have no true rhyme (oddly perhaps, the others are orange and silver). All these things have made purple seem the most intriguing and bizarre color to me, and I like the way it holds its ground in this piece.

Day Twenty-Two

24"x30", latex & oil on panel - in progress

I bought some latex enamel in this delicious green shade and coated a masonite panel with it. It dried fairly quickly, which enabled me to get right to it with a juicy mixture of cadmium red, transparent white, and a lot of bleached linseed oil. At this phase, the red areas are very streaky, but I will work them up to a uniform surface. Admittedly, I want them to be more volumetric and illusionistic, but this is a path I have to avoid for the time being.

Last night I had a dream that I hung a bunch of ropes around my studio, similar to Eva Hesse's rope piece. I spray-painted them silver or gold, and it was all an exercise in understanding how lines move in space and define it. Generally-speaking, I think it's a good idea to listen to one's dreams, so when I get my hands on some cord or wire, I'll have to give it a try and see what happens.

Day Twenty-One

16"x20" oil on canvas

This is the painting begun on day 18. Obviously I've made it with crisper edges and more even tone throughout flat areas of color. I'm not sure if I'm completely happy with that change, as there was something compelling in the initial unevenness, particularly in the washy background.

At this point I'm calling this piece finished, though I'm seriously considering going back in with bright red lines which form another intertwining system. I'll do some studies and see how that works.

Day Twenty

24"x24", oil on canvas - in progress

I worked briefly on this piece started on day 13. Mostly I prepared canvases and dallied around with other things. The changes in this piece are so slight they may be imperceptible, but I concentrated on pinks, in all kinds of shades. I decided I'm going to go back in with specifically-mixed tones of pink, brown, green, and tan to make the areas of color hard-edged and clean. I'll also have to clean up the titanium buff to make it a pure, chalky surface again.

Day Nineteen

9"x12" acrylic on paper / detail view

I'm rather disappointed with myself on this one. I wanted a quick finish on something, and since I spent most of my studio time preparing canvases with solid colors, I hastily chose cadmium red to fill in the white spaces against the silver in the piece I'd started on day 15.

I had thought it would have an interesting matte/metallic contrast, but the intensity and uneven application of the red seem to overpower the subtleties in the silver which I'd enjoyed so much. I'll look at it again tomorrow and maybe try to revert to white or some other color, but it has lost the delicacy and immediacy of an exposed paper surface. Ah well.

A Note

I have not become some kind of artistic delinquent despite appearances - I have kept up with this project, but in the process of wiping my computer's hard drive, reinstalling Windows, etc etc, I've choked up on posting photos and such.

I'll back-post from day twelve to the present later this evening and hope to resume a more timely schedule soon.

Day Eighteen (backposted)

16"x20", oil on canvas - in progress

I wish I'd had the presence of mind to hold off on the turquoise lines until the ground was dry. I started with tinting the canvas in a green mixed from cadmium lemon and French ultramarine, without any white. I mixed a handful of blues and teals into the other color, which appeared more like a bright light blue on my palette. I'm fascinated by the way it seems to glow against the green, but unfortunately as I applied it, it mixed in with that green and changed a lot.

I've put this painting aside to dry a bit so that I can go back in with more opaque layers of the turquoise. I'm not sure if I will make the green more opaque - in some ways I quite like the lightness and uneven surface of the tinting, but I also realize that having such an airy background forces the space in a limited way which could be avoided with equal coverages. I'll have to see how it looks in a few days.

Day Seventeen (backposted)

30"x40", oil on canvas - in progress

I started this painting thinking about blues. My boyfriend's mother had given me a wonderful tube of cerulean paint at Christmas, and I've been studying pigments in one of my art history classes. I used a rag to tint the canvas with a wash of cerulean, then pulled the French ultramarine to begin some kind of study in blue.

This canvas size is about the largest I'm comfortable working with right now, as it relates and corresponds to the body, allows for movement from the shoulder, and feels both expansive and compact to me.

I need to work out the appropriateness of scale in my markings such that the circles transforming into ellipses and mesh-like grids correlate with the canvas size and shape better.

I'm also a bit bothered by the way I've handled the French ultramarine, as it's close to its mass tone in the lower left and darker portions and losing the luminosity and brilliance for which I initially chose it.

Day Sixteen (backposted)

9"x12", acrylic & permanent marker on paper

I returned to the yellow piece from day 11 and impulsively filled the spaces with turquoise magic marker. Compared with the original, I thought it became rather empty and dead.

I got into a lengthy discussion about this piece while I was working on it, and I went in with a thin raspberry marker, making the tiny circles as I attempted to defend it for having any kind of artistic value whatsoever. (Not a pleasant experience).

In the end, it reminds me of blood cells in capillaries or something vaguely organic, but it fails to take on the springing-forth quality of multitudes I'd imagined when I started, and I think the energy falls a little flat. When I look back at the progress shot, I much prefer the yellow by itself, which I think much more clearly conveys the things I was going for.

Day Fifteen (backposted)

9"x12" metallic acrylic on paper - in progress / detail view

Entranced with the shiny metallic silver paint I'd used the day before, I started a piece on very smooth Bristol, again letting forms emerge from modular elements.

I really loved the luminosity of such a thin layer over white, and I put the piece aside to consider how I could enhance or showcase that effect.

Day Fourteen (backposted)

18"x24" watercolor & acrylic on paper - in progress

Since I'd been using acrylic essentially as a watercolor, I thought it might work to saturate the surface of the paper and actually try some watercoloring. I had extremely limited patience, however, as I was using gridded drawing paper susceptible to pilling (so it more closely resembled painting on a paper towel) and I was displeased with the tinting strength of the sky blue paint I was using.



Some genuinely beautiful things were happening with the green, but too quickly they faded into the wash or absorbed into the paper, so the end result at this point really isn't much to look at.

I'd started in with metallic silver in the lower right corner, but quickly decided this was out of place, so I'll have to think of a resolution to that if I ever finish this piece.

At this point, my favorite thing about this painting is the color it turned my water. Maybe sometimes that's all there is.

Day Thirteen (backposted)

24"x24" oil on canvas - in progress

I started this piece by tinting the ground with titanium buff - a paint I received among my Christmas gifts - and that began suggesting muted colors to me. I turned to one of my favorite olive greens and originally just made an intertwining linear shape (remains of which are evident in the central portion) for the first pass.

When I came back to it, I'd been thinking about tropical plants from Costa Rica which grow with pink and green in the same leaves, and I was considering that color combination when I decided to intervene with a rosy color. I liked the brown that they produced in combination as well... though I haven't yet decided how I'd like the colors to end up in this piece.

As I've said, I'm becoming increasingly interested in modular elements coming together and the patterns that emerge within repetitive systems. Here I thought about circles and the way that the paint would modulate between outlining the circle or becoming the circle's edge. I'll have to find a way to make these ideas more apparent in the finished work so they don't just come off as effervescent and decorative.

Day Twelve (backposted)

24"x30" (?), acrylic on paper

This is the larger piece which I began on day 7 and continued to work on in passing.

I was especially interested in the ways the paint separated from a solid brown mixture into its constituents of phthalo green and cadmium red, which I suppose is to do with chemical properties of the two emulsions.

Personally, I found it rather poetic to use water in such a way, a diluent with the capability of separating a presumably stable mixture by immersing and extending it beyond the adhesive properties of acrylic resins. In my head, it was a bit of a conceptual metaphor, which I think also influenced some of the forms, which began to take on a primordial, narrative quality for me.

I think there is something in this type of work which is essential to who I am as a painter, but the confines of this semester and my thesis project may prevent me from thoroughly exploring it imminently. I'll probably keep up with smaller works though and see where it goes.