Focus

Wow! It's been a while since I blogged. My intention was to be posting at least every week, with some new artwork. But things have gotten busy on the digital side of my business, and so my focus shifted away from the  blog for a while.While I am grateful for the opportunities to bring in some regular business, I do not want to lose sight of my artistic goals. It's important to me that I balance the digital work with painting and creative pursuits.

So the further I get from creating my own artwork, the further I am from happiness. At least I have been able to create a few new pieces during my blogging hiatus. Since I am so far behind on posting the art, I'll try to catch up from where I left off a while back.

My husband and I were visiting with family in Attleboro, and we took a walk downtown to check out the Attleboro Arts Museum. Lucky me! Not only was the gallery there open, but they were having the opening reception for their Celebrating Diversity show (sweet!). I got a chance to check out some very inspiring artwork, see the museum space, and pick up information about their upcoming events. By the way - there was some fascinating work at the diversity show, and one of the first displays there was a series of small sculptures - Army of the Imperfectly Dressed by CA Stigliano, who was my wood carving teacher at MassArt! Something about art and my MassArt connections coming around again makes me feel like I'm on the right track.

After the show I became a member of the museum, and created two mixed-media pieces to submit for the 2010 Spring Flower show at the end of March. ...and WOOT! Both pieces were accepted! Since the theme of the art show was Light and Dark: a Celebration of Contrast, I worked from some of my flower photos that had heavy contrast and I hoped would make decent compositions.

Queen Anne's Lace  8" x 10" pastel

This first painting is soft pastels on black paper. Of the two, it was my husband's favorite. Someone at the show liked it as well, as it sold during the exhibition!

Sunset Blooms  10" x 8" mixed-media

This second painting is mixed-media - I started with a loose acrylic underpainting on a watercolor block, and then layered soft pastel over it. I really love the color of the flowers, and thought the deep blue would make a nice contrast. This piece was selected for a merit award by the judges (WOOT x 2!). So I have to say, I'm very happy with how things went at this show. The painted work by all of the artists was fantastic, and the show also included floral and landscape designs from several local businesses, each inspired by classic pieces of art. There were some really creative interpretations of the theme.

I have some more new work to post, so I'll be back on the blog (tomorrow, hopefully) to continue with the catch-up session. Some personal pieces, as well as more work on the Heart Art for the charity show coming up in 2011.