Galleries love a good group show parameter that will give a wide breadth of interpretation by all the different artists. Each individual artist will interpret the show’s parameter in their own way. Some will shift their voice to fit the requirement. Some will make the parameter fit their style. Some artists will take it literally. Others will find some airy-fairy connection that only they understand. Regardless of how it is tackled, when the audience gets to experience all these different interpretations in one spot it makes for a magical show.
A Matter of Blue was a group show at The Fraser Gallery in Tatamagouche, here in Nova Scotia. I agreed to enter the show. Being a new exhibitor, I’ve learned that when I enter a show, the show consumes me until the paintings are deemed complete, varnished and leaning against the wall waiting for delivery day.
With A Matter of Blue show technically I could have entered many paintings that were already done as I use a lot of teal and aqua leaning blues in my paintings. Then I could have quickly washed my hands of the show and moved on to the current progression of my work. But no, I had to paint specifically for the work to fit with the show.
I came up with some ideas, hopped from one to another, mixed up variations of my favourite shades of blue, I even pulled out oil paints although I have almost no experience with using them. I was still building my A Million Dreams collection and my brain had been wrapped up with bouquets, but for some reason when it came to tackling the blue parameter, I kept trying to go back to my landscape training and the “pedestrian” paintings that I used to make. I created a vista from Cape St. John looking across the fields at River John. It was in all these deep blues which was a blend of Ultramarine blue and Pthalo Blue (a great colour combo by the way), with this one patch of white highlighting the clouds and the steeple of the village church. I suppose someone would think it was a wonderful piece but it felt foreign to me. It went into my stack of paintings in the cupboard.
I did a subtraction piece in oil of a sailboat on an expanse of gradient blue. Meh! No. 1 Daughter took it home cause she loves it. None of my attempts were in my voice as an artist. I was clearly trying to be an artist that I’m not and more importantly don’t want to be. So one morning, after struggling for two weeks with this blue concept, I declared to Mr. D that I was no longer going to exhibit in the show. Deep breath. Relax. Ahhh. Stress gone. You know the expression ‘Man plans, God laughs?’ well that applies here.
I went back to my collection work and painting a set of two sisters – Matilda and Maeve. Matilda is on a 12 X 24′ canvas. Maeve is a bit bigger on an 18 X 24″ canvas. They look balanced hanging on my easel wall. I’m back in my groove. When I started them both my intent was to lean into the green and yellow areas of the colour wheel. I’m not sure why. Perhaps I was tired of work with blues. Blues are very bossy colours. There’s no getting around that.
How blue I had gone with Matilda and Maeve I didn’t realize until I set this group of paintings on the floor for a quick picture. That’s Matilda, finished, second in on the left. Maeve is second from the right. As you can see I was in a really blue phase. Elle, in the very center, has my usual teal-blue shades, but Stepahnie and Stella, like Maeve and Matilda are very blue. Having them all together really emphasizes this. During the painting process, I did not realize that this was happening. Seeing this grouping was a “Who knew?” moment for me.
My process of staining the canvas with transparent colours followed by layers of both transparent and opaque layers usually gets photographed for later reference. The painting will shift as each layer is added. I’m never quite sure where it’s going for the first couple of layers, but then it gets to a point where I see where I know it needs to go. The following layers will solidify the final shapes that take the painting to completion. I started with blue in the base layer, intending to cover it with greens and yellows, but without realizing I shifted into blues through all my layers. Unconsciously I was once again treading in the waters of blue so to speak.
So suddenly I was again going to enter paintings in the A Matter of Blue show. Definitely not what I expected when I created Matilda and Maeve, but that’s what I love about my painting process. I never know what’s going to happen.
Sometimes you don’t like a painting when it’s finished. It’s not a matter of repainting it, you just know when a painting is done and there is nothing more that can be done. So you walk away. Here’s an interesting aspect of art. If you change it’s location you change the painting. It looks different. This is what happened with Matilda and Maeve. I dropped them off at the gallery and thought they were OK, but I wasn’t real keen on them. Then when I saw Matilda and Maeve hanging on the wall of the show I fell in love. They sparkled under the gallery lights. WOW! That’s all I could say when I walked into the room. I felt proud that I had created these paintings.
Like my other work the compositions of Matilda and Maeve were good. The bouquet was balanced. Both each had a unique combination of flowers in the painting. The lights and darks were balanced so there was depth to the bouquet. The layers of brush marks make standing close to the painting a new experience each time you step up. There are just so many little interesting marks, colours that you can discover. When I went to bed that evening there was a feeling of satisfaction with having been true to my voice, while somehow falling within the parameters of the A Matter of Blue show.
Ture Story!
Time to get Dancing
Dancing in the Moonlight
Within the A Million Dreams series, there are sets of paintings that have a specific “get up and get going” song. For Maeve and Matilda, the song was Toploader’s version of Dancing in the Moonlight. I remember the original song from back in the 70’s. This version is superb. There is what sounds like an original Hammond organ in the arrangement that I just love, especially when it has a solo! The rhythm has that flowy feel of the original 70’s version too. You can’t stay still with this song. Swing those hips, bob that head!