The Walls are Alive Again

Tomorrow I hope to get my seven paintings back into frames and onto the walls. Eric Law did a fantastic job of photographing them, and I'm pretty sure I know which two will become entries for the Michigan Water Color Society annual.
Here's one that, much as I like it, I DON'T think I will enter.  It doesn't feel like an MWCS painting, although I'd have to work on why that is. This one has been photographed twice by Mr. Law, because it had a MAJOR revision and now has a whole new look. The black and gold in the background of this painting are both gesso, not my usual method.  Maybe that's why it doen't seem appropriate for the MWCS competition. At least the flowers aren't Pink!
The rest of the paintings, whether or not they go to this competition, are making me pretty happy and will become part of my November one-woman show at Fieldstone Winery.  So excited about that!  I'll probably share a couple of them here over the coming months, but not all. Need to give my friends some good reason to come to the opening!

Preparation begins

What? you say - Why is she posting such BORING pictures of empty walls?   Well, this is what my house looks like these days, as I prepare entries for the Michigan Water Color Society annual exhibition. It's been announced that this year's juror is Pat Dews, and the entries must be postmarked by February 11.

Recently my strongest tool for assessing a painting is familiarity.  I used to follow some artists' suggestion of hiding away a painting, then pulling it out to see it with new eyes.  Instead, I've been putting them, unsigned & unphotographed, into mats and frames, and hanging them where I see them often.  This has worked well for me, in that I'm finding out clearly which paintings can hold my interest, and not annoy me with small flaws.  Some fail both these tests, and eventually come out of the frames for corrections and sometimes complete reworkings. Others pass. The passing paintings get signed and  - currently - are stacking up for a trip to the incomparable Eric Law for photographing.

Once I get the results back from him, I'll look at the images to decide which ones are worthy of entering in the MWCS annual.
The down side you see here. Some very sadly empty walls for a while.

The Sum of the Parts

How does it go? The whole is greater than the sum of the parts?  That phrase occurred to me this morning when I looked back over my shoulder at the wall of my studio where I tape and clip things I’m working on.

This  view made me think that maybe mats and frames are NOT my friends as I thought they were. Several of these have made it briefly into frames and onto living room walls (this is how I decide if they are done  … or, sometimes, how I decide I don’t really like them at all).   A couple  may be done (whether I’ve signed them or not doesn’t count).    One of them has achieved ‘reject’ status.  And there are always fragments up on the wall from paintings that failed and got cropped and still failed – this process at least  seems to generate lovely long strips of colors and patterns that I can’t abandon.

But all pasted up together on this one wall, I like all of them. A  generous overload  of pattern and flower and all the things I love putting into paintings.   I don’t know if there’s anything for me to learn from this: I don’t think I should be collage-ing them all together into one gigantic frame.  I just liked the way they all looked, crammed together this way, and they made me smile.