Friday, April 18, 2014

Michigan Water Color Society Annual - Accepted!

Treepodia
I learned this week that both of my submissions were juried into the Michigan Water Color Society's upcoming annual exhibition.  How exciting is that?  I'm feeling a wee bit personally perplexed, though, because they are from the series of  mostly abstracts that I was working on all last summer and fall after my Kanuga workshop with Mike Bailey. I submitted them because I thought they were good enough, and I like them both, but since then have happily turned back from the abstracts to my floral/pattern paintings.  Now, the nod I have gotten for my abstract work seems to tell me, paint more of THOSE.  But . . . I'm not sure I really want to anymore.  So: what do I do with THAT?

6 comments:

  1. Congratulations, Katherine. All your work is top quality, no matter the subject, imho.
    I was watching a Mel Stabin video earlier today wherein he said not to paint for shows or judges, but to paint what you want to, what you care about (at that time). Which seems like good advice ... I don't even know how anyone could do otherwise!
    Love here, again, your use of positive/negative, which is a thing I find often draws me to paintings.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you Laura, and especially for the insight from Mel Stabin. I think I'll listen to that advice. As you say, how could one do otherwise.
      Also thanks for noticing/mentioning the negative shapes, it is something I usually try to design carefully, sometimes more successfully than others.

      Delete
  2. Congratulations, Katherine! What a feather in your cap. I've been enjoying your floral/pattern work so I don't think you should abandon that but I haven't seen your abstracts so I can't compare the two. I'll have to check your blog archives. Hopefully you posted the abstracts on here somewhere. Have you ever tried submitting your floral/pattern work?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, Billie! Actually, I've had perfectly adequate (not spectacular) success with the floral/pattern work too, getting several things into various juried (local!) shows. So I guess I don't really to agonize that much over which kind of painting pulls me.
      The abstracts were posted late last year, into December, if you are really interested. These two that got into MWCS were really the only successful ones, though.

      Delete
  3. Congratulations! I see your style in these and in your latest - the patterns come through and the clean color sense comes through. This is just a nod to the quality of your work, whether it is more abstract or expressionist. Don't return to something you don't want to do just because someone liked the older stuff. If you do that, you will stop growing as an artist. Keep walking forward!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Beautiful paintings;of course they are accepted! Congratulations and well deserved.

    ReplyDelete