'Fusepo' response

I'm beginning to feel as if I am painting with plastic.  I guess it's like any material, you get to know it and you can use it as your handwriting. 

Yesterday we took the train back from Exeter.  I had my little zipper bag of mail art materials and on the second train we had a table to ourselves so I collaged. Last night between activities I spent a bit of time in the studio with my iron and some of the plastic I foudn in Exeter.  I wanted to capture the (poetry) the colour  and feeling of the collage in fused plastic: FUSEPO. 

Considering the role of white and black on colour

                                             A                                                B
Both of these studies are 6"sq.  I began study 'a' feeling very rusty about colour studies.  My next task (from David Hornung's colour workshop book) was to create a 'free study' and the previous reading was about the use of white and black around colour and the impact on adjacent colour. I thought I'd see what happened with black and white and try to jog my memory around an understanding of colour relations.  I used neocolour 2 (water soluble crayons) and portfolio water soluble oil pastels first.  They are messy to work with if you are trying for precision. I didn't begin thinking 'this is the plan' I had a loose objective and perhaps choice of materials didn't really suit where I ended up going... but it gave my a chance to think about texture, something I hadn't considered before.  The task was to use each colour at least twice.  I didn't  plan value or hue constraints. I wanted to use a variety of materials.  I wanted to add some pattern. Could I have too many variables going on here? In the end I used paper scraps, Caran D'ache gouache, black permanent pen and white paper.  Whatever colour I laid down on the square, I put the same colour on another piece of white paper to cut and collage elsewhere. 

In the second study I wanted to see what would happen if I seperated the blue/greens from the red/yellows.  I was also thinking I was putting the darker value at the top.  But as I responded to the image I found I needed a rich, deep more prismatic red/orange. The lemon yellow is quite cool and I put the cobalt violet with the blue greens...  so the end result was a wider range of values, a similar range of hues and more black in 'b'.  Although much is similar I prefer the gesture in 'b'.

leftover plastic collages

Snowlight colour studies under the influence of Hiroshige

No sun up this morning while walking the dog and the colours and light at the end of the lane reminded me of Hiroshige. I wondered whether using Horoshige's colours in one of my colour studies would create the feel of snow. I tried to think about colour ratios, very loosely, and grabbed, tore and cut paper quickly. I wanted to keep away from reproducing the structure. Clearly missed an opportunity to use my favourite melon orange, in my haste, though.

Snowlight in studio

Heavy snow last night and overcast today. I only have titanium white, I wonder what lead white would do? 

Also making snowlight mailart, drawing on colour studies and gouache painted paper.

A typical Friday night

In response to a very theoretical but also provocative symposium on Involuntary Drawing: Art and Automatism yesterday, I did a bit of tangerine scanning and let it take me somewhere culminating in a book.  The lecture featured the film of Matisse drawing. The characters hover around orange.  And  this morning as I was just finished attaching the velcro to the intentionless tangerine closure, Figgy called to tell me she had a pivotal poetry lecture and that it doesn't matter what the writer (artist) intends.  We all make our own meaning, so there.

Envelope

 'Intentionless Tangerine' cover

P2 &3

P 3 & 4

Back cover

Back envelope

Maybe how an idea begins to evolve

I went through my sketchbooks and gessoed out all the stuff that wasn't interesting.  In a few places I glued shapes of a different colour over dark places. The rose red was part of a paint chip I'd collected in Maine a few summers ago.  I blended a bit of bluey gouache into the gesso.This morning I woke early and found some objects that would work with the direction of the red.  The objects were not red.

Next I scanned the new image and printed it onto some cartridge paper.  I worked without reference to the objects with a Matisse book opened.

All over the place

Mail art sent to Theresa (the letter project)

Looking at Dorothy Eisner, finding an old collage and rereading Barbara Haskell's Milton Avery book,  and borowing Jane's Barbara Rae drawings, reminded me that working in all directions from a range of sources, life, drawings, photos, imagination, monotypes, collages is the way I always worked before.  I have been feeling so serious and so self-conscious, mailart the only place I feel I really play or experiment.  License.  Didn't I do my MA thesis on that? And besides aren't women born to multi-task? In the midst of all this theorising I went to a talk by Daniel Sturgis at First Site in Colchester.  Interesting but in a funny way dispiriting. Only response is to fill all the moments of doubt with frenetic making. So here is some 'bad art' or in process art that might be the stimulus for the next thing. Jeni, from UEA would be proud with my 'messiness' (Jeni thought I tidied up my thought process, revealing only semi-finished ideas in my journals).  Perhaps suffering in public is the honest way.  Or maybe I shoud have a continual bonfire ablaze?

Trying to tame new ink

So inspiring to visit six stunning gardens yesterday.  Today it rained so was indoors more than usual and found time to think about some of the motifs from the day.  The sunhat was a recurring theme.

These new Akua Kolor inks just aren't behaving the way they did in England, so I am having to work back into prints.

These are postcard size but perhaps I can take some of the ideas and scale them up or translate them into a different material.

Playing with cake

The great thing about mailart (for me) is the permission it gives me to play and experiment with different ideas and materials.  I go through my day in a state of hyper-sensitivity to words and colours, hoping to be inspired.  I am now on # 72 of my 365.  Where else could I go with cake?

finding a little inspiration

Another mailart fitted into a busy day.  A deadline of 30 mins and NO IDEA what I would make.  As I looked under the table to select a box of scraps I noticed a magazine and what looked like a face.  It turned out to be a Sky magazine promo.  Sky turned out to be timeless suspended between art nouveau and the sixties.  Fun, fun, fun.

Decorative Mailart

When I was a pre-teen I have a zodiac colouring book - these are derivative and were lots of fun to make.  I have been so busy plastering, lime washing, working and today spending a delightful day with my Niece and nephew that I am empty when i begin my daily mail art.  I never know what will happen and am surprised again every day when I find something to say, even if it's just I that I love to play with colour!

Mailart #23 - a warm hat

The weather is set to plummet but I have a new hat that i bought at the Cranberry Island non-fair sale. I have sent the mail art as a bit of island PR too.