Birdwoman

Success!Just so you know, getting married is really fun.  I highly recommend it.  And being married to Charley (although I only have 12 days of experience with it) is REALLY fun.  These pictures are photographs of photographs (I only had printed copies and no scanner), but I couldn't resist posting something to mark such a great day.  I will post something crisper (and knowing me, probably more artsy) when our photographer is finished processing our images.

  
I like this one, because I'm surrounded by all four of my parental figures, since my stepdad was behind the camera.  

Anyway, now that the wedding is over, it feels good to get back to normal life and take a nice long look around, without getting interrupted by involuntary reveries about centerpieces and place cards.  

Yesterday morning was a great day for good breakfast light, a good breakfast mug, and a good breakfast book:

And I'm back in my studio with a vengeance and some new materials:
Framing is starting to chap my hide.  Not only is it expensive, but it also feels like I'm imprisoning my paintings.  All of the layers and textures and colors that I slave over for weeks and months, become flatter and duller when they are trapped behind glass.  So I've been thinking of ways to make pieces that 1) feel technically and conceptually satisfying 2) can happily exist without frames and 3) can be created without using chemical solvents.  

I have a quilt in my studio that was made by my great, great grandmother.  I've recreated some of the patterns on it in some small paintings.  Last week I went to Fabric Corner in Arlington and found a whole shelf full of awesomely similar patterns--all deliciously dated.  So I bought some and stained it with acrylic paint.  Then I sewed the pieces together with a tiny gouache on paper painting that I made and stretched it onto a wood panel.  I added some more layers of paint and this is the result:

I like it.  I have more in the works, but I'm feeling nervous about sharing too much until I'm a little more confident in the work.  And my next piece is going through it's adolescent awkward phase right now.  But basically, what I'm aiming for with these pieces is to make little, intimate, jewel-like gouache paintings that pop against a kind of dark, roughly textured, layered backdrop.