Birdwoman

Here's a peek at the sketches that will become the next two paintings in my forest critter series. This gang of potentially malevolent owls has been bouncing around in my head and my sketchbook for months and months.  A while back I started working with a variation of this image in a large painting on paper, but I've put that piece on hold for a bit.  I'm too in love with making tiny things at the moment.  So in love, that I felt like it was time to make some more egg portraits:

 I also made this present for my friend's daughter out of bits of an old failed experiment: 

I love to repurpose things.  Some of my best work comes from a sort of back-and-forth between destructive and creative processes.  Occasionally, when I'm working on a big piece, I get most of the way through and realize that (most likely due to a number of deliciously irresponsible risks on my part) the composition is irresolvable, or the paint has gotten muddy in places and killed the luminous quality that might have been.  There's this moment when I think to myself, "If I could just start over, and change x, y or z, this painting would be spectacular!"  So that's what I do.  Which leaves the first version free for cutting, sewing, and all kinds of other interesting experiments.  These experiments aren't completely footloose and fancy-free; they're carefully directed by my active search for a new narrative.  My blog header, a painting entitled Birdwoman is my favorite example of this because it catapulted me into so many new ways of making images.  

Along these same lines of destruction/creation, I recently saw an exhibition of Julie Weiman's work at the New Art Center, where I teach.  In her artist statement, Julie wrote about making images that were "a little bit ruined."  Isn't that a beautiful notion?