Mostly Red

My new friend Martha just posted a wonderful item about our recent Steve Aimone workshop in Asheville. She has done a great job of telling about the workshop and showing pictures of a lot of people and artwork. It brings back such fond memories -and inspires me to work. I have been having a lot of fun working with numbers, dates, and letters. Using these as starting points, I intuitively work with paint and drawing. Today I am also concentrating on the color red. I feel that I need to continue working this way for a good while. Another inspiration for doing artwork is the continuing AARP site that Steve Aimone is hosting for Expressive Drawing. It is always a good thing to have a source of motivation.

April 15

In keeping with my theme of working with numbers, I thought of doing paintings that reflect the date; hence, here is my April 15, 2011. I am starting with the date, covering up, repainting, cevering up etc. hoping that some of the date may or may not show through but the spirit of the day is remebered. I am realizing that in order to give this non-objective style of painting a chance for me, I must work on it for a good while....

In the Aimone workshop last weekend we did some drawings/paintings starting with numbers or letters. Today I have worked on three 12"x12" canvases that I started with numbers. This seems to be a good way for me to get into non-objective artwork.

Palette Knife Symbols

Today I have worked with a palette knife. I have done this before and always find it easier to be more free with abstraaction. Since I have been using personal symbols, I put some into the paintings today.

Expressive Painting

After attending the Aimone workshop last weekend, I am finding that I HAVE to paint in an expressive manner. I always have a bunch of paintings going at the same time and sometimes group them into diptychs or triptychs. This group of three is working with personal symbols, something I have been thinking about for a long time and never have gotten around to doing. I think I will keep working on this theme for a while.

Aimone Workshop

I just attended a Steven Aimone workshop in Asheville. It was a great weekend. We had such a wonderful group of people from all over the US and Canada, and there was such diversity among us; but we were a really cohesive group and formed great friendships. Steve teaches an online class for AARP now and has workshops in several places during the year ranging from weekends to full weeks and next year ten days. Most of the people in the group had read his latest book EXPRESSIVE DRAWING and like it so much that they HAD to come. I took a workshop from him a few years ago and felt it was time to gain some more knowledge. I usually don't work in quite this way but am trying to learn! We worked really hard; Steve gave different projects to do, and we moved quickly through them. Not much time to think - that was the point - to draw straight from energy within with no visual reference. We gathered to look at each other's work and made comments or asked questions. Steve is a strongly positive person and sees the good in everything and is encouraging to everyone. I hope to do another workshop in the future and in the meantime am enjoying the AARP class. The painting I am attaching is part of a tritych gleaned from a large painting done in the class.