Upcoming Demo, Spring Tulips

Well I'm all packed up for my Demo tomorrow at Dots & Doodles in Astoria at 2pm. Should be an excellent demo. I've got a handout with my suggestions for tools and equipment you need to start out and I'll have what a starter set would entail sitting out at the demo so people can see. I also have some beginning exercises for newbies to try out should they want to get started right away. There will be lots of samples and paintings to touch and feel that I will hand around and there will be a demo - which I'll try to get through in 1 hour (and if I don't finish there, I will do so at home in my studio and I'll post it here). So come and have a good time looking at interesting encaustics.

Here are 2 pictures of tulips I planted this fall. The light here in the wintertime is so weak and overcast that I wanted something really bright and cheerful to see from my windows. These Appledorn varieties actually entice me outside nearly every day to see how they are doing.

I have a painting friend who told me the story of going to a workshop in Arizona and there really learning what color was and how it could be used in the landscape -- and how it just rocked her world because up until then she never had really understood how thin and weak the light is here in the northwest especially during winter and spring days. When she came home and stepped out of the airplane it was absolutely a shock! So below is an example of a shot I took out here on the coast which is such a typical shot during this time of year - not only is the light thin and weak but many of the plants and all of the grasses lack color - for us they live in that dun colored hibernation until spring has really turned into summer. Even if the sky is blue and the sun is out, it looks like this. Which of course is why a good dose of spring tulips in the very brightest colors I can find is a necessity for the spirit!

On the other hand, you notice that the walker is wearing shorts - such is life in the mild marine Northwest - not too hot--not too cold ---just right!

Some Encaustics for fun...... and other pursuits

Here are two recent encaustics I completed and such fun they were to work. I'm going to submit them to some juried shows that I usually enter this time of year - one up in Edmonds and one in Bothell. The layers are so lovely and in the first one the textures turned out so nice as well. This beeswax thing is just so darned addictive that I can't stop.

I thought I'd do some pieces in the near future with some realistic images in them so that people who enjoy more tangible objects can see how great this medium can be with those sorts of paintings as well. And since Spring has finally seem to have sprung around here I think I can promise tulips and hummingbirds as subjects. Suddenly both are around!

Spring does feel like the time to delve into new projects doesn't it. For instance, even though I've been a knitter all of my life, I've suddenly gotten this bee up my bonnet about learning to spin - especially colorful art batts and then to weave the new handspun on a small ridgid heddle loom.

I don't have a spinning wheel or a loom and I never have had, but I was reading one of my favorite blogs the other day - Stephanie McPhee's Yarn Harlot blog www.yarnharlot.ca/blog and she has done 2 such escapades within her last 6 or 7 posts whereby she has dipped into her stash, pulled out some lovely wool batts, spun then and then decided on a weaving project instead of knitting the handspun. So cool.

Now of course, Stephanie is a very fine fiber artist and a very experienced professional knitter, spinner and weaver but even so - WOW. Just clear out the blue she has veared off her normal course and I believe she has lit the fiber world on fire once again! Her blogs often have over 300 comments and they just jump when she does something like this. So the upshot for me is how long can I withstand the longing to jump into something new for me?

I guess we'll find out! :-)

Now To Work

Yes, as you can see my world at the beach is filled with regular winter sights. Here is the most recent grey whale that washed ashore in late March. It's had a necropsy by biologists and then the carcass was buried but for a time drew quite a bit of attention - from people and seagulls.

No trash has yet to arrive from the Japan tsunami  but we expect a lot of people to come to pan for interesting bits and bobs.

We also have had several successful clamming weekends here on reasonable morning tides so this will probably be it for razor clams until Fall. The weather for the most part has just been ferociously stormy and rainy.

I'm now working on a group of encaustic pieces that reference my Burn series and my Rune series for a "Featured Artist" layout in June for Trails End Art Association and Gallery. Stay tuned and I'll post them as I get them finished and cropped in PhotoShop. And I'm entering 2 juried shows in Edmonds and Bothell this year with encaustics. Encaustics are now being shown more regularly in galleries so I'm hopeful that people will enjoy seeing them and will be disposed to buying them. I'm also doing 2 free demo's at Dots and Doodles in Astoria to give the community a chance to see how it's done and develop and attraction for the medium.