You may or may not recall a post I published last fall with some fairly atypical (for me) work. Well, I’m still making that work, albeit sporadically. These are a couple of pieces from that series that I finished the other day. Both are acrylic on really nice, archival mat board.

When I have enough of these (in about thirty or forty years) I’m going to transform my under the front stairway closet into a gallery, plaster them all over the walls and have a party. Leave your address in the comments below if you’d like me to send you an invite. The postcards are sure to become collectors items in century or so. Trust me, you’ll want one. I’m not collecting addresses to sell. Really.

Sincerely,
Steph

Nonetheless, I have invited my friend, Galina Todorova, to take over for me. Galina is a noted painter who lives and works in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Her posts will begin next Friday, so please show her some support. I have spent many long hours discussing painting with her, and I feel like her points of view and passion for art will be a welcome addition to d’Arte Board.

I have included a few examples of her work after the jump–>

Balance, 2009; acrylic on canvas; 48 x 24 in.

My mother, 1991; pen and ink on paper; 5 x 20 in.

Return, 2003; oil on canvas; 51 x 43 in.

But of course that was the point, right? Previous efforts in this collab have been in my color/pattern safety area, nice and neutral. Puzzling this one out was fun, working hard to keep the chaos of the free shaped forms in some harmony with the rigidness of the lines, fearing muddled results otherwise.

I don’t usually use these colors, or stripes either, and that two pages were so similar in color made an easy choice to flip one horizontally to give the forms some definition against each other.  The opposite approach seemed fitting to handle the black and white, syncing up the lines where possible so vertical structure could be created,but none of it was working until the stitching was added, giving the eye just enough of a break to navigate it all.

I think.

I mean I hope. Did it sound like I knew what I was talking about up there?

That was an honest reflection of the decisions that went into it, but it’s all new, new materials, new techniques, so it’s still pretty mysterious.  But I want to make more, so I figure it must be the right track.

By the way,  the title came from a random thing on the bottom of my computer, but it seemed to fitting, so I followed instructions.

printers ink and graphite on paper

27 x 23 x 5 inches
mixed media on cradled panel

Let’s see now, what to say about this. How about it’s not finished yet, but it’s starting to make me grin. I hope that thing that sometimes happens where I show an unfinished piece and then lose interest in it doesn’t happen this time.

Thanks for looking!
-Steph

Pheromoning, oil on canvas, 36″ x 62″

-JD

And I think that’s the end of the violence today. Thanks for looking!
-Steph