Musings

I promised to talk about using glitter and acrylic paints together to form an impressive and let's face it, downright cool effect on the canvas. Sheva and I had been discussing my doing a seasonal series - depicting Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer. I had several thoughts on how to go about doing such a series as I already started my Autumn Series dedicated to my grandmother. The colors were chosen for me by fate so it seemed and the creative process, once overcome, poured out of me.

Winter has been a much bigger challenge. For how do you depict winter, snow, white, on white? You see, challenge. Amazingly enough, the answer also came through Sheva. We went to the Pearl art store which was having a clearance sale and Sheva insisted on buying all kinds of glitter. Now I get a bit messy when I paint but the idea of glitter getting in the cracks on the floor of my apartment gave me hives. I tried in vain to dissuade her from buying the glitter - to no avail. Once home, Sheva suggested that I might use the glitter in a painting. On the surface. Not thrilled with the idea, I once again objected. But then it occurred to me to combine the white glitter with white acrylic paint and see what happened. I had also bought an iridescent color series called "Interference" which was very glossy and fine and wouldn't show up very well on canvas unless combined with another color. Ah! The combination was there, all I needed to do was experiment. So with a palate knife, I combined the white paint, the glitter and the "Interference" red and went to work. The result is what I call my winter series. Born out of frustration and a total lack of ideas, these paintings ended up as the textured representations of winter scenes that we in Chicago and elsewhere - where snow, wind and cold are the essence of winter - know so well. They are fun to look at, surprising, rough to the touch and a triumph as far as I'm concerned.

They are difficult to photograph and much better to observe in 3D but I will post an example on the blog.

Gold textured painting

So I used the oatmeal-type paints that I described in my last blog. The one I used was a gold color paint that is supposed to look like pyrite when dry. Interesting to work with. When it first goes on, you cannot see the finished product. It's still white and somewhat gooey. Because of the way I layered the gold on, when it dried, the result was a raised 3-D look on a 2-dimensional space - it really did look like pyrite. What I did was pair it with gold and bronze shiny acrylics that look fabulous on the canvass. I used a palette knife to apply the paint so the result is a very textured look. If you run your fingers over it, you feel it. It has shining accents due to a bit of gold glitter that I mixed in with the paint. I love the warmth of colors. Using mixed media with acrylics has turned out to be a wonderful adventure but more on that next week.