Newspaper Paintings

"Red Rock"
" Hazy Sky"

"Fire Sky"

An experimental painting today....ended up being a group of four. back to recycled materials and wanting to use newspaper and newsprint in paintings. I want to use my newspapers in new and creative ways. I started by thinking I was going to just color over some of the type and collage it into paintings but then I added more and more and more color until.... a painting showed up!

You can still see some of the newspaper in the bottom right of this one. The other thing that was going on was using materials without worrying about wasting them....so what if it isn't really a painting...so what if it is really awful ...so what if it is just color next to color and some of the colors work and some of them don't.

I don't know what I will do with these next...they will still probably be collaged onto or into another painting but just having big pieces of paper to paint on is a LOT of fun

Peas and Carrots

" Peas and Carrots"

One of the paintings in the Artful Lodger show.

The paintings were delivered yesterday in the afternoon without a whole lot of stress. I had been steadily working toward the Sunday afternoon deadline and had the 30 paintings wrapped and in their packing by noon. One of the most time consuming parts of preparing for a show after the painting has all been done is naming all of the paintings. I like the names to have meaning but not be too obvious. And I end up talking out loud to myself about the painting and what I was thinking when I painted it. Some times I take photos of the paintings and then flip through them writing the first thing that pops into my head when I see them. For this painting the single tree in the middle of the row made me think of climbing trees, being under a tree and having a favorite tree. Naturally, that means Forrest Gump and Jenny. And that can only mean Peas and Carrots.

An idea I had from some photos I took at dusk with my Iphone. I like it but I have a hard time not doing more to it.

An example of the acrylic paintings that I'm working on for my upcoming show. These have a warm feel...I'm calling them October fields. Most have an orange to yellow field of some sort at the bottom and then some kind of distant horizon. The surface is textured with tissue paper to add some visual interest.

I'm working on an idea to use plastic shopping bags cut into pieces and gessoed or glued to the painting surface. It might be a good way to use up all that plastic. I have used plastic wrap in the canvas surface with good results so why not the plastic bags. For all of those plastic bags still getting out there in spite of canvas bags to reuse at the store.....