New Painting: Your Molecular Structure is Looking Mighty Fine Today
New Painting: Running Pops
Reminder: Art Opening Tonight at Bay6 Gallery
Solo show of over 40 of my recent paintings!
I hope to see you at my opening reception tonight – Saturday, October 10th, 7:00 – 10:00pm.
Food and drink will be provided, with music by The Treachery of Others.
Bay6 Gallery is located at:
5305 Bolm Rd., Unit 6
Austin TX
78721
Link
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The show continues on weekends through November 1st.
Getting Excited About My Solo Exhibit!
In eight days, I will be greeting friends and fans at my solo show at Bay6 Gallery in East Austin. I am really looking forward to that moment!
Getting ready for this has been an amazing process. Doing all the necessary organizational stuff besides trying to paint every moment that I can for weeks and weeks and weeks, that is.
I sent out email invitations to most of the people I know; and Bay6 has also invited a large number of folks. We’ve notified people via email, Facebook, Twitter, EventBrite, Eventful, and word-of-mouth, and we may be expecting a great turnout! I picked up my beautifully printed postcards today from Tom at ipgprint.com; I will be mailing those tomorrow. Plans are set for music, food, and drink, and we will start to hang the show next week. I owe some responses to emails and blog commenters, which I will try to get to as soon as my mental energy rolls in that direction.
How Much Do You Plan Your Paintings?
I recently read an article by a representational painter on another blog, in which the writer said that one should very carefully and thoroughly plan one’s paintings. My first thought was, “No waaaaay!” That would take all the fun out the process of discovery that, for me at least, is a great deal of what painting is about. Feeling a little smug, I thought of the following much-loved quote:
You are lost the instant you know what the result will be. – Juan Gris
The Challenge of Becoming a Non-Representational Painter
Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others. – Jonathan Swift
Abstraction is real, probably more real than nature. – Josef Albers
I am getting very excited about my upcoming solo show. I’m painting like mad, and I’m beginning to be very happy with some of the results. I think I may just have a future in this wonderful world of painting!
Continue reading “The Challenge of Becoming a Non-Representational Painter”
The E Word: Recent Works by Marilyn Fenn
Solo show this October at Bay6 Gallery & Studios, Austin
My new exhibition, “The E Word,” explores life at different scales: from the elements of evolution to the essentials of our environment, and on to the endless reaches of space. Through the interplay and juxtaposition of the micro with the macro, I try to depict on canvas what nature could do in the world, but hasn’t gotten around to yet. There are always new combinations, and with them, new opportunities for capturing the kind of emergent qualities that animate the world; new ways of discovering parts whose sum creates a greater whole.
This wealth of possibilites lies in the inescapable fractal nature of the physical world: tiny crystals under a microscope resemble mountain ranges; neurons mirror nebulae; zoosphores echo supernovae.
Flashback Friday: 1992
Some of my online art friends started posting on Fridays a Flashback to previous works. I found out about the Flashback Fridays from Steven LaRose, who in turn credits Carla Knopp for starting this movement, and adds Mary Addison Hackett as the next artist to join the ranks of Flashback Friday posters. Is anyone else doing this?
Color is the Thing for Me
I am getting very excited about my upcoming solo show. I’m painting like a madman, and I’m beginning to be very happy with some of the results.
When I made arrangements months ago to do this show, I had no fear about showing my work, as I had just come off of a long period of intense and successful creation, and was (and still am) very happy with the work I had created.
But I was ready to move on to the next thing creatively, though I wasn’t sure what it was.
So I began this year by doing lots of tiny sketches and many small paintings, searching for a satisfying direction. I attempted a few larger paintings, but they went awry. At a workshop, I created some new work in encaustic, though in the end I wasn’t happy with most of them. To date, I have completed about 70 pieces this year — which is a lot for me — though most of them are sketches and small paintings.
Then, finally, the realization that color is the “thing” for me, and as long as I’m true to that, I’m happy, and my work succeeds. The other issues – the other elements that go into an abstract painting (shape, form, surface quality, etc.) I continue to think about and work on as well.
How Do You Know When You’re Done with a Painting?
I was in a class several years ago in which another student complained about painting abstractly because she didn’t know where to stop. She said when she worked representationally, at least she knew when she was done — for her, it was when the painting looked like the thing she was representing. Of course, it’s not as simple as that for many representational painters, but often it seems when one is just starting to draw and paint, success is measured by how close one’s piece gets to looking like the object or scene one is depicting.
It’s so different when you give up representation. The answer to the question, “how do you know when you’re done?” becomes more elusive.
Is it when you achieved what you set out to achieve or perhaps when you discovered something you didn’t know you were looking for?
For me, it’s a bit of both — I like to keep my goals pretty loose so that I can explore an area of the process of painting that fascinates me (like color), and still discover something new in that process.
Sometimes — in a glorious moment — a piece just comes together. Everything seems to work — the colors sing, the composition works, the texture and brushstrokes are interesting and well-integrated. One more stroke and you could really lose it.
At other times, there’s something not quite right that keeps nagging until you figure out how to make it work. I had a wonderful moment yesterday when I reworked a small painting from earlier this year that never really sparkled, and suddenly, I got it right! Oh, the thrill!
Sometimes though, I lose interest in a piece before I feel I am done…and then it may languish in my studio until I regain interest and work on it some more, possibly finishing it…or it may just be added to the stack of unfinished pieces.
What about you? How do you know when your piece is finished?