Getting Lost and A Conversation this Week

Since I shared with you the testing I had done on the acrylic paper, I thought you might like to see what I did with the rest of the pack. You can clearly see the ones which have the pearl powder pigment. One I did as a weaving and that did not work well since the paper is just too stiff. Now I added something to the red paint, but now I cannot remember if it was pearl acrylic paint (not powder) or inference. That is so like me, getting into the moment and not "thinking" about the process. So what good are these experiments if I do not remember? If anyone has insight or can tell from the photo, I am eager to hear your thoughts.

I really have to do better with recording my experiments, but I do get so lost in not thinking when I am in the studio. I know Elis has also brought up this subject, and she is trying to stay present. Do you have any suggestions on how I might accomplish this challenge? Do you get lost in your work while you are working? I would love to hear from you.

Stay tuned this week because I have another Conversation to be published. I will be talking to Dianne McNaughton on Wednesday. Dianne writes Intuitive Painting which is a wonderful, contemplative blog. She is not only an artist extraordinaire, but has a wonderful life in South Africa to share with us. Please come back to enjoy this wonderful conversation. I think you are going to be very happy with the insights Dianne shares with us all. I think you will find it an exciting read.

Have a Great Day!

Asking Questions/ Searching for Answers

Because so many of you responded to the previous post I was inspired to draw more of these faces and evaluate what different lines might mean on the face. These simple lines of the basic features bring to mind so many things and I am reaching into these lines to come up with some meanings behind the images. Any of you who regularly read this blog know what comes off the tip of my pen, brush, hand, etc. does not come from any pre-planning on my part. It just happens. I know many of you inspire me with the posts on your blogs (just consider how many of us were touched the last two days by Andrea's original post). These are not real faces I see, but lines I am feeling which evoke the idea of a face. I know there are more of these which need to come out of me, so watch out.

If any of you are interested in reading a wonderful book about the subject of spreading love, I recommend The Power of Kindness by Piero Ferrucci. A year ago I said it was the best book I had read in 2007. Today, I have to add in 2007 and 2008. I highly recommend it.

There is something else on my mind today. I read this article yesterday and it made me think about what makes something art. The article is about a show at SFMOMA (San Francisco MOMA) of early science photographs. So is this an art exhibit of science photographs? Is it actually art? Is there a fine line here? Or is the difference between art and science actually a point of view?

It seems to me these are images about the documentation of what may be considered science, but it is really nature's paintbrush being documented. Originally, it was documented as a means of studying the subject, however they are seen as art by others. I see science as a way of organizing thoughts and explaining what is often natural, and art is the expression of visions or experiences in a way it may not have been expressed before. Sometimes, nature gives us an opportunity to see life as it has not been seen before...is that, at that point, art? Is this what we are seeing here?

In his book, Art Heals, Shaun Mcniff says:

...Artists are the best sources for understanding the psychic effects of creative expressions. They typically stay close to the physical qualities of arts rather than using them to advance a theoretical position. (127)

If you think about it, scientists want to advance that theoretical position moving it forward until it is proven. It seems to me, many artists do not care if it is proven or not. If it feels right to the artist, then it is right for them and that is what matters. Artist just apply what feels right and what is true for them is what feels true.

So this brings me back to the exhibit. Do you think the point of view is what makes this an either/or issue? For the scientific mind, it is documentation of the facts, but to the artist is was a new way of seeing.

Okay, I have gone off on a ramble here, I know. I kind of share with you what pops off the end of my fingers. Lately these ramblings relate to something I have read...another one of my passions. Now I am interested in what you have to say, of what you have to share.

I wish for each of you a wonderful weekend of love and of spreading love.

Sending Out Love

This is another bit of canvas I have worked on. What you see is bits of metal foil attached to the painted canvas with clear glaze.

In Andrea's post today she talks about how sketching her Metroheads becomes an act of love for her. As she sketches and really looks at each subject, she feels the love of and for these people, even when at first she might feel a bit reluctant in the subject. As usual, this blog post made me think about how important our work of art can be for all of those around us.

One of the things Andrea said, in this post, how she likes to imagine this love begins to spread to those around her and they will then leave the Metro feeling better than they did when they entered. Now how cool is that? I believe this is exactly what happens. I am not the only one believing this, either. Take a look at this article I recently read. If happiness is spread by being happy, I feel quite sure, love is spread by feeling love.

So Andrea, by doing what she does each day on the Metro is making a difference in the lives of those around her, and they probably do not even know. For those of us who share with each other each day, the reality of happiness of our friends here make a difference. Many of us are probably also greatly aware of the impact of the people we love on our own emotions and even the people we just come in contact with from time to time. Now we can probably be assured our happiness and love in general spreads out to people who are completely unaware of what is happening.

When I go out, even to the supermarket, I make it a special point to be kind and patient with those I come in contact with. I often receive hugs from regular employees of places I frequent. When those people smile back at me, it makes me feel so much better, too. Now, how to make my art bring joy and spread love as this seems to be so very important right now. Do you feel a responsibility to spread love?

Thank you Andrea for this wonderful post. I have so much to learn from each of you! You are true blessings in my life and spread joy to me each day.

Spread some love today and spread it thick! :)

Hiring An Agent...and A Friday Smile

photo provided by The Associated Press

This is Cholla, the painting horse from Nevada, USA. Now I know you have seen other animals who paint professionally, and many of their paintings are similar. I actually think it is rather cool these animals are getting in touch with their creative side. But the thing about Cholla is his painting "Big red Buck" has been selected to exhibit in Italy. In addition, he has also exhibited in New York and San Francisco.

Now I, for one, am very excited about Cholla's success. Isn't it wonderful he can help promote instinctive art? Now here is what I think is the key to his success...his agent! Yes, I think that since it is a stretch to think Cholla actually does his own marketing one could probably attribute his wonderful success to the agent he hires. Here is my question to you...do you think there is a chance we might band together to hire this agent, too?

In all seriousness, I hope you enjoy your weekend and do visit Cholla's web site. (And note, you might have to scroll the screen to the right to see the sight.)

Mindless Doodling

I know this is not a good photograph, but bear with me here.As many of your know I really like to do these doodles. And as Andrea has encouraged me, I am working on playing in my sketchbook each day since getting into my studio is not happening all that often. I also do these things because I am a process person. I love the process more than the end result. Are you and end result artist or a process artist?

Now, this is a funny thing I wanted to ask you and show you. You might be able to note some of these shapes are outlined in black and some are not. When I first did this, I use a gold pen to create the lines on watercolor paper, then I used the Inktense pencils as the color for the shapes made by the gold pen. And because I love the process so much, I decided maybe outlining each shape in black would be interesting. I even considered layering the black as texture in some shapes, but changed my mind on that. And since my time is limited these days, I haven't completed the black lines, but I thought it would be interesting for you to see the difference. Basically, I will use the exploration of these doodles for ideas for future art. Do you think the black lines attract or detract?

I hope you are getting more time in your studio these days than I am. I am snatching some bits of time, so I hope to be able to show you something before very long.

Have a Beautiful Day!

Creative Gifts

Here is another little bookmark for you today. This one was just a doodle on watercolor paper with a plain old blue ink pen. I have been really busy with a lot of things here lately, but thought maybe you would enjoy this.

I have been watching for some article somewhere to catch my eye to share with you, however even the articles lately haven't been that exciting. There was an announcement this morning about Life Magazine beginning to post their archive of incredible photographs online. Now that is exciting.

I really would love to get back to the studio, however I only seem to have these snippets of time and am looking for big blocks. Maybe I need to pull out the sketchbook and find another faster form of creativity. The problem is my creativity has never been one of those speedy things. Oh well, I will find something. Of course, I am completely open to ideas. How does it work for you? Do you need larger blocks of time to be able to express your creative side?

Art and Non-Art

Today is kind of a clean up day around here. Just a few things to note and asking for some help in understanding.

In a comment to yesterday's post, Suki asked if I might add a side bar providing links to the conversations held on this blog. I have done that, if you are inclined to access the conversations with these wonderful artists. And speaking of conversations...I know you have realized I have not had a conversation in the last little bit. It is NOT that I am giving up on them. Many artists are quite busy right now and fitting in the time to work on these conversations is not easy. The other issue is I absolutely insist the experience be a positive one and each artist is absolutely satisfied with the content and presentation of each conversation. So this takes some time, but you have the benefits, too. I have a list of possibilities going, however if you are interested in having a conversation with me, please email me so we can talk.

Now I have something else in my craw this morning. It kind of has to do with art, but it doesn't, too. Anyone who reads this blog with regularity probably understands I order a lot of my supplies to be delivered. I do this for several reasons, but one reason is because I am not a single person running around to find what I want in the area for the best price. Basically, this means it is more efficient for my time as well as for the environment. I am very pleased with the source I use, my orders usually arrive in just a few days in very good shape.

But it is not only art supplies I order online. I also order books...as many of us do. And I have recently ordered a basket for my bicycle, so I can ride that to the grocery store when I need a few items. This will also save a little. I try to do my part to save energy. My car gets 30 to 36 mpg (good in the US), I ride my bike or walk a lot, I don't cook inside when the AC is running, I buy local food as much as I possibly can....well, you get the picture. Here is what I want to know...why is it that when I order items with a standard shipment it is often routed way out of the way before it gets to me? It goes right by my house, a lot! I know some services do not do this, but many do. Why is that? Do you have insights about the operations of these services? I would like to understand why, if you can help me here.

So these are my non-art questions for today. How do you save energy? Is it important to you? Do you have other sustainable practices in your life?

As always it is great to hear from you each day.

Paper Presentation

It is interesting that one of the reasons I prefer to work on deep, stretched canvas is because I do not want to have to deal with presentation once the work is completed. Now, how is that for laziness?

My woven pieces are a case in point. If you read this blog, you know I like doing these woven pieces with papers where I test various materials and techniques. As a matter of fact, I have been testing on rice paper because I know I will use these pieces for one thing or another.

So now I have a stack of woven pieces which are unmounted or unframed. I decided I was going to test out the Ampersand 3/4" Cradled Panels. If I had chosen the flat ones, then I would have been right back to where I began with how to present it...framing.

The weaving above I tried a ton of things. Babs had thought it would look good placed against a grass-cloth type backing. I also thought that texture might be nice. You can see, I worked on the string like appearance, but getting this thing right was brutal. After tons of trial and error, I ended up with this solid color over the texture I had worked with earlier. This particular wine hue does set off the weaving nicely, though.

This piece is one I did quite a while ago. I actually showed it as a WIP, but received so much encouragement to keep it as it appeared in the photograph. So I chose to do just that. The delicate gluing of this piece was very, very time consuming. It is quite fragile, but I also know glass over it would take away so much of the texture I worked hard to keep. So, I am just going to leave it this way. The cradled board behind it has many, many layers of glossy black paint and the edge of the cradling retains the clear wood (without paint).

I am not all that excited about these boards, but I am glad I tried them. They are fairly expensive, but they are very rigid and strong. I would like to find some other way to present these works on paper.

Do you struggle with having items framed? Do you find it cost prohibitive sometimes? I know I could not afford to pay for framing. Do you ever frame your work yourself? How do you deal with work you do on paper? Maybe I should be mounting these on canvases. What do you think? Do you think I should get into bookmaking? :)

Seeking Advice

Here is a little posy to get your week off on a lovely path!

This is the painting I finally completed this weekend. I have been working on this for quite some time as it has probably between 50 to 75 layers of glazing. It will go into my Contemplation Series and is acrylic on 30 x 40 gallery wrapped canvas. I am still toying with names for this one. If you have ideas, I am listening. Some of the ones which have come to me are Into the Depths, Soul Seeking, and Into the Spirit. But I have not settled on anything at this point.

What do you think would be a good name for this painting? Do you ever have trouble with naming your works? Did you have a good weekend of art making or art seeking?

I have received a book shipment, so tomorrow I will share with you some of my thoughts on what I received.

Trying To Get Back Into The Swing Of Things!

Okay, so this weekend I did spend some time in the studio...some time! While I did not complete anything, I did play some and feel ready to get myself more seriously moving forward.

So I had this old frame I had purchased from Ikea a few years ago. It had glass in it and I had an old pastel framed. The glass broke while the piece was in storage recently, so the frame and backing was just hanging out in my studio, so I took the backing and glued some of my painted rice paper onto it. I added some more paint around the edges. Then I dry brushed the whole thing with silver. This is what it looked like at that point:

So then what? Well, I had this other piece, I had shown you before, I had painted on rice paper. Do you remember it? Maybe I could use that with this bit above as the base. Mmmm, I am not sure. What do you think?

It is kind of difficult to imagine this way, here let me give you a better idea.
Well, I don't know. Maybe. I really have not decided about this. I like the backing a lot and this would cover a little more than I wanted, however I also see how floating this just above the base surface might be very interesting and bring out the base. For now, I am going to live with this one a bit longer. It has been fun to just think about some form of paint again...even if it really isn't art.

But the other thing I did was to paint some glaze layers on this canvas. Do you remember I showed it to you before here. This is what the glazes have done:
With this, my challenge is to paint in landscape format. I always paint in portrait. When I first started this, I thought it would be the next one in my Music Series, but I feel now it is going to be part of the Contemplation Series. I really, really want to keep this simple, so we will see.

So do you ever get this way? Where just painting is what you need to do? I have known I wanted to get back to painting, but am not feeling the confidence right now to bring this to completion. I want to, but I think I have to do a bit of work on my head, right now! This time away...not even really thinking about art...has done me in. ARGH! I think I really do have to spend some time doodling and sketching when I am away from my studio.

What are your thoughts? Do you have advice on this subject of getting your muse back? And any thoughts or advice on these painting bases?

At least we are talking art again here!

Have a Beautiful Day!

Getting Out of Artistic Frumps!

So today I am using the "Largest" font size on Blogger. Why, because this post may set some people on their ear...I do not have any color today...all black and white! Eeek!

This is some doodling I have done. I mentioned yesterday I was having trouble getting stuck back into my painting after being away for a bit. Jessica recommended I just start doodling or something like that. So I did. This is the first bit I did...real doodles...nothing creative. Just ink on paper.
This is the next one I did....well, at least it is a little more detail.
And finally, I did this one! Okay...I think I have bored myself enough to head into the studio! LOL

I highly recommend Jessica's suggestion because if it doesn't give you other encouragement, it will bore you enough to do something exciting!

What helps you get out of artistic frumps when you have been away...or in general? Basically, it just irritates me when I get this way and that doesn't help matters at all. I appreciate any suggestions or help on how to keep this from happening again.

I look forward to hear from you and hope you have a Great Weekend!

Nature and a Little Test

Today I am running a test and sharing some of the inspiration nature is providing in my yard this spring.

Some people would call this a weed. I call it sweet and a great color inspiration, too.

Yesterday, I asked if anyone had any suggestions for me to improve this blog. Everyone was so nice about that, and I even had a suggestion to reconsider the black background. Well, I am a rebel, but I have told Chewy ,who commented about this, I would ask other people for their suggestions. Please go to the comments on yesterday's post and read what we have talked about there. I do not want to even try to express it to you in my words. If you don't want to comment here, but would like to give me your opinion, send me an email (find it in the column to the right).

I just love to see the new growth on the trees in our back yard here. Do you remember these with all the snow a few months ago?
These azaleas are just beginning to bloom out now. They must have been planted by the original owners. I bet they were really small when they planted them.

As you can, hopefully, see I have posted larger photographs today and also increased the size of the font. Does this make a difference on the black background for any of you who have issues with it?
Do you remember this dogwood tree when the owl was found sitting on the branch? I shared it on a post in early December.
Here is a close-up of one of the dogwood tree branches. These are the most interesting flowers to watch as they change color throughout the spring.

I hope you can also find some inspiration in some of these spring photographs from my yard. I always find it interesting to see photographs from other areas which are so inspirational for me. Travel, as you know, is one of my huge inspirations, so this is a way to see another place through my eyes...sorry Lynette, I am sure this isn't all that great for you!

Let me know your thoughts on the larger font and photos.

Better Blogging

Today beautiful San Meredith over at A Life With A View has bestowed upon me the Excellent Blogger Award! Can you believe it? A beautiful artist and wonderful blogger like San has given me an award for excellence? I am truly honored. Wow, so now I have to identify 10 excellent bloggers! Oh boy, this is going to take some serious thinking as there are so many excellent bloggers. I am going to break this up a little bit, though. Here are a few for today:

1. Chewy because she shares some wonderful parts of her life, great art and truly lovely poetry. She writes "The Back of My Headboard. A Place to Stick It."

2. Elis, over at "Into the Blysitc", who not only writes an excellent blog, but creates some incredible art. She is always willing to share what she knows, too.

3. Kate, who writes "Kate's Corner", who is always willing to share so much of her glass art, local art, painting and life.

4. Andrea, at Cestandrea, who writes, paints, plays and shares so much of her self and her life life from Paris.

5. Sukipoet who also shares so much of all she sees every day on her blog. Suki writes "Paints, Poems and Ponderings".

Each of these bloggers always has something special to share if it is on their own blogs or by commenting on other blogs. I will be sharing 5 other bloggers in a later post.

You might remember the following piece I shared with you in an earlier post. I received some comments not to touch the weaving from how it appeared in the photo...although it was not near completion and the photo was shown as a WIP.

I took the advice given to me and fixed the pieces in place as they appeared in the photograph. I cleaned up the edges and mounted the weaving on an additional piece of rice paper. After this dried, I mounted the entire "fixed in place" piece onto black Fabriano Tiziano art paper.

My plans now will be to mount this onto a wood panel and frame it. As you can see there are quite a few loose and twisted bits to this piece. If you have any thoughts or ideas about how I might proceed with this, please do not hesitate to let me know. It will be quite some time before I can get this framed, so if you can think of any other steps I should include, by all means speak up.

Below you can see a closer photograph of the details of this piece:
I really appreciate so very much everyones participation on this blog. It is really helpful to me and I hope to everyone else. If there are other things you would like to see me do here, please do not hesitate to speak up. If you know of anyone you would like to see in conversation with me, let me know. If you would like to have a conversation with me, let me know.

So the main questions for today is: How can I make this blog better? And how can I make my art better?

I look so forward to hearing from each of you! Thank you so much San for the beautiful award. I look forward to sharing 5 other bloggers, but for now visit these blogger's sites!

Testing...and Opinion

This weekend was one of painting and one of testing. If you remember last week I did a post showing a small painting on the Ampersand Aquabord. This particular product works very well. I also mentioned in the comments that Golden has a product known as Absorbent Ground which I had not tried, but owned a pot that I wanted to try. And try it, I did...

To use this product, you have to thin it with twenty percent (20%) water and paint it, thinly, on a gessoed surface. The directions said the thinner and more layers used the better the product. So here is what I did. I had some Ampersand Gessobord, so on one I painted 2 thin layers of the product allowing the first to dry before adding the second layer. The second layer was allowed to dry thoroughly before dropping paint on the surface. For this first piece, I sprayed the surface of the prepared board with distilled water and dropped thinned acrylic paint on the surface. As you can see, it clearly did NOT take up the paint in the way watercolor paper would or in a way the Ampersand Aquabord did.

This particular material handles in a very different way. It is a surface unlike paper or Aquaboard. If you are more of a traditional watercolor painter, it might work very well for you, though. If you are more of an experimental painter or abstract expressive painter with watery paint, you will get a very different result than the other two products. I have already began to change this particular piece...it was very difficult to look at even as a test!

The second Gessobord, I did three layers allowing for thorough drying between the layers. This time, I also sprayed the surface with distilled water, but I used acrylic ink rather than the watery paint. The intensity of the ink was more appealing to me, but the ink still sat on top of the surface more than I had wanted. Since a lot of it was just sitting on top, I tossed a bit of sand on the surface (I am not really a good tester, am I?) to get this result.
I liked the result of this okay. It is fine, but nothing to write home about. I, personally, still like the other surfaces better than the Absorbent Ground.

But, once all this had dried, I noticed my pot of Golden Pearl just hanging out nearby. So I picked up that and did a bit of dry brushing over the sandy surface. Granted this is not controlled at all, but I really liked the result.
I know it is difficult to see the pearl effect here, but I thought being able to see the difference would help. Photographing those more reflective paints is a real bear!

So what experiments have you done recently? Are you willing to share the techniques? Do you think it is good to share this kind of thing or do you feel it is something an artist should keep to themselves? How do you feel about sharing just bits and pieces like this...not really art, but tests or how mediums and materials react with each other? And is this kind of blogging unfair to other professions such as writers or workshop instructors?

I look forward to hearing from you...

Have a Very Beautiful Day!

Contemplaing on Contemplation

Contemplation 9 (do you have ideas?) Mixed Media 18 x 18 deep, gallery wrapped canvas

As you can see, I was able to get into the studio a bit this weekend. Yippee! You might recognize some parts of this particular piece. I think a while back I was showing some things I had done on rice paper and one was this particular image. After that, I tore the painted rice paper into strips along with another painted rice paper which was done with similar paint however without the image. I then wove them together as you can see here and attached the woven piece to some other rice paper. This almost felt like loosely woven fabric...it was quite lovely to touch. So this hung around for a little while. Then I came up with this particular idea. The background has many, many layers of thin glazing. You might be able to see those if you click on the image to make it larger.

So for this one I am looking for ideas for the subtitle. As you can see it will go into the Contemplation Series, but I am not sure what to call it. Yes, my international friends, let me know your thoughts, too. Here are some I thought about, but was not sure how they might be received...Meditation, Focus and Silence.

So my questions are: Do you like any of these subtitles? Do you have other ideas which might come to mind when you view this work?

I look forward to hearing from you all...Have a Very Lovely Day!

Trust The Process

I thought you might like to see this photo of what was in my back yard this morning. The interesting thing to remember is we are just a few short miles from Washington, DC! Ohh, I wonder what that means? A fox...Washington, DC? Well, go ahead and draw your own conclusions. This little guy hung out for maybe 10 or 15 minutes in our yard.

Today I have a book I would like to share with you. Shaun McNiff wrote Trust The Process to help people heal through their art, but I have found it does just what you give me...the permission to move forward to make the art I need to make. The courage to keep on going even when I wonder if it is really worth it. This is one of those books I refer to when I have doubts. I have also shared it with a friend who found it also inspiring. Normally, I don't know when the doubts will hit, but I know where to turn when they do...you and this book.

My apologies for this image. I couldn't seem to get a good shot of this book...I think it has been to well used and doesn't want to lay still with me hanging over it.



Along the same lines, this morning I found this blog which was just set up for a new book called, Art From Intuition. While it is not yet available for sale, look for it on the market next month. I think I will look into this particular book, too.



I like to have books like this on my shelf...being the book person I am. I have a stack beside my bed, another by my chair and a lot in my studio! But there are some which are just favorites. Do you have favorite books you return to when you just need that extra boost?




Have a Great Weekend! Be Safe! Be Creative!

A Few Weekend Bits

I played a bit in the studio this weekend, and actually began a new series. But more on that later. My studio is small, but I insist on working on large canvases. I know it makes no sense, but I just can't help wanting to put my entire self into the work. So I end up playing with some other things while I am working on one large piece. And here you will see the result of some of those bits and pieces. Do you recognize this? It is similar to a sketch from the sketchbook posting on Friday. This is rice paper (but your probably already caught on to that) with paint brushed and splashed about, crumpled when it was wet, flattened back out and some sweeps of copper paint added. Well, I had been wanting to do something with this image, so I just popped it on this paper. Of course the paper and the crumples made getting the lines smooth an issue. Part of me says they need to be more crisp...that would be the part that wants contrast. The other part of me says the blurred lines add to the meditative quality...that would be the part of me that probably wants this to be better than it is :) I know it is just a bit of paint on a paper like a doodle, but what do you think?

These are two bits of paper which are not attached to each other...just lying there. The bottom one is actually rice tissue paper, with the same kind of crumpling and folding for creasing, with color added. The top one is heavier rice paper which has not been crumpled, but only had paint added to it. The silver line...you will see something similar again - maybe later in the week. What do you think here?

Now I have a question for you. As many of you know I have to keep my studio portable since we move about with some regularity. I have been searching for an easel I can use when painting on the deep canvases so I can get at all edges at any time. Something in the back of my mind says I saw one in use in a studio in England, but for the life of me I cannot find any such animal. The one I think I saw had a feature where you could attach the canvas frame to the easel and this allowed all the edges to be free of touching a surface. And I think it even was made so you could "spin" the canvas to get to all edges easily. Why didn't I ask when I was at the studio? Well, that studio was on TV. Has anyone out there seen anything like this? Do you know the type of easel it is called? Do you know where I can purchase one? Hanging on the walls to work, right now, is just not an option for me. If you have other ideas, I am listening....



So I begin with lots of questions this week! But I believe it is going to be exciting around here, so come back to see what is up!



Here is to a beautiful, CREATIVE week!

Sometimes There Are Opportunities

It has been a wild ride here this morning. We had a large ice storm here last night and did not have power this morning when we got up. So I am late getting to things here today. Watch out, though, we are to get more and mixed with snow tonight!

I am not sure what to do with these. When I purchased the canvases, which are small 6x6 gallery wrapped, my thought was to use them together as a triptych. You can see they are stepped in depth - 3/4", 1.5" and 3" deep. They have not turned out well for me, though. This is about the fourth time I have painted them and still do not feel happy. I wanted to do something along one edge, so they could be configured in a variety of ways. At least this was my initial thought.

So let me tell you what you see right now. There is a layer of coarse paste covering the canvas and this has been painted with fluid acrylic (purple, of course). Then there is a faint line running along one side in white. Then another layer of liquid acrylic in a deep red/purple over that. I then mixed some of the wine color you see with gloss self leveling gel and put that in a little squeezy bottle...more about that in a later post. And placed some pearl with the same self leveling gel in another squeezy bottle. Then I dropped the paint in little drops along the side of all of these, as you can see. Nothing special to be sure.

Here is today's question. Do you think I should just push these away and maybe stumble on them some years down the road to see if anything else comes to mind? You know send them to my "corner of shame" as Jess (http://jess-messyjessie.blogspot.com/) says she has. I don't feel bad about this as it is what it is, but has the time come to put them away? What is your advice?