New Work: I Spy Blueberries!

I Spy Blueberries!
11" x 14" painted collage papers on wc paper

Every once in awhile an image will pop into my head and I know right away that it is something that I will incorporate into my work. For the above piece, I very clearly remembered the blueberry farm that I went to last summer. The blueberries were such beautiful colors and the woman who owns the farm had planted several different varieties which all tasted a little different from one another. Picking the berries was a great experience for me and I can't wait to do it again this year.

The other thing that appeared in this piece are some organic shapes that are a kind of experiment. I thought I could use portions of them and blend them with the more rectilinear shapes. I think that they work and I will continue to try and incorporate them. It's important for me to not have these pieces be "sectioned". I want them to have an overall-ness so it's a challenge for me to get all of the shapes and colors to play well together. As I place shapes onto the paper I look for a directional flow and it's this flow, among other things that I think helps make the pieces cohesive. Anyway, that's what I think.

In other news, I am still perusing my Carla Sonheim book that I mentioned in my last post. Though I am not drawing any finished animals as the book suggests you do, the exercises are providing prompts for drawings which then lead to paper cut out shapes and completed figures. I hope to be able to show some photos of that work soon. My thought is that even if those shape/figures don't show up in my work they are still helping me to work with color, line and composition. 

OK, that's it for now. Hope everyone has had a good month. It's warming up here which is good and bad. We'll just see!

Thanks for reading and commenting,

Libby