An infinity of possibles

Snowbound and tired of the relentless freezing, I decided it was time to do a collage experiment. I printed up some sheets of black & white pattern, tore off some pieces, and used an old jar of liquid matte gel to glue them, completely without thought or intention, onto a small panel, just as I'd watched Robert Burridge do. I tried painting and scraping into it while it was wet, but got a little too vigorous and tore some of the paper, so I let it sit till it dried.

Next I overpainted it with transparent blocks of color, just looking for something interesting to happen.

I stared at it for a while, enjoying the starkness of the designs. I have honestly never played with collaging like this before, so most of my reaction was surprise, and my brain was jumping around, doing flips and cartwheels at the infinity of possibilities of direction. All from just one step of randomized activity.

Eventually I realized I couldn't choose which patterns I wanted to leave and which to keep, so I decided to negative-paint a silhouette over it, and worked up a mask of a hummingbird. Where the patterns got in the way, I painted them out, and where they added to the painting, I featured them.

I really like playing in this "there are no rules" place—very engaging and fun. I'm still coming around to the idea that neither a painting nor the elements in it have to make sense logically, as long as they work together visually. I think that if the parts do play off each other well, the mind will work very hard to make some kind of either feeling or thought viewpoint of the painting. The hummingbird design is instantly recognizable, and has positive associations of nature, colors, and flowers—unless you're a gnat, in which case they're scary predators—they make me think of bright summer days and gardens. So this painting became symbolic, in a knee-jerk way. I went for the quick and easy symbol. But it could have become anything, as simple or complex, emotional or logical, as you want.

Even as I was painting on it, I realized I could have started with the hummingbird idea and shaped and laid the patterns to support that, but once I get a concept in my head I start to get rigid about what I should and shouldn't do with it. Less problem with that this way, where you can put off any kind of decision-making until you're tired of playing.

A very arty party

If you could do a combined show with any other artists you know, whom would you pick? Ones who like your art as much as you like theirs, whose work is excellent, yet plays so well with yours that the impact of every piece is elevated? Friendly, outgoing artists, articulate and interesting, people you'd want to be friends with no matter what their field is? I am that lucky with this show.

I know because several of the attendees said so, that Leslie's photographs and my paintings showed them a single subject through two very different visions. Roxanne, the gallery owner, had said after we finished hanging the works that she was happy about us combining them, letting the designs and colors rather than authorship dictate the arrangement on each wall, approaching the show as a collaboration. I was beyond happy that the viewers got it, that they saw why we did what we did.

We had a full house of friends most of the night, including a lot of artists, many of whom I'd never met. I had so many great conversations that my head is still spinning. I offer my heartfelt thanks to everyone who came.

I wish I'd taken more pictures!

The Light Taking Form show is up!

All ten of my paintings and (if I remember right) sixteen of Leslie Ebert's prints are hung in the gallery! The official opening is Saturday, October 3rd, from 6 to 9 PM, but it will also be open for Oregon City First Friday Night, October 2nd, from 5 to 8PM. Leslie and I will be there both nights, and I think Amelia Armitage will be there as well to present her lovely organic sculptures.

I didn't take any pictures last night when we finished, but I will get some this weekend. We decided to intermix the paintings and photos so they play off against each other, and my impression last night was that it's kind of a mind massage to look at them together. There's a lot of commonality of colors, plus the shared theme of Light and Form, but a very obvious difference in the appearance of the works. Where the mixed media works are very matte and brightly colored in an abstract-painterly way, Leslie's prints glow more subtly, although there is plenty of color in them—where the light hits them they softly shine with iridescence, so it feels as though you're seeing the show outside in a park, with the sunlight playing around you.

If you have a favorite color, it's in this show.

Last painting for the October show is done

Refuge

22"x30" Ink and colored pencil on archival cotton paper $500
You can purchase this painting HERE.

I just put the last touches on my last new painting for the show next month. Time to put the pencils away for a while. I'll be posting the announcement for the show this week. I wanted to use different colors from the reds of the last two. There was actually another new painting but it took a nose dive a couple weeks ago. I may be able to rescue part of it, but almost half of it is ruined.

It happens. The colored pencils are only so forgiving. I may try it again; I did like the composition. But not right now.

I'm getting ready to embark on the set of illustrations I want to do for my book Take The Wind Up With You. I have a list of about 15 ideas, but I've really got to work on my eagle- and mouse-rendering skills. I haven't done any action drawing since my horse-drawing days, sixty years ago. I'm thinking of doing them digitally, if I can manage that. Wish I could channel N. C. Wyeth.

Ribbons at the Fair!

Fern Lake won 1st in Mixed Media class.

Foggy Fall Morning won 1st in Acrylics class.

Canyon Night won 4th in Mixed Media.

My paintings got three ribbons at the Clackamas County Fair! Two of my watercolorist friends also got prizes this year, one with three and one with four. I was just glad that they had air conditioning units in several places in the building. I bailed out at 11:30 when it was 95º and came home to cool off and start watering the garden.

All the displays will be up through this Sunday. There are hundreds of paintings and photographs, plus many other beautifully made art and craft items.

Thank you, unknown judge at the Fair! And thanks to all the volunteers who staff the exhibits and make the whole event possible. What a fun event!

Cha!Cha!Cha! show extended through August 31st

Good news! My show at the Cha!Cha!Cha! Restaurant in Milwaukie, OR—at least a portion of it—will be up until the end of August. Seven paintings are still hanging there. Two were sold and the other three are back at home or on sale on my Etsy site. The two that were sold are:

Forest Sunrise

and

Cascade Waterfall

I've been working on a new project—the cover for my next Kindle book release, coming soon. I'll have the first attempt done this week. I have two really different ideas and I might end up trying both of them before I decide for sure which to use.

Back to work!

Mixed media paintings on display in Milwaukie, OR

Cha!Cha!Cha! Restaurant - Home of my first solo show, July 1-31, 2014

A dozen of my big mixed media paintings are spending the month of July in the Cha!Cha!Cha! restaurant in beautiful downtown Milwaukie, just a few miles south of Portland, OR. The show opened yesterday and won't come down till July 31st. Most of the paintings in the show have appeared on this blog, but a few are older ones which were done before I started this.

I'm really thrilled to have my first solo show in this wonderful Mexican restaurant. Mexican food has been one of my most favorite kinds of foods since I was kid, so I have many decades of happy memories of sharing Mexican food with family and friends. Being here feels like a big thumbs-up from the Universe to me. The owner and manager of the restaurant, Carmen Mojica, has been really great to work with and is very supportive of local art and artists. And, the food is great and very affordable—and the margaritas are, too.

So if you're in the area and just a little bit hungry for good Mexican food and lots of bright colors and friendly people, pay a visit to the Cha!Cha!Cha!, at 11008 SE Main Street in Milwaukie. It's just one block off the 99E, between Oregon City and Portland. For hours or reservations, call 503.659.2193. They also do take-out!

Group show at In Bocca al Lupo Gallery, Milwaukie, OR

Fern Lake

Last night was the opening of the "Pollen Count" group show in beautiful downtown Milwaukie at the In Bocca al Lupo Gallery of Roxanne Clingman. I was there last night with three of the other artists, Dianne Jean Erickson, Bridget Benton, and my gardening & art buddy, Marilyn Woods. Roxanne shared one of her mixed media paintings, a beautiful large sunflower with brilliant colors, rich and splendid. All the artists were really fun to meet and talk to, and their works both include encaustic, and they're really strong compositions and very worthy paintings. Bridget's painting explored the macro-micro juxtaposition with luminous colors, and Dianne's struck me as a higher-level abstraction, an ethereal essay on Nature, that on reflection makes me feel as if I were standing outside in a garden. Marilyn's new acrylic florals combine strong abstract elements with very delicate flowers that remind me of Odilon Redon's floral pastels. He has been a favorite painter of mine for several decades.

The First Eden

Roxanne generously included two of my mixed media works, The First Eden and Fern Lake. This is my first time in a gallery in a few years and it was really fun. In Bocca al Lupo ("In the wolf's mouth") is a bright but intimate gallery in the south part of Milwaukie, which is a walkable small town halfway between Portland and Oregon City right on the 99E, and there are plenty of restaurants and tea and coffee shops nearby to make it a lunch or suppertime destination. The gallery hours are limited, Thursdays and Fridays 1-5pm, and during Sunday Markets, 9:30am to 2pm.

Light as expansion

Light As Expansion

Still pretty busy, but I did manage to finish up the fifth in my series of the 22 Dimensions of Light—it's the fifth dimension!—Light As Expansion. Expansion, the opposite of contraction, the energy to grow larger, to increase, to be in that phase of creation where the focus is on adding, extending, becoming more of what you already are.

The weather is warming up, and I'm starting to really look forward to getting out into my garden to paint again, but first I have to get out into my garden to work—and there's plenty to do right now. Fortunately we're looking at a week of dry weather with nice temperatures, so maybe the next time it gets warm, I can drag the painting stuff out and start playing again. Meanwhile, I've amassed a huge backlog of great photos of local scenery, so when I'm done with my current projects and can start painting again, I've got plenty of material to work with.

Anyway, back to work. Thanks for looking!

Light as motion

I've been painting more this month than any month I can remember. I finished the fourth in my series of the twenty-two dimensions of light. I'm really happy with the amount of energy in this one. I've never done anything with all hot colors before, either.

I've also been working on several smaller paintings and finished two on paper, including one of a PJM rhododendron blooming last spring, down by my barn. PJM's are a family of rhododendron varieties recognizeable by their lavender to pink to white medium-sized flowers and being just about the first ones to bloom. The ones down at the college started blooming this year at the end of January, which was extremely early. Mine will be opening in a couple weeks, from the look of them.

Another one is another attempt to capture the first light of a December morning, coming through the tall firs behind my house.

Twenty-two dimensions of Light

I've started a new series of mixed media abstracts. It's an attempt to show twenty-two dimensions of the fundamental energy of the universe—Light. I finished Radiance last month, and I'm working on the second one now. I'm not sure how far I'll get; twenty-two is a large number, but I have come up with twenty-five possible descriptors. The mathematics of the cosmos has always intrigued me, even though I never got past beginning calculus, and it's been a real treat to see how far astrophysics has come during my lifetime. If I had done better in school, I would have loved to be in on that work. At my age, I figure if I can even contemplate the existence of twenty-two different dimensions, that'll be an excellent workout for my brain...which needs all the exercise it can get.

I've spent the last two rain-free spells re-photographing all the large works I have on hand with my new, better camera, and this weekend I finished getting those images up on my new gallery at Fine Art America, an on-demand reproduction and printing house. All of those paintings are now available for purchase as reproductions in a wide range of sizes from greeting cards to 30"x40", on half a dozen different surfaces from paper to metal. As far as general quality of artwork at FAA, it's the most impressive online gallery I've seen; in just a few hours of poking around I've found several artists whose work is astonishingly beautiful and original. My gallery is at:

 https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/2-patricia-ryan.html

I'm also happy to now have good images of some of my favorite paintings from years past.

Depths Of Time 2: A Green Earth

It's officially a series now—there are two. Or does it take three? Then that will take another month or so. I do have more ideas in this theme.

Depths Of Time 2: A Green Earth
Ink & colored pencil 22x30 $550

My biggest concern with this one was that it would end up looking just like two different paintings, stuck together. I did a few things to try to keep that from happening. The first was to make the first row of trees with strong contrasting colors. The second was to have a steady progression from warm at the bottom to cool at the top, with the addition of some aerial perspective. The third was to use very dark blue violet as a common color on both halves as well as the center. The last was the repetition of the curved shapes of the hills in the details of the rock strata. When I made the initial print, I was hoping that the pair of diagonal cracks in the strata would add an interesting element. I think instead they're too much of a distraction, so I tried to minimize them. Not everything you can think of makes for a better composition. That is one problem with this technique that makes better planning a great idea.

Well, on to the next one—happy painting!

Painting A Series: The Depths of Time

Depths Of Time 1: The First Shelter
Ink & Colored Pencil on Paper 22x30 $550

For some time I've been wanting to attempt a series, and I finally got an idea for a series of mixed media paintings. The theme is to show two aspects of landscapes—the beautiful scenery we see around us, and the secret, hidden structures that lie beneath them. The Earth is every bit as complex and dynamic a construction as the more visible organic forms that inhabit it. In an environment as profusely alive with carbon-based life forms as here in the Willamette Valley, it's hard to remember the beauty that we don't see. A few days' stay in any desert should open a new window for you into this world.

I have been interested in rocks and stones since my childhood, living in the desert at Davis Monthan Air Base by Tucson, Arizona, and after a summertime visit in the Petrified Forest National Park. But I never felt a real sense of the earth by itself until I spend a four-day Thanksgiving weekend in Death Valley, camping out with friends. I'm a tree and plant lover, primarily, and it took me two days of seeing rocks, rocks, and more rocks with almost no plants whatsoever to stop wishing there was more greenery around. On the third day there, I suddenly began to notice the colors and forms of the stone around me. I could for the first time feel the deep strength, the quiet but definitely alive energies that could only have been coming from the Earth. I came away from that trip knowing that I had had to slow down my mind and my body for a long enough period of time to be able to feel the life energy in that great stillness, to sense it in a separate way, as the foundation of all the more active beings that live and grow upon it. I've never lost that connection which was forged there, and for me, the Earth is as alive as I am.

I am calling the series "Depths of Time", in recognition of how this Earth of ours has changed over time, and how its history is written so clearly in the thick and thin layers of rocks and soil that we get to see where the processes of creation and destruction reveal them. I'd like to dedicate this series to the thousands of inquiring minds, professional and amateur scientists alike, who have over the preceding centuries been given the grace to see and understand the clues that have lain around us for aeons—in the depths of time.