Sensuous, Sexy Color

Contemporary collage - my current color palette

Nothing pulls me into a painting as immediately as color. Clear across a gallery my eye will instantly find the colors it loves. Books and articles abound on the subject of color and tend to use words like hue, intensity, value, temperature, cool, warm and compliments. I usually fall asleep when I try to read them, for all the good intentions of the author. For me, color is a tool I use daily, that I make discoveries about and that I experiment with intimately. While there is a science to color, my approach goes beyond scientific. The words that describe the “rules” aren’t part of my thinking process. I mix my colors using all I have; my experience, my intuition, and my sensitivity to color.
I think as I am working - deep profound color thoughts like “yummy” and “yuck!” In fact, I think “yummy” is the Nobel prize for color in my studio. Immediately after declaring a color I have just mixed to be yummy, I begin to apply it to any nearby surface that resembles potential collage material. It’s just so much fun.
I collect colors; pages from magazines, photos I have taken, color chips at the building supply stores, rocks and rusty bits brought home in my pocket. My books are full of frilly tags marking the pages where my favorite color combinations are illustrated. I am a fan of design and architectural magazines and books in which designers have produced exquisite examples of perfect edgy color use.
This week Shauna Chapman from Quail Ethical Fashion commented “I was attracted by your collages and the colours you use. Colours of chalk, charred coal, clay, ochre, burnt umber, etc...Your colours remind me of the cave paintings at the Lascaux Cave in France.” And Philip commented “I also see urban art influences by the way.” How satisfying it is to hear my influences have been communicated. Thank you both.
In my inspiration notebooks are photos of old walls, cracked concrete, windows and doors, man hole covers, bleached drift wood, pebbles, feathers, old yellowed stationary from 1940, a winter tree branch. When I am successful, these influences – natural and urban – combine in my work to create a piece that that hopefully evokes a response in the viewer. That is part of the appeal and beauty of contemporary work.
Later today Kurt and I plan to take the cameras for a walk. I know where there are bunches of bare rose hips. A perfect inspiration for red.

Saying Yes to Contemporary Collage

Saying Yes by Leslie Avon Miller

Saying Yes, Saying No

A quiet satisfaction, a sense of anticipation.
Sorting, choosing, releasing.
Listening to myself.
Simplification.

Letting go of old ideas, paths once explored,
but now I turn back. Saying no, so I can say yes.
There is clarity in this action.
I feel the power.

Contemporary collage paintings.
Minimal softness,
textures, shapes and marks.
Non-objective mark of the artist.

Line and space.
Neutral colors of the earth
and of the rocks, of the elements.
Weather, time and thought my subject.

Deepening my voice with knowing and
the mystery of future discovery.

Yes.

My possibility is exquisite expansive
breathing room – to create.
Saying no, I have said yes, and now I find myself
standing inside the room with space, my studio.

My perspective has become more certain.

Of Dots and Falling in Love

This collage is another of my recent series. I’m rather fond of it. Perhaps this will be the one I keep for myself. I feel an interest in dots coming on….finger painting is so tactile. Perhaps a dotty name for this collage will come to mind.

Dave King at Pics and Poems blog brought up a discussion about liking art. Do you need to understand art to like it? Or is it enough to know you like it? That issue was pretty well discussed at his blog. I must say, Dave is good at causing me to think about things.

Years ago, I took a week long class at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts. It was a large gathering, with many individual classes. It was a symposium of contemporary basket makers from all over the country. The structures made by contemporary basket makers are wondrous sculptures. I’ll add some links to some of my favorite artists.

The course I took was all about nurturing and developing ones own creativity. I was really excited! Here I was flying across the country and going to one of the well known national colleges of arts and crafts, to attend a gathering of many of the best know artists in contemporary basket making. I would be part of all that creative energy!

So I looked around for examples of my teacher’s work. And I discovered that, well, it was ugly. Really, well, ugly. I thought about changing classes. Still I was so very interested in working around development of my own creativity. So I just went anyway. I told myself I could work around the ugliness of the teacher’s own work. I would just ignore that part.

The first day in the class we did a lot of exercises. We “drew” with whole arm motions in the air. We drew lines with charcoal on paper, expressing emotions and qualities such as joy, excitement, and calm. Soon we had an assignment to make something using items in their opposite function. If it was a material usually used as a fastener, then we used it as the structure. If it was usually the structure, we used it as the fastener. I wound coils of metal wire and placed metal binder clips affixed to the wire, but the clips didn’t hold anything. It was a stretch to think in opposite directions, and I could tell my brain was working. We learned about critique, which is an art in itself; expressing truth while honoring someone else’s vision and execution in making an art object. We began to learn about telling a story, about having something to say with our art.

By the evening of day two I was invested in what I was doing, excited, and really getting value from the teacher’s guidance. And I really enjoyed who she was. I stayed up late at night along with everyone else to talk about art and creativity, to share what we were doing and to be part of that intense energy. The excitement in the air was palpable. The multiple conversations created a din of noise. But still, in the back of my mind, was the knowledge that my teacher’s own work was so unattractive to me.

Wednesday morning our class went to the auditorium and saw slides of our teacher’s work and listened to her talk about her work. She had started out as a painter. Her paintings were of faces of people, somewhat abstracted in a Picasso type of style. And the faces were always in relationship, looking in a similar direction, or at each other, or away from each other. Then her path took her to making of structures. Her structures were unique, made of thousands and thousands of knots of waxed linen, and did not have a cavity as a traditional basket. She called them contemporary baskets. And her structures were usually in relationship to one another. Touching, or leaning, or wound round one another. Or very alone. She began to tell us what these structures represented to her. They were her family members, her loved ones, in relationship with her. They experienced struggles as always occurs in families. Conflicts. Love. Hate. Differences. Breaking away and coming together. These were reflected in her work. No words, no objective images, but relationship, proximity, and gesture.

During the course of that work shop and in the hours we studied our teacher’s work I began to fall in love; with her work, and with her vision. Because I learned about the artist, and about her vision and who she is, my response to her work had completely changed.

Collage and Meme

This collage is for the International Collage Exchange 2009. The lower part has more texture in the white area than shows up in the photo.

MEME:
I have had a great day; I have responded to 3 memes. I signed up with the Painted Lady at Art-i-ture, with Jo Horswill at Mystory, and with Cynjon Noah at ~ ~ Varietist Muse ~ ~. So now I will rein myself in and stop, because I will be making 15 items to give away! Except as I move my studio I am finding all kinds of cool items I have stashed and forgotten about. The potential that I already have 15 items is great. I adopted the variation of recipient’s input from Painted Lady, which I changed to be input of a color.

The first 15 people who respond to this post will get something made by me. My choice, for you. BUT with some input from you... a color request.

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

1. What I create will be just for you
2. I cannot guarantee you will like what I create (though I can hope!)
3. You will receive your item sometime before the end of the year
4. You will have no idea what the item is going to be but you will be allowed to add one color suggestion in your original response to this post.
5. You will have no clue what the item is going to be

The catch is you have to repost this meme and make and send out *five* surprises of your own.

Its fun! What you create could be a poem, a story, a photograph, or anything else you can think of. A babble, a bead, a bangle or cookies perhaps?

Collage and an Interview!

Between moving my studio to its new home across the driveway, working and keeping an eye on the inaugural events, I haven’t had much time for creating art. But the International Collage Exchange is due to be in New Zealand in late March, so I am focusing on making my collages for the exchange. This is one of them I have completed, but haven’t named yet.





There is an opportunity to buy collage in the International Collage Exchange during the month of April. Last year I bought the collage of Joan Schulze, an artist whose work I admire. Her collage is shown here. It is titled Long Nights. Joan states her series for the 2008 exchange is An Exercise In The Poetry of 13. I notice Joan has sent in her collage for this year’s exchange already.


I have had fun interviewing Ruth Armitage, who has a blog called Art is Truth. The link to her interview is here. Ruth is a fun loving artist who uses color and shape to express her ideas. Her work is often figurative. I particularly enjoy her piece called Shoe Shopping.