Happy Holidays!! I hope all of you have had a wonderful time with family and friends this December. I have been so frantic to get things done- that’s what happens when you’re a procrastinator like me. This painting I made for my parents for Christmas. I had started working on it a couple months ago, and had finished rolling all my paper pieces, but I didn’t finish putting it all together until Christmas morning. I had to keep my parents out of the dining room and wait until the morning was almost over before the paint was dry enough for me to present it to them. Lesson learned- get all my Christmas presents done no later than November.
This piece I really wanted to be messy. I started with a palette of brown paper, and used them to make a basic collage on the surface of my canvas. I used brown paint to add some drips and dark spots to the paper and surrounding canvas, then I added my paper pieces. As you can see, I worked for the left to right- using the edge of some larger pieces of paper as the boundary for where my quilled pieces would be placed.
I added paper clay to the top and the bottom, mixed with a variety of brown colored paints. I had to let the clay cure for a few hours before I added the rest of the paint. I started at one end, and simply pooled some paint at the top near the paper clay, and let it drip down the canvas and over the different elements without any other interference. All the drips are simply how the paint progressed. I did that from both ends, so you can see some drips are two-toned where different colored paints from each end would run together.
As soon as my father saw it, he asked what everything was supposed to represent. I told him most of what I was thinking about as I worked on this piece- knowledge, and how it’s given and received. The two ends of the painting, with drips coming down and up and intermingling make me think of teachers and students, each learning from the other. Parents and children, leaders and followers, etc.
I don’t think my dad was completely satisfied with my short answer, but I figured he can find his own meaning it this as well. :)
