Sunday, July 12, 2015

Workshop weekend

I had the really good fortune this past weekend to attend a photo and mixed media workshop taught by Corrales, NM artist, Holly Roberts. Her blog is great- called One painting at a Time.

I thought about formatting this blog in the same way- talking about one painting at a time... but I seem to get too distracted by other things to write about. This is one of Holly's mixed media pieces called Horse Resting:


I love it of course. She is an amazing artist and a patient, kind and generous teacher. I learned a lot. I did three pieces over the weekend. This piece was my AHA! moment piece.



We started by creating a painting. Holly doesn't just consider this painting a background. She really wants the painting to be great and to stand on it's own, even though we collage and image transfer over it.

I was happy with the underpainting and then decided to use a photo of an old truck I had taken recently. But I got stuck when I was cutting it out to use for collage. It just didn't seem to fit until Holly said to me, "Make it your truck." I was trying to cut true to the shape of the truck. I needed permission to break the rules and color or cut outside the lines.  When it became my truck the whole piece came together for me. As I worked I realized making it my truck was a good metaphor for my creative journey and my life journey and the transformation process it all is.

I also did the piece below by photo transferring onto a painting and then collaging the middle bird and transferring the other birds and adding a little stencil.


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