Thursday, May 31, 2018

Shades of Blue, Mermaids and First Friday

The Carolina Mixed Media Art Guild is having a member show at the Artists' Loft and Gallery in Wake Forest, NC.  

When:   First Friday, June 1st, 2018 between 6:00 and 9:00pm

Where:  156 S. White Street
              Wake Forest, NC 

Stop by and introduce yourself.  We love to talk art.

Our show is titled Shades of Blue and approximately 90% of the paintings should be blue.

I had planned on posting a sneak peek of the display, but was unable to get a good photo.

This is my submission to the exhibit.  




The Origin of Bubbles
16"x20"x2.5"

This painting is made with an acrylic pour and polymer clay mermaid, fish, seashells, starfish, and seahorse.  The bubbles are all alcohol inks in or on resin.  The resin is over an inch thick which gives it a very dimensional look.  

The photos below are closeups of the edges so you can see the layering of the paints and resin.  There are nine layers of paint and nine layers of resin. The resin is over an inch thick which gives it a very dimensional look.  



Detail of The Origin of Bubbles


Detail


A little about this painting...

Inspiration...

I was inspired to create this painting after watching one of our CMMAG members, Marcia Streithorst, make encaustic paintings of mermaids, and following one of the other artists of the Loft, Hannah Stayton, paint a different mermaid or "merfish" each day for the month of May.  She took a different fish each day and added a tail of that fish to make a unique mermaid or merman.  You can see all 31 of her paintings on Hannah's Facebook business page.  Pretty impressive to create a different one every single day for a month.

Process...

I have been doing some acrylic pours for a few years, but they are often not exceptional, but I have found that the ones that are not the best are the ones that work the best when adding other deliberate types of art to them. As you may know, a lot of fluid paintings turn out by chance to be works of art and many others are not quite up to what one expects or desires. This painting was all blues and had very little going for it, but that is what makes it work for the background for a mermaid.  

The mermaid was created out of polymer clay in 2006 for a CMMAG sign for a show we were doing as a guild.  Each member chose a letter of the Carolina Mixed Media Art Guild, and we each chose the medium we wanted to use for our letter. I chose the letter M and made a mermaid using the letter.  After the show was over, this mermaid sat in a drawer for twelve years.  Our guild encourages recycling, up cycling, reuse, and repurposing.  What better use for the mermaid than to add her to the acrylic pour that did not have enough going for it to be a stand alone painting.

I sculpted a fish, starfish, seahorse and a few seashells to go with her.

The bubbles are all alcohol inks.  Some have metallic or pearl pigment in them.  

The painting is on Ampersand Claybord™.

Come out tomorrow night and enjoy the evening of music, art, and friendship.





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