Creative Endeavors in Art

Ascending

I am coming to the realization that I prefer to do abstracts more than realistic painting.  I love the freedom of abstracts gives.  I love how a painting will intuitively lead me.  For instance in this painting, my intention from the get go was to painting something with to do with "Edges" and that is NOT how it turned out!  In fact, the numbers you see on the side represent the alphabet spelling out "edges"!  A ladder form appeared and I went with it.  I am really happy with how it turned out!

Lately, I've been busy teaching an art journaling class to highly at risk teenagers!  It is the same school that Steve teaches at.  My excuse for not doing much artwork lately is coming up with engaging lesson plans.  It has been a very humbling experience learning about the kids my husband teaches every day.  Their rough start to life is hard to comprehend let alone give them hope for a better future.  My hope is they learned more about expressing themselves in healthy, artistic ways.  

I hope to be more focused these next coming months on painting more!  Stay tuned!

 

ARTMA is coming this month!

I'm so excited for ARTMA this month!!  What is ARTMA?  It's a magical art event that raises money for pediatric cancer research.   Hundreds of artist, nationwide, donate artwork to the event.  It's basically a huge party and silent/live art auction!!  Live music and catered food add to the cool ambiance of the evening.  This year, ARTMA will be held at Denver's Glitterdome!!   How cool is that!  Here is a link for more information about the event and how to get tickets if you are interested.  We'll be there!!

ARTMA Information

Here is the painting I donated for ARTMA:

HIDDEN RADIANCE - cold wax and oils

Teaching Art Journaling

As many of you know, art journaling was a catalyst to me considering myself an artist.  As a way to share what I love and  to learn more about the dynamics of our son's school, I decided to teach Art Journaling at Grant middle school for a quarter!  It's been a great experience.  I was assigned 17 kids, grades 6th through 8th.  More importantly, 15 out of the 17 kids are every chatty girls!  Keep in mind, I know boys and am pretty clueless about girls.  I almost didn't take the job when I had to go over classroom lockdown procedures.  Man, the times we live in these days...I decided to commit because I feel like art journaling has been such a therapeutic gift, that I want to share it.  

I would say that most of the kids that signed up for my class had an artistic inclination.  It was the kids that had no idea what they were getting into that I really wanted to reach.  They were the ones that didn't think they were creative.  I have found with art, there are other ways to solve a problem.  You have to dig down deep, look around you and find other options.  They may not work, but the process of trying is part of figuring it out.  I think a lot of things (i.e. answers) are just given to kids without them having to go through the problem solving process.  People want immediate answers.  Art is not like math where there are definitive answers-there are different approaches to get from point A to point B and its the journey that to there that makes it worthwhile.  

My intentions were to teach the kids different art techniques, give them a prompt and let them have at it.  Half the kids listened and tried what was asked of them.  The other half just liked learning an art technique and going with it from there.  Keeping in mind that I was teaching an enrichment class with no grading involved and it was the last class of a very long day(7:30am to 4:00), I made the class pretty organic.  I think the kids appreciated the less strict structure and a chance just to let loose creatively.

I'm really happy with how the class went.  Here are some photos of my class I snapped:

Kids learned how to collaged about their favorite season.  

 

Showed my students how to draw their own mandalas.

 

Zentangling was a huge hit!  It taught the kids the unlimited possibilities of a line.

 

My students working on a group art journaling project.  I'm happy to say the kids started as individual 6th, 7th and 8th graders and at the end became an art journaling group.

I learned some things while teaching.  #1 As kids get older, they begin to doubt themselves.  As mentors, we can remind them to honor what they feel inside and to believe in themselves.  #2 There are different ways to solve a problem and that is a great lesson for kids to learn.  #3  Middle school girls are extremely chatty and will tell you whatever you want to know about what going on in preteen lives.  😉I was honored to teach art journaling to Gierma's middle school.  So much so, I will be teaching art journaling next quarter at Third Way Center residential treatment facility where Steve, my husband teaches!!

1st Annual Gallery/Sushi Party!

Having our own gallery party has been something Steve and I have been planning for a couple years now.  Up until now, I've put it off sighting different reasons:  I don't have enough paintings to show, I'm not ready, blah, blah, blah.  Well, I was running out of excuses because I now had 45 pieces to sell and I was ready as I'll ever be!  Steve did let me postpone the party a couple weeks from our original date though.  😊

We decided to make it a Gallery/Sushi party hoping the sushi would really entice people to come!  We've been wanting to have a sushi party with friends anyway.  The date was set for Saturday, September 12th.

Having a major party like this was a good excuse to deep clean the house.  We even had an electrician put in lighting in the living room and kitchen so the artwork could be seen in better lighting.  So happy we did that, it makes such a difference!

Steve was my curator and did an excellent job of hanging up all the artwork and then carefully wrapped the ones that were sold.  He was kept busy with all the paintings sold!

These paintings are still adorning our walls, so if you are interested in one of them, let me know.😉

Of course, I had a bunch of my resin pendants for sale too:

It was a fantastic open house, and I am already looking forward to the 2nd annual Gallery/Sushi Party!  For me, putting my artwork out there to sell was a big step for me.  It felt very freeing, like breaking through a major threshold for my career as an artist.  I know now I have the confidence of artistically putting myself out there!  

"I don't paint to please people, but I am pleased that people like what I'm painting!" -Denise

Dias De Los Muertos Birthday Diorama

I have an affinity for the dias de los meuertos celebration.  I love the fact that Mexicans celebrate the deceased in a festive, rejoicing way.  Thinking of Wiley, Morgan and Parker being part of this big party in the afterlife gives me a feeling of peace and happiness for them.

For my sister,  Val's birthday, I made her a dias de los muertos birthday diorama!  Val loves to make dioramas, so I thought I'd try my hand at it for her.  Here is what I came up with:

 

I had so much fun creating this diorama for Val, I think I'll make one in honor of my boys in Heaven!

Wabi-Sabi Poppy Field

I've been reading up on what wabi-sabi is:  it is a Japanese term that means finding beauty in the imperfect and weathered nature.  So to apply the wabi-sabi to my art, I wanted to use colors I see in nature and use a certain kind of intuition.  

While wondering what my next painting would be next, poppies kept coming to mind.  I vividly remember  the beautiful poppy fields in Spain.   There is something about poppies I just love.  With a photo for reference and keeping the wabi-sabi style in mind, this is what came of it.  I like how loose I was able to paint this way.

Underwater Dream

 

Playing with acrylic inks in an intuitive way, these crazy looking jellyfish appeared!  I am kind of fascinated with these translucent alien beings.  They are such interesting creatures.  Painting loosely like this is so out of my comfort zone, yet it was very meditative to paint.  It's actually my artistic goal this year to paint more intuitively.  Let's see where it takes me!

Chaos and Calm

I love to etch into a painting to create a story within a painting.  It's like unearthing something that wants to come to the surface.

This piece represents about choosing to be free of chaos/drama by observing it from your place of serenity.  

Kurt Schwitters Inspired Collage

Since I love collage so much, I've been reading up on important "collagists" in art history.  Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) work caught my eye.  He would take everyday ephemara and make them into beautiful collages, a new medium at the time.  Schwitters is also credited for his pioneering contribution to installation art and found object artwork.

I took text from magazines and created my own collage reflecting modern day type and advertising.

 

 

Evolving

Here is another painting I finished in March called "Evolving".  At first glance, it just looks like layers of different colors.  There is a story behind this:

Red layer represents my earlier life with Wiley, Morgan and Parker. Red had always been my favorite color.  Some of the collaged papers are of Wiley's aviation maps, Morgan's drawing of a race car and Parker's practice of writing "U"s.  When I would tell Morgan and Parker, "I love you", they would reply, "You!"

Black layer represents the devastating lose of Wiley, Morgan and Parker.  I etched in a heartbeat that stops along the way.

White layer represents a very deep period of grieving where all I knew of myself died along with my family.

Blue layer represents meeting Steve, the love of my life.  He brought color back to my life and feeling (hence the texture).

Purple layer represents where I am now in my life.  My past life and present life creates a new color for me, purple.  Dragonflies have always been special to me.  They symbolize change and self realization.  The dragonfly has the different colored chapters in my life on its wings.  The kanji symbol is for "evolve". 

Even though my painting looks simplistic to the unknowing eye, it has very deep meaning expressing more with colors, shapes and textures than words could ever convey.