Painting progress

Please excuse with the poor quality of the images, I took it from my Android phone.

ta da!

mural from home

cropped close up

Still life from FAS 1

what I'm currently playing with

The above pictures are just a few things that I have done- the unfinished one is what I am currently working on... will continue to work on. It will be awesome- but the image will be completely changed to reflect a more environmental concept. I'm still going to be sewing wire bits into it. And that's all for now.

Cheers!

new project ideas...

Feeling inspired from some night time fisheye photos I took a while back, possibly for the 50 paintings project? Looking around for inspirational night painters, if anyone knows of any let me know

This quarter...

...I want to further explore the theme I started in painting in the spring.  My last painting of the spring quarter was of a decomposing car, with vines and leaves surrounding and beginning to penetrate the remnants of the structure. 

The car.

I used bright colors that gave both the car and the foliage a vivacious quality.  For this quarter I plan to continue using the theme of the foliage, but instead pair it with other objects, like sugar skulls.  I began drawing sugar skulls this summer, and I believe I’m attracted to them because they are dead objects that are given new life with designs and color.  I hope to create at least two paintings with this theme, my first one large (22"x36" I believe,) and the other smaller (less than 18x24”.)

My first painting is going to be of a sugar skull on a window ledge, with vines that start growing up the wall normal-colored, but change into bright colors as they grow over and through the skull.  The background (window and bricks,) are sketched out, but I'll post pictures when I'm further along.

 

Nick Bantock

Sometime in the middle of August, I went to a used book store to look for a book on Nikola Tesla hoping I would be able to get a good find.  Fantastic place in Albany (yes, New York's Capital,) if you are ever that way called Dove and Hudson.  You have to watch out for their hours though, they are strange.

Anyways, continuing on with what I was saying... I bought a few books.  None on Tesla.  However I found a book, "Nick Bantock the Artful Dodger, Images & Reflections."  From the Best- selling Author of the Griffin & Sabrine Trilogy.  I was drawin to his use of images in collages.  I saw stars, maps, numbers, strange emblems that could be family crests, then... A bunnies head seemingly coming out of the picture plane in a three dimensional way.  I thought... What the hell?  I was prone to hate bunnies at that point but I was intrigued.

I opened the book and the first thing I read...

My work is a rag-bag,

a dice box,

a wheel of fortune,

and I am a mongral

with a passion

for parallax views.

Okay... Obsessed with poetry, this stirred something in me before I even see his work. 

Nick Bantock has done portraiture, hundreds of book covers & illustration, paintings, and collages.  One of the books he created has completely compelled me to another world.  The Egyptian Jukebox, A conundrum created by Nick Bantock.  

"When two unsuspecting objects weren't looking, surrealists would often sneak up and cunningly join them together.  It's an effective way of provoking ideas, probably because it nudges our thoughts off their regular track.  Occasionally this enforced marriage spawns a new species, an artifact that appears to make perfect sense on its own."

The Egyptian Jukebox is a cabinet with ten drawers filled with artefacts he collected, found and bought.  A story develops with the found objects and is put in each drawer which contains a different country or region.  It is an exciting story of travel and mystery.  He creates it and has it professionally photographed, then published.  This piece is The Egypt Drawer.  The book states, "In the Valley of the kings, a mummmy pays a visit to reclaim an ancient doll from Hasp's parents."

 

I am so intriqued by the different historic artefacts and images used in even just one.  So many avenues could be found by just one small item.  Yet he chooses a particular path going through and around every small aspect of each.  Yet he manages to tie it together visually.

Anyone is welcome to take a look at the book and his works.



This quarter I am focussing on the concept of materials and how certain fabrics can be portrayed through oils. The idea is that the material I mean to covey is really only an illusion, so why couldn't I just change how the fabric is seen in real life to make it look like something else. To make this more clear, I will share my concept for my first piece that I am currently working on. I have draped plain old cotton fabric in a way that it takes on a structural element. My painting of said fabric will come off as more of a solid form than a free flowing material. We are told all through art school to use the materials you are working with to the best of their abilities and to take advantage of what they can do. For this series of paintings, I'd like to go a step further and depict something that these fabrics are not. I plan to make a clear plastic bag look like glass, a pillow case to look like a sheet metal structure, etc. I will be posting progress shortly! It's a hard concept to explain to anyone but hopefully it will be more clear when my work is shown during critiques.

For some of my past work, you can visit my tumblr to get an idea of who I am.
shannamayo.tumblr.com

Thanks for reading,
Gina

Step one of this painting, what am I doing with it? No clue.

GEORGE VEDITZ

George William Veditz (August 13, 1861 – March 12, 1937) He was a former president of National Association of the Deaf of the United States and was one of the first to film American Sign Language. The film by Veditz is called, "Perservation of ASL", a true inspiration film. Milan Conference in 1880- It was the time when no other event in the history of Deaf education had a greater impact on the lives and education of Deaf people. This single event almost destroyed sign language. This man, George Veditz, created a film to bring the faith in the Deaf community to never give up on American Sign Language. Acrylic painting. The emerald city from The Wizard of Oz is a metaphor of Government who has all the power to make our world more beautiful and yet a better place. Instead of yellow brick road, we have a rainbow path to lead us into the Emerald City. This is what the future holds for the Deaf Community; a promise to enrich the preservation of Deaf culture forever. Inspired by George Veditz's film.