My Artist's Assistant

This is Miss Kitty, my well-loved, devoted, and extremely encouraging artist's assistant. Her help is invaluable, as you can see in this photo. She was keeping me focused on my work, making me move from one area to another so that the glue could dry, and adding cat hair to every single inch of the painting for textural purposes, of course!

Artists' Assistants can be hard to find and very costly, if you are even able to find the right one. I feel extremely lucky to have found the perfect companion, in all things artistic. :)

I love Miss Kitty! XOXOXOX

How it All Began. . . .

. . . .  in regards to Fleury I and Fleury II!

Here is what the "knot" or "tassel" looked like that was the inspiration for the 2 origami paintings.

Fleury 2--a look at the process

Last Saturday, at Sierra Second Saturday Art Hop, I spent the day at the Mind Shop Bookstore in Oakhurst. Since I was there for several hours, I worked on putting the origami pieces on Fleury 2. It all started with a rectangular piece of beautiful Japanese paper that looks like a tassel or knot. I glued it down and then drew sweeping lines out from the printed paper, each one to be filled with one basic color of small (patchwork-like) pieces of origami paper. You can see the edges of glued-down rectangle in the photo above.

As I'm gluing small pieces down into the sweeping areas, I save the very small ones that I cut off and I use them right away on some really tiny little collages that use up the left-overs of beautiful origami paper. I have two 4" X 6" pieces of scrap mat board in front of me in the photos and am adding to both of them. They will wind up being "mini-collages". 

I counted the "sweeps" and there  are 15 different colored areas that need to be filled with bits of cut papers. When I went up to Oakhurst, I had done one large black area. By the end of the day, I had six of the areas completed.Nine left to go! And then I'll add large collage"flowers"to the foreground to make the "Fleury" come alive! Those flowers will be the "surprise" in this painting.

The thing that's bothering me a bit at this point in the painting is that the red "background" areas which were navy blue in the first Fleury painting are too similar in color and value to the sweeps that touch them. I will have to probably darken up the red painted area on either side of the loop/knot to make it recede into the background.

Fleury 2

"There once was a painting called Fleury." She was very beautiful and very unique. She sold to a couple in New Jersey before her time. :) She was made from a lovely piece of Japanese paper that came in a paper assortment brought back from Japan by the artist's friend, Chieko. The artist never dreamed of doing another Fleury but when she, the artist, was in Berkeley a few weeks ago she (the artist) spent some time in a lovely, Japanese paper shop. She bought a package of assorted papers and when she opened it in her hotel room, lo and behold, there was another piece of paper that looked like a tassel or knot with origami papers emanating from it. The beginnings of another Fleury! Almost exactly like the original one except that the color scheme is different. The artist is now working on Fleury 2 and will show you a photo of it later today.

Art Hop at the Mind Shop Bookstore tomorrow!

If you're anywhere near the Positive Living Center in Oakhurst tomorrow, Saturday, July 10th, I hope you can come by the Mind Shop Bookstore and visit for a while. Sierra Second Saturday Art Hop is from 11 AM till closing time at 5 PM and I plan to be there all day. Sisters 7 has a group show hanging there right now and several of us will be there on and off during the day. The group of seven artists includes myself, Sheila Boyd, Anita Stoll, Julie Mitchell, Valerie Runningwolf, Vivian Helena. and Joan Constable. The show is called "Tropical Breeze" and it's quite "refreshing". Come and see!

We also have made our blog a public blog and will be adding events and information to it on a regular basis. Come and visit and see what's happening with Sisters 7. The blog address is sisterstotheseventhpower.blogspot.com

Hope to see you tomorrow!

No Italy this year. . . .

I keep forgetting that not everyone knows that Grace and I will not be teaching a painting workshop at La Romita School of Art in Italy this year. We were to begin on July 13th but we didn't gather enough people to do the session in 2010. I am very disappointed and a little sad, but maybe the opportunity will be offered again another year. Sometimes things happen for a reason . . . . but I'm sorry to say we won't be experiencing Italy in 2010. La Romita is such a life-changing place to be!