Cutting Myself A Little Slack

I wonder if I'm the only one who does this? I look back on my studio practice now and then and become convinced that I haven't been producing any work I'd be willing to show. Sometimes that's true, and sometimes it isn't.

Examining the last few weeks, I was surprised to realize that I've been very productive.

I've been returning to my earliest roots: painting paper. There was no plan for how I produced several dozen papers, except that I kept the color schemes similar so that I could collage with them later. I painted with thin, transparent layers of acrylic, monoprinted, stamped, and painted some hand-written Stacked Journaling, working from one sheet of copy paper or other old, printed material, to another.

After I had a large stack ready, I cut them up and applied them to all types of substrates. Paper...

On 6"x6" flat, canvas panels...

 And on cradled, wooden panels of various (small) sizes...

Still using the wooden panels (my favorite substrate of all, seriously), I painted directly onto the unprimed wood to get a stain effect and then applied some- follow along with me, here- monoprinted, cut Stacked Journaling. (Monoprinted, cut Stacked Journaling is described in this post.)

I've also been revisiting my love of old, yellowed papers. With this very large wooden panel (30"x40"x2"), I primed the surface and then collaged encyclopedia, dictionary, and thesaurus pages on the theme of trees and birds onto it. A couple of layers of thinned paint and a good sanding with my palm orbiter gave it a nice patina while serving to push back the background. I'm doing some studies before touching it again, because I want to be sure I know just what I want to do before start, so watch this space.

Finally, sitting on my workspace in front of me, is this gorgeous hunk of wooden panel, 16"x16"x2", in its first stages of paint.

Instead of using paper collage elements, I decided to use multi-purpose fabric, so I'm painting two large pieces at the same time as I paint the panel, again, keeping things in the same color family.

I guess I need to cut myself some slack- I'm producing plenty of work.

Until next time, paint happy!