I have been making art, just not as much as I hoped. It is true that now that we are not necessarily just staying at home, it is easier to avoid work. But also I decided to work on a big project and most of my work is explorations around the ideas for this project and not finished pieces.
With the Harvard Art Museum open again I decided to revisit Bernini’s angels to see where it takes me. I am trying to go in at least once or twice a week and draw for 1.5 -2 hours. I keep thinking about how I love the dark work that references Dante and I keep thinking how fun it would be to capture the angel made up of souls by combining my drawings of angels with my drawing/paintings of the dolls. I am not sure where it is going to take me
Because of covid, the grand babies, our parents and Delta I decided not to continue with Joel’s group because he is now teaching in person in his studio in the South End. I miss everyone, but at the same time an old teacher Elaine Spatz Rabinowitz invited me to join her online class. Elaine and Joel are the same generation of artists and both taught at the college level. They are both eloquent and successful artists as well. But they are different and I can’t quite put my finger on what it is that distinguishes them in their critiques. Elaine is an oil/acrylic painter although she knows I am only using watercolor and gouache right now. We talked about getting lights into my painting after I showed a particularly bad overworked painting to class. I mentioned masking fluid and she brushed it off as being a material for an artist who does not work as loosely as me. I knew right then I had to prove her wrong and discovered that I could make almost print like paintings by using the masking fluid, painting a layer, removing it and doing another layer of masking fluid and paint. Below is the result.
