"Creative Freedom" by Maggie Price, including me!

 When Maggie Price asked me to contribute to her new book, I jumped at the chance.  She is a talented, prolific, generous artist and teacher.  Maggie invited me and a number of other artists to share their ideas for breaking artist's block.  I was asked to provide two demos, accompanying photos of my process and copy describing the demo - all firsts for me. The demos had separate deadlines, two months apart.  It was a great experience from start to finish. 

My work was finished a year ago.  The book is finally here, available from North Light Books, and is pictured to the left.  I can't wait to see it in person.    Hope you'll check it out, thanks for looking.

"Blue on Blue" 6 x 6 Class Demo

My painting class arrived today to a table filled with three collections of objects and matching cloths - red group, blue group, yellow group.  I asked the students to choose only objects from one collection so that they could explore warm and cool mixtures in the same color family.  (Interestingly, there were red and blue still life arrangements, but no one chose the yellow.)  

Then we reviewed the hierarchies I recommend they establish when beginning each painting. Look for, and establish the following notes:

  Darkest/lightest 

  Warmest/coolest 

    Hardest/softest edge 

    Saturated/neutralized color. 

By establishing the range for each of the hierarchies, you are setting the boundaries for the painting.  If considered thoughtfully, no other passage in the painting should be outside the established boundaries.  

"Blue on Blue" is my demo of today's lesson.  I began by putting notes of color for each of the eight hiercarchical boundaries.  

Every artist establishes their own repertoire of methods to draw on when beginning a painting.  This is a good way to start a painting, and good discipline for painting in an intentional, thoughtful way.  Each and every stroke is measured against the initial notes.  Intentionality doesn't suppress energy, rhythm, spontenaity, exuberance.  In fact, intentionality frees you.. it produces results, and avoids a lot of fixing, adjusting, reworking, and overworking. We had great results today.  As always, my students are such good thinkers, and hard workers.  Good day!