Colors of Autumn

Color is one of the most immediate and emotionally affecting elements in visual art, packed with symbolic and cultural associations, personal meaning, and expressive potential.  Here in Vermont the leaves are just beginning to turn into their fall colors, so I thought it would be an appropriate time to post a little video on COLOR.

My online workshop, Unlocking the Secrets of Color, begins on September 4.  Learn to use color with confidence, and make the most of its visual impact.

Collage Journeys in Vermont, 2013

We had our Collage Journeys in Vermont workshop last week, with twelve creative and enthusiastic participants.  Janet, from Ohio, blogged about it here.  Take a look at her fabulous photos, including a good one of my post-office-with-chickens.

Here is a little video of the workshop, to give you a taste:

I took the opportunity to show off my Nova Scotia roots in the video by featuring James Hill on the ukulele with a very maritime-sounding uke-and-fiddle tune.

And a few pictures:

Big Fat Art on the Floor

More Big Fat Art on the Floor

One of Bette's collages

Marilyn's table

This is a piece I did as a demo.

As you can see, we did both collage and Big Fat Art.  For the collage, we spent the first afternoon painting papers and printing with the gel plate from GelliArts.   Then we did collage-paintings focusing on various compositional parameters. On the third day we started exploring Big Fat Art, which is REALLY fun to do in a group!

Big Fat Art it a state of mind rather than a particular type of art.  It is process-oriented, and part of the process is making a LOT of it.  Then you use your "starts" to explore and play, develop different concepts, go out on a limb, and, most importantly, keep the process going, moving forward.  

Next year's Collage Journeys in Vermont will be posted in the next couple of weeks, and open for registration.  The dates are August 12 - 16.  I will send out an e-mail when it is up on my site, so if you are interested, and not on my mailing list, please join it (in the right margin of this blog "join our mailing list" in a yellow-green box).  

I'm considering adding a Big Fat Art retreat in the spring, here in Vermont.  This may be a five day event or something shorter.  If that interests you, please comment with your ideas and suggestions.

Thanks for visiting!

More Big Fat Art

My Collage Journeys in Vermont starts today, so I'll be taking pix and video clips to show you next week.  I am very excited to see students I've worked with before and meet the ones I haven't.  LOVE this workshop!  More on that next week.

Meanwhile, I've been working on my Shapes pieces and 4"x4"'s, and also trying some new things with the Big Fat Art.  In perusing Pinterest, I've noticed that I really gravitate towards pieces with what I'm calling "expressive mark making": very free-looking scribbles.  So I did a bunch of Big Fat Art in which I explored scribbles and marks in a new way.  All are 19.5"x25" on Canson paper.

All of these are unfinished pieces; some of them will come to resolution and some will not.  It is about the process, the exploration.  I'm seeing that the shapes are emerging in these pieces, which is exciting - could I combine my shapes stuff with the expressive marks?  I'm trying different materials: pastel, Inktense pencils, graphite, India ink in an oiler boiler, airbrush colors (the drips), and crayons.