Residency at Vermont Studio Center

Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT, offers a Vermont Artists Week, in which I am SO lucky to be participating this year!  A whole week of just me and my Inner Resources, plus fifty-five other Vermont painters, print makers, sculptors, and writers doing same.  We are housed, fed, and generally taken care of, so that we can focus on our work.  So this is my only post this week, with just a few pix.  No videos, no tutorials, no Brilliant Insights or Pearls of Wisdom ; )

Selfie in Studio, first night.  Work behind me is new, in progress, warm-ups.

First morning I did twenty studies, 9"x12"

Stuck a few on the wall and began work on 10"x30" verticals.

In Process, ELEMENTS in the fog

Ditto the above.

Northeast Art Workshops

Just back from teaching at Northeast Art Workshops in Gloucester, MA.  The workshop filled to capacity, and the space was AWESOME!  Plenty of room for everybody, with loads of wall space to hang up our work for viewing.  Kat Masella is a kind, generous, and very organized host for the workshops at Northeast.  Check out her line-up for this summer and fall.  I'll be back next year for a five-day intensive, June 27 - July 1, 2016.

Here is a picture of our group (most of us):

Here are images of student work.  We first did a color exercise: using complementary colors in different proportions:

Then we worked on focal areas (or busy, active areas) against quiet space in the format of the cruciform:

And a few other things:

This is actually my piece, but Meredith had nails to match, so I had her pose for the photo.

This is my piece.  It's the one Meredith is posing with above.

Love this tiny bit of orange peeking through the blue.

Thanks for visiting.  As the above is student work (with the one exception), I ask that you not re-post them. 

Winner of the OPEN Acrylics

Jan from  Green Valley, AZ is the winner of our set of OPEN acrylics from Golden (well, the giveaway is from me, but Golden makes these fabulous paints).  Jan needs them because regular acrylics dry much too quickly in Arizona.  Thanks, everybody, for participating.  Jan: e-mail me with your mailing address, and I will send them out next week.

Here are two pieces in process in my studio.  Both are 30"x44", which is WAY big for me.  OPEN acrylics are great for working large as well.

This one is probably finished.  30"x44" on paper

This is a close-up, sort of, of the above.

This one is definitely NOT finished.

Monoprint Collage - and a giveaway

THANKS to all of you who signed up for the online Monoprint Collage.  It is full now - that was quick!!  So, for those of you who would like an in-person intensive monoprint collage experience, I am teaching at North Country Studio Workshops in January.  It is a five-day intensive using the Bennington College art studios, which are full of light and are spacious.  The workshop is limited to twelve participants, and the studio are open 24 hours.  It is a fabulous place to immerse yourself in art and meet lots of other artists (there are thirteen workshops going on simultaneously, so you mingle at meals and evening slide talks).  I studies encaustic with Daniella Woolf at North Country in 2012, and drawing (ink on Yupo, actually) with Leonard Ragouzeos in 2014.  The workshops happen every other year. 

Here is a video I posted before, on using Golden OPEN Acrylics for Monoprinting.  I will give away a set of OPEN acrylics to a randomly selected person who comments on this post.

Here is how you enter:  go to North Country Studio Workshops and look around the site.  In your comment, tell me one or two things that you found there.  Please identify yourself uniquely ("Mary G in Louisiana", not just "Mary", for example).  The winner will be posted on Monday, and it is the winner's responsibility to contact me with a mailing address.

This is the OPEN set I'm offering.

Good luck!  Happy monoprinting.

Monoprint Collage Online

By popular request, I am offering Monoprint Collage online, beginning in November.  It is a six week class in which we'll explore the possibilities of the GelliArts gel plate, and build images using print and collage.  We'll cover basic gel plate techniques and then move quickly to projects that develop visual content using monoprint, collage, drawing, and painting in a fluid no-boundaries process.

Download the Supply List.  Click here to register.

Here are a few examples of monoprint collage:

Grid-Print, 12"x12"

Grid Collage, 10"x10"

Shape #20, 10"x10"

String Theory #1, 9"x12"

Moving Through #2, 9"x9"

Thanks for visiting.

Black and White Studies

Continuing on the theme of a Vocabulary of Elements, here are some of the black and white pieces I've done on 9"x12" cheap drawing paper.  My vocabulary expands as I continue the series.  Beginning with the dark black circular line/shape/scribble, the pencil scribble, the fine line, coarse line, and a pattern or two, I began to add other elements:  the "ink spill" (actually High-Flow paint), the graphite smudge, and more patterns.  Committing to a quantity of studies, and considering them studies, like hypotheses, seemed to encourage a gradual and organic development of vocabulary.

Here are a few of my favorites:

We'll be doing similar exercises in my Abstract Painting workshops this spring and summer.  See:

• Abstract Painting: Series as Process on Whidbey Island in Washington
• Expressive Abstract Painting at Omega (The Power of Process)
• Abstract Painting: Working in Multiples at Dillman's Bay Resort