On art & taste

If you're one of those people who are splendid enough to keep up consistently with my blog, and read my post from February 11th, you'll know I'm working on a new series entitled "These walls we hide behind". Yes, it's about walls, but it's about so much more than that. It's based on a collaboration of photographs I took while tramping around Europe last fall (from France to Belgium to Germany, The Netherlands, Czech Republic, Hungary, and lastly Austria) that is intended to focus on barriers we put up (both mentally and architecturally) to keep other people out of our private lives, to hide from them our dark, distressing, and often not-so-sexy secrets. It's also about some barriers I'm breaking down for myself and my work-- being open to even more experimentation, and even working in an abstract manner in some of the pieces, which is something that is SO DIFFICULT for me to wrap my brain around. It's about letting go of control.

In that post, I was working on an abstract piece from a photograph I took while in Amsterdam, which was actually of a building just one over from the Anne Frank house. I was experimenting with some different textures here, as well as trying to build a structural foundation first and then work in an abstract manner over that. I had no idea where the piece was going, what would become of it, or if I would even keep it. And because I work in a home studio, my boyfriend (who is a creative as well, but most certainly not a visual artist) is often my only means of critique. Therefore, I decided to post it to my Facebook art page for a bit of constructive feedback.

"Rocking horse in window" - Amsterdam, The Netherlands; 

acrylic on wooden panel, 9.75" x 9.75"; 2013.

Probably because it's such a huge departure from my typical work, the responses were overwhelming. Some people loved it, and some people loathed it, and some people were just intrigued by it, but the important thing is that I was able to strike a conversation about the technical elements of the piece, while encouraging people to express what it meant to them. One woman said that she and a friend spend an hour pouring over it, finding different symbols and faces in the bricks, in the window, in the swirling colors. And it sold immediately-- first time I both completed, sold, and then packaged up a work to ship in the same day, and hopefully it won't be the last. What an amazing feeling.

I'm planning on re-creating this piece in a larger format, and executing it with more structural freedom and in cooler tones... but all in due time. Here's a sneak peak of what I'm working on now:

"As yet untitled" - Budapest, Hungary; 

acrylic on canvas; 34" x 24"

Stay tuned!