Paintbrushes make me bristle

Blushing Wall

Recent Paintings

Here are some of my more recent paintings.

Blue Yonder (2010)
12x16 each, acrylic and tempera on stretched canvas

Moonlight (2010)
10x30, acrylic and tempera on stretched canvas

Prairie (2010)
12x36, acrylic and tempera on stretched canvas

New art

Cosmic Funk
This guy really put me through the ringer. I had to create a painting small than 20 inches by 20 inches for display at The Contemporary Art Museum for the recent Open Studios Tour. Ugh. Not easy! But now I know I can create something smaller (18x12 inches) if need be. The title comes from the fact that I really was in a bit of a painting funk when I had to make the deadline to submit this piece. I'd painted several paintings that I didn't like, some of which I've now decided are good. Live and learn.


Lazy Afternoon
I hadn't done anything impressionist in quite a while, so I had begun to think that the impressionist phase was over. But, alas, I kicked this one out last week. I don't know why, but the painting reminds me of the colors you might find in a Victorian park, so I was thinking "park", "Sunday afternoon stroll int the park," and I came up with the title.

Purple Haze
No, I didn't give this painting a druggie name on purpose! The phrase just popped into my head when I looked at the painting & then I googled it to find out it is a Jimmy Hendrix song-LOL! This is one of the paintings I had planned to paint over since I'd struggled with it & decided it was too dark. But now I've decided that it's a keeper.

Dusk

This is the first time I've combined 4 different techniques of applying paint, in 4 layers.

Layer 1: Applied paint with brush.

Layer 2: Applied paint in small pats of my finger tips. Let dry overnight.

Layer 3: Rubbed paint into the dried, heavily textured paint from the day before.

Layer 4: Wiped paint across parts of the painting.

The Final Result

A heavily textured, deeply toned, complex, vibrant painting. And a contented artist. Well, at least for the moment.

For more information on "Dusk", click here.

Mood Wall

This is my first series. The whole thing just popped into my head one day.  That's never happened before. Until this series, I'd just throw a blank canvas on the floor, and get some paint spread around, having no idea what the outcome will be. But with this, I knew I'd be doing 6 canvases in these specific colors. 

I was surprised at how long it took. Normally, I can finish a canvas in a few hours, so I expected the whole project would take a week.  But it took me two weeks. Painting the canvases was easy, but it took a surprising amount of energy. And then there were the sides of the canvases to deal with. 

I finished the paintings and then lined the paintings up in my hall. The unpainted sides of the canvases distracted my eye from the intense paint colors. I knew if I was bothered by the white, it would be the same for other people. So I painted the sides of each canvas, painstakingly wiping wet paint off the fronts of the canvases. What can I say? Live and learn. But at least I got the look I was going for. Color and nothing but.

So what's the point of this series? Color affects all of us, but how aware are we of this? The more I paint, the more color affects me. I love laying paint down on a canvas and then watching as the colors merge. It's fascinating and beautiful. I'll find myself staring at an ugly color on a wall or a piece of someone's clothing or car and subconsciously change it into something more pleasing in my mind. 

The mood wall takes your eye thought almost the entire spectrum (minus indigo). Let your eye settle on a color or colors. Maybe that color reflects you current mood (think mood ring), or maybe you need to look at a color that will calm or energize you. 

For more about the Mood Wall, click here.

Art for Haiti

HaitiLives.org

I have to do something for Haiti. I feel helpless, as do many of us.But what's the appropriate way to help? What Haiti needs, I don't have. Money. But I do have something that I can use to raise money from those who can afford to give. My art.

Soon after I started painting back in August, I knew I had to use my art to help people.  I am keenly aware of how fortunate I am to have a house, security, health, enough money, family and friends. It is my obligation to help other simply because I can. I have been looking to connect my art to a cause for several months and now I have one: Haiti.

The first step I took was to respond to an e-mail I received from The Sheldon Concert Hall and Galleries. I am on the press release list from when I filmed there a few times for my site, CultureSurfer.com.  The press release was about a concert which will take place on February 9 to raise funds for Haiti. I asked if I could donate a piece of art to be auctioned off. When they said yes, I asked if they'd like more art from additional artists. I posted a call for artists on Facebook and now at least a dozen donations of art have been made. I am grateful to all of the artists who so generously donated their work.

But now I am planning a long-term effort to raise funds. In my previous post, I told you about Ray, my personal connection to Haiti. But I have another connection to Haiti. I met Rene several years ago when I met his girlfriend who was then working at a local art gallery. Last week, I e-mailed Rene, asking him how he was doing. He told me they had been unable to find out how family and friends in Haiti were doing due to all of the phone lines being down. I can't imagine what he's going through.

Rene created the site, HaitiLives.org. He's an IT guy so he, like many IT people, is volunteering his time to do whatever he can help (I recently heard about someone creating a Creole-American translation site.). So I told Rene I want to donate a portion of everything I sell on NaomiSilverArt.com over the next year to Haiti. The challenge I have is that I'd like the donations to occur automatically when someone buys a painting, so the buyer a) knows for sure that the donation has been made b) the buyer gets the tax deduction (a further incentive to buy). I'm waiting for Rene to get back to me on this. He's got enough on his plate for now, and Haiti will be in need for years to come.

Warm Embrace

Here is the the brown paint I was so dreading working with, which was very easy to mix by the way (blue + yellow + red). The paint looked so much like chocolate pudding that now I'm thinking I need to try some of the Belgian chocolate pudding I noticed in the refrigerated section of Trader Joe's. I have to admit that I didn't really mind working with the brown because it was such a warm brown, not dark and depressing.


 

And here is the painting. I did, in fact, use the brown as an undercoat but only on the bottom of the painting. It's actually on top of some others layers at the top of the painting. I tend to like to "anchor"  the bottom of my paintings that I do with a straight brush stroke (as opposed to the textured ones which I do with a brush & then my fingers) with a darker color so your eyes tend to wander up to the lighter colors, giving the painting a sense of upward moving energy. I love the warmth of this painting. I call it Warm Embrace because the brown shadows stretching upwards look like 2 people hugging and the colors in the painting feel so warm & nurturing. I'll be looking at this one tomorrow morning when it's -1F outside!

More information on Warm Embrace.

Brown? Blech!

Unless it's in the form of chocolate, that is.

I've changed the way I approach painting. Back at the end of August when I first began painting, I couldn't stop. It was an obsession. I'd go to sleep and wake up with colors floating through my mind. It's typical for me when I begin anything new to take off running out of the gate. Whole hog.

But now I've slowed down, thankfully. I don't have to stress over tearing through canvases so quickly (to the dismay of the lovely ladies at Dick Blick). Now I wait for an inspiration. The inspirations seem to come in the form of a color popping into my head. I let it sit there for a few days, just to make sure it's going to stick. This is how Dune came to be. That flourescent pink got stuck in my brain until I put it down on the canvas. This time it's brown.

Why am I surprised & a bit repelled by the idea of using brown? Because I really don't want to end up doing depressing, emo paintings. There's plenty of that out in the world & I don't want to contribute. I love the fact that even my darker paintings have a feeling of light in them.

But I have learned to trust my intuition to the extent that I can & go with it. I'm thinking tomorrow will probably be the day to paint. We'll see what happens.

NaomiSilverArt.com

Dune

I finally had to move my "studio" up to the front bedroom from the basement. It was just too cold down there-brr! Dune is my first painting done in a combination of room light and natural light (as opposed to the flourescent light I was painting under in the basement). The colors are, well, bright! Just think traffic cone when you look at the orange. Strangely enough, I find this painting both energizing due to the bright orange and relaxing due to the texture & design.

All I knew when I sat down to paint this one was that I needed to get some flourescent pink about the entire edge of the canvas. Then I just went by intuition. I knew I needed to add a slightly new technique as far as creating texture, but it was difficult to really understand what to do. I ended up working the paint slightly differently with my fingers. The end result looks like the waves formations you see in sand in the desert (visible if you click on the close-up to the left); hence the title Dune.

Not a bad way to close out my 40+ paintings for 2009.


For more information on Dune.

Slideshow of my art

Find more photos like this on MySLART.org

For more information about my paintings.

Spirit

This is the painting I did about 2 weeks ago when I was under the influence of a nasty cold. As do most of my paintings, the result was a surprise. What's new about this one is that there is some transparency in the paint (you can't actually see the canvas but can see an undercoat of paint). I find this effect gives the painting an airy feeling.

I was reluctant to call this one "spirit" for fear of being seen as a new-age freak but I figure what the heck. It looks like a spirit to me (in front of a tree), so that's what I'm calling it. Feel free to interpret the painting to mean whatever you think it means.

For more information on "Spirit," click here.

Intimate Distance

I just created this video of the exhibit where my art is on display with the work of several other artists until January 12th.

Hoping to hit the studio today

Ok, I'm now on day 8 of this nasty cold. I won't even attempt to describe what's being produced in my sinuses but suffice it to say the substance could be used to create an unusual piece of art that would be classified as a bio hazard. Nevertheless, I very much hope to get back to the studio today. I miss my paints. Hoping the feeling is mutual.

My 2 most recent paintings

Sea of Fire and Sea of Light
Both paintings are on view in the "Intimate Distance" show until January 12th at the 5th floor gallery at The Syndicate Building, 915 Olive St. 5th Floor, St. Louis, Mo. 63101
Gallery open by appointment only: Contact Connie or Paul LaFlam at: artthngs@hotmail.com or 314.436.9374

NaomiSilverArt.com

Since when are you an artist?

This is the question I keep hearing from people who've known me for a few years. You want the honest answer? The art thing kind of crept up and bit me, well, you know where. This past August, feeling a bit burned out from 2 years of running my website CultureSurfer.com, I decided to take a stab at doing some painting. I'd been around a good deal of art and artists over the past two years & the thought hit me that maybe I could create some decent art, at least decent enough to show and maybe even sell.

Off I went to the Ben Franklin and picked up about 4 bottles of cheap finger paint along with a few super cheap brushes and a few canvas boards. I went home and hit an old piece of poster board with the paints. Ick. I didn't like it. Neither did my husband. The whole thing just looked like mush. Not good. But I kept at it.



Time to hit one of the canvases. Suddenly, I found myself doing what I now refer to as "grown up finger painting," a process I now use in many of my works. What can I tell you? There is something very child-like in my personality that just relates to squirting paint out of a bottle and getting down and dirty with paint all over my hands. It's such a direct way to connect with the creative process. No brush as intermediary.


A few weeks later, BAM! Art show #1. I answered a post on Craigslist & within 2 days had 6 pieces of my art hanging at a wine bar out in St. Charles, Missouri. Cool. The show was up for a month and nothing sold but hey, it was a start.

NaomiSilverArt.com