Well since we last spoke I have been working away non-stop. My mind returned to an old favorite, Alice in Wonderland. I’m so inspired by Alice’s world because it is beautiful, yet surreal and a little menacing. I have several paintings on the go. A couple pieces I started by covering a cradled panel with collage of Alice in Wonderland book pages. (I buy old vintage books from the thrift store or eBay to collage with.) These pieces have quite a bit of texture from the old paper. I paint over almost every bit of the collage on the front but I leave the sides unpainted so the book text can be read, I love picking out bits of the story that are especially interesting for the sides.
A couple other Alice pieces are quite large. I have two 2ftx4ft loose pieces of canvas stapled to plywood. One, Painting the Roses, is done and ready to stretch. The other, The Pool of Tears, I have just started and have a little video below with some of the progress I’ve made on it. I’m still very much in that play stage and not sure yet what it wants to be.
As you can see I’ve got a lot of work ahead to finish these up and who knows what new ones I’ll start, I keep having new ideas. I’m liking where the Pool of Tears is at the moment but it has a long way to go. I want to preserve those very childlike pastel scribbles and marks but the painting needs a bit of menace and sadness in it I think, or anyway some complexity. It’s too sweet at the moment.
Here’s a little video of me doing my favorite thing, messing up a painting lol.