Musical Interlude...

Did you realize there's only 4 and a bit weeks left until Christmas? I think I clued in around Wednesday... I'm usually REALLY organized when it comes to Christmas, 1. because I seriously hate crowds, and shopping in the malls around here in December vaguely resembles roller derby, and 2. it's a month that is usually insanely busy at my day job. This year I'm not so organized... somehow the time has managed to slip by without me noticing, and here it is one week till December. Yikes.

What have I been doing? Well... painting. I did my class with Gwen Tooth, worked on a couple decent sized abstract pieces, and finished off a large musician piece that's been hanging around my studio for a few months now. I got an amazing book out of the library, "the Jazz Loft Project"...  Its based on the photographs and tapes of W. Eugene Smith, from 1957 to1965. There are some fantastic photos in this book, and I used one of Thelonious Monk  as a jumping off point for this piece. I try to alter my drawings so they don't actually look like the photos... I will draw from the photo, put the book away and draw it again a couple times, and each time it gets further away from the original, and I learn enough about my subject to be able to paint it with minimal detail and get the "feel". With this one, I was going for the atmosphere of the smoky bar, with the jazz band in the spotlight, completely into the music.

"Straight, No Chaser"  
30x36" Acrylic on Canvas

This is the largest piece I've done in a while. I love painting large, but storage can be an issue... my house is small and I've got art up on pretty much every available wall (not all my own... I have a small but growing collection of works by artists I admire). If you are interested in the various stages one of my paintings will go through, I sometimes post working photos on my facebook page. You can check it out there.

In other events, last weekend was the opening reception for the Colour and Form Society's annual juried show. I hadn't entered many juried shows over the past few years. Time has been limited and I really thought my energies were best spent elsewhere. This year I've been in a few, but they have all had specific size requirements. This show was open, and apparently I had forgotten something i had previously learned about juried shows... if I enter a small piece, I might just have a hard time finding it when the show is hung. That's my little one on the end... the far, far left... actually the end of the hallway. See where all the people are? Yeah. That.