Some Changes and New Work

the Changes…

Over the next few months I’m going to be changing the format for this blog. I’ve started working on a website that will be the new place to see my portfolio, hopefully in a more user-friendly way. It should be up in a few months. I’ve also started a shop on Etsy (seller name: sgpedry) where you can view a few things that I have for sale. I’m going to use this blog as a place to post what I’m working on now, and to talk a little bit about what I’m thinking about and looking at art-wise. For now I plan on making a new post every weekend.

and the New Work!

I’ve started a new series of paintings on watercolor paper that are taking me back to my love of drawing while incorporating what I love about the color and texture of paint. I am working with pen and ink, gouache, some collage, and a variety of other materials. The work I’ve done over the last few years is very loose, with solid colors and many layers of oil paint. My intention for the new work was to keep the atmospheric feeling of the oil paintings, while simplifying the image and adding moments of control and delicate rendering.

The subject of the paintings is difficult for me to pinpoint (as usual). I almost never start a painting with the intention of telling a specific story or evoking one emotion. I might start with a color that’s been on my mind, a photograph I’ve seen, or just the flash of an image from memory. When I look at the blank paper it seems like it just tells me what to do…maybe that sounds a little hokey, but it’s true!

Having said that, now that I’ve made a few paintings I can see a pattern developing. I have some ideas about where they’ve come from me, but I don’t want to restrict their meaning for anyone else just yet. So here are the repeated images and subjects: children, arrows, wolves and other animals, and blood (or something blood-like). I’m also back to using halos a lot, which have always been a powerful symbol for me. I like them not so much for their religious connotations, but for the way they seem to lift their subject out of any real space. I also see it as a protective symbol.

So, here is one of the paintings. There’s no title yet…

Working alone in the studio can be kind of an isolating experience sometimes; I would welcome comments on the paintings that will let me know what you see.