Wow....I have been busy as a bee. However, this is such a beautiful busy that I can’t even describe it in words. Here is my attempt to document this...,my mind is taking on so many new adventures and I am excited to report. I did my first exhibit 02/26/11, that went really well at Hans Gallery. 
In these paintings I am experimenting with a new approach, on large canvases filled with dense, formulated patters made by brushes heavily laden with bright colors. This was inspired and dedicated to Alma Thomas, Byzantine mosaics, techniques of Georges Seurat and the paintings of the Washington Color School. Over 1,000 people saw my work, some even wanted to purchase, however they were just put up for show (they were not on sale). Very proud moment for me that defined the beginning of my career.
My friend John Bernard had his showing 02/25 in the River Oaks Gallery that was fantastic also. Victor’s parents were in town for a week. His mother taught me how to sow so I have been exploring sowing canvases together. We will see where that exploration takes me. Of course I have my weekly 2 classes at Women’s Institute of Art. That is going well. I took an additional class that taught me how to work the medium Pan Pastels. I would show the pictures that I produced, however, they were stolen. :(. What else....um, oh yeah, two exhibits.
At the Manil Collection - The Whole World Was Watching -Civil Rights-Era Photographs from Edmund Carpenter and Adelaide de Menil
It was incredible. 
This exhibition presents a selection of work from an extraordinary gift to the Menil Collection by Adelaide de Menil and Edmund Carpenter: 230 civil rights-era photographs. The work, by Dan Budnik, Danny Lyon, Bruce Davidson, Leonard Freed, Bob Adelman, and Elliott Erwitt, captures the profound changes taking place in the United States beginning in the 1960s. It includes a wide variety of striking images that deal with race and politics: marchers on the road from Selma to Montgomery, Dr. Martin Luther King in protest, cotton workers in the Mississippi Delta, prison labor camps in Texas, and the Ku Klux Klan.“The Whole World is Watching” was a phrase adopted by radical and leftist political groups in the 1960s to aggregate change, including anti-Vietnam war demonstrators, and student activists, like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. With the advent of television and the new ubiquity of printed media in everyday life, live broadcasts and the immediate dissemination of shocking images were playing a powerful role. The media was helping to finally shed light on violence, and racial injustice, and the American people could no longer turn their backs. The photographers in the show were involved with showing the world both the struggle, and victories of those fighting for civil rights. As photographers and artists, their work is not only important photojournalistic documentation. It is also extraordinary works of art, in themselves. With complex formal compositions and masterful plays with light and framing, they are indelible statements.To supplement the exhibition, organized by associate curator Michelle White, the museum has invited professor Gerald O’Grady, fellow at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard, and founder of the Rice University Media Center, to curate a summer film series of important films of the civil rights era, and lecture on how the then new forms of film and photography in the 1960s served as a such critical tools for advocating social change.This exhibition is generously supported by Mark Wawro and Melanie Gray, Roy and Evelyn Nolen, The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P., Goldman, Sachs & Co., Michael Zilkha and the City of Houston.
I also went and enjoyed the Rothko Chapel - Rothko Chapel, founded by Houston philanthropists John and Dominique de Menil, was dedicated in 1971 as an intimate sanctuary available to people of every belief. A tranquil meditative environment inspired by the mural canvases of Russian born American painter Mark Rothko (1903-1970), the Chapel welcomes thousands of visitors each year, people of every faith and from all parts of the world. On the plaza, Barnett Newman's majestic sculpture, Broken Obelisk, stands in memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.The Rothko Chapel is an independent institution, a sacred place open to all people, every day. In 2011 the Chapel will celebrate its fortieth anniversary, having achieved, in those years, recognition as one of the greatest artistic achievements of the second half of the twentieth century. In 2001 the Chapel was listed in the National Register of Historic Places, an honor awarded before the institution was fifty years old. The Chapel regularly makes top ten lists of places to visit, and is a featured entry in National Geographic's book Sacred Places of a Lifetime: 500 of the World's Most Peaceful and Powerful Destinations, published in 2009.The Chapel has two vocations: contemplation and action. It is a place alive with religious ceremonies of all faiths, and where the experience and understanding of all traditions are encouraged and made available. Action takes the form of supporting human rights, and thus the Chapel has become a rallying place for all people concerned with peace, freedom, and social justice throughout the world.
Rothko Chapel
I also met with Karen Lastre, an abstract artist that kinda paints in a Rothko like way.
Karen Lastre
Also, not painting but art music, I saw Janet. Hubby got me front row tickets. All I can say is she kinda needs to retire. I was beyond disappointed. :(. Oh well what can you do, I would have been upset if I was not there. Kinda can’t win for loosing.
I met with Natasha (my advisor) - She introduced me to some artist after seeing my progress.
Ghada Amer (born 1963 in Cairo, Egypt) is a contemporary artist living and working inNew York City. She emigrated from her birth country at age 11 and was educated in Parisand Nice.[1] Much of her work deals with issues of gender and sexuality, particularly the representation of female nudes in art history as ideal objects rather than human beings with a sexuality and eroticism of their own.[2] She is represented by Cheim & Read Gallery [2].
Henri Michaux (24 May 1899 - 19 October 1984) was a highly idiosyncratic Belgian-bornpoet, writer, and painter who wrote in French. He later took French citizenship. Michaux is best known for his esoteric books written in a highly accessible style, and his body of work includes poetry, travelogues, and art criticism. Michaux travelled widely, tried his hand at several careers, and experimented with drugs, the latter resulting in two of his most intriguing works, Miserable Miracle and The Major Ordeals of the Mind and the Countless Minor Ones.
Henri Michaux Since I am developing my language/words within my work, he was a great person to source information from.
Marlene Dumas (born August 3, 1953) is a South African born artist and painter who lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Stressing both the physical reality of the human body and its psychological value, Dumas tends to paint her subjects at the extreme fringes of life’s cycle, from birth to death, with a continual emphasis on classical modes of representation in Western art, such as the nude or the funerary portrait. By working within and also transgressing these traditional historical antecedents, Dumas uses the human figure as a means to critique contemporary ideas of racial, sexual, and social identity.
Marlene Dumas
Gerhard Richter (born February 9, 1932) is a German visual artist. Richter has simultaneously produced abstract and photorealistic painted works, as well as photographs and glass pieces, thus undermining the concept of the artist’s obligation to maintain a single cohesive style
Atlas of Richter
Gerhard Richter
MY STUDIO WORK -
She was impressed with my head way and challenged me to find more source material. She thought the stains I was developing are beautiful. I am looking into maps, more stains, ect. I am also looking to learn more on mono printing, she believes this will build and add to the direction I am going.
I am next going to explore Rite dye and making stains more specific. She also really appreciated my process. Drawing, painting small scale pic, then growing to a 5 by 5 - then much much bigger.
My body of work - studio or art work - I have been understanding, learning and practicing staining, layering and dye painting. This is certainly not everything, but a good synopsis of what I have been working on.
Staining with paper, burlap, canvas and linen (in that order) - sowing
Burlap, stretched and stressed
Staining - Stained, textured and layered distressed woman. Still working out layering and staining..
At the Manil Collection - The Whole World Was Watching -Civil Rights-Era Photographs from Edmund Carpenter and Adelaide de Menil
It was incredible.
This exhibition presents a selection of work from an extraordinary gift to the Menil Collection by Adelaide de Menil and Edmund Carpenter: 230 civil rights-era photographs. The work, by Dan Budnik, Danny Lyon, Bruce Davidson, Leonard Freed, Bob Adelman, and Elliott Erwitt, captures the profound changes taking place in the United States beginning in the 1960s. It includes a wide variety of striking images that deal with race and politics: marchers on the road from Selma to Montgomery, Dr. Martin Luther King in protest, cotton workers in the Mississippi Delta, prison labor camps in Texas, and the Ku Klux Klan.
“The Whole World is Watching” was a phrase adopted by radical and leftist political groups in the 1960s to aggregate change, including anti-Vietnam war demonstrators, and student activists, like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. With the advent of television and the new ubiquity of printed media in everyday life, live broadcasts and the immediate dissemination of shocking images were playing a powerful role. The media was helping to finally shed light on violence, and racial injustice, and the American people could no longer turn their backs. The photographers in the show were involved with showing the world both the struggle, and victories of those fighting for civil rights. As photographers and artists, their work is not only important photojournalistic documentation. It is also extraordinary works of art, in themselves. With complex formal compositions and masterful plays with light and framing, they are indelible statements.
To supplement the exhibition, organized by associate curator Michelle White, the museum has invited professor Gerald O’Grady, fellow at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard, and founder of the Rice University Media Center, to curate a summer film series of important films of the civil rights era, and lecture on how the then new forms of film and photography in the 1960s served as a such critical tools for advocating social change.
This exhibition is generously supported by Mark Wawro and Melanie Gray, Roy and Evelyn Nolen, The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P., Goldman, Sachs & Co., Michael Zilkha and the City of Houston.
I also went and enjoyed the Rothko Chapel -
Rothko Chapel, founded by Houston philanthropists John and Dominique de Menil, was dedicated in 1971 as an intimate sanctuary available to people of every belief. A tranquil meditative environment inspired by the mural canvases of Russian born American painter Mark Rothko (1903-1970), the Chapel welcomes thousands of visitors each year, people of every faith and from all parts of the world. On the plaza, Barnett Newman's majestic sculpture, Broken Obelisk, stands in memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Rothko Chapel is an independent institution, a sacred place open to all people, every day. In 2011 the Chapel will celebrate its fortieth anniversary, having achieved, in those years, recognition as one of the greatest artistic achievements of the second half of the twentieth century. In 2001 the Chapel was listed in the National Register of Historic Places, an honor awarded before the institution was fifty years old. The Chapel regularly makes top ten lists of places to visit, and is a featured entry in National Geographic's book Sacred Places of a Lifetime: 500 of the World's Most Peaceful and Powerful Destinations, published in 2009.
The Chapel has two vocations: contemplation and action. It is a place alive with religious ceremonies of all faiths, and where the experience and understanding of all traditions are encouraged and made available. Action takes the form of supporting human rights, and thus the Chapel has become a rallying place for all people concerned with peace, freedom, and social justice throughout the world.
Rothko Chapel
Karen Lastre
I met with Natasha (my advisor) - She introduced me to some artist after seeing my progress.
Henri Michaux (24 May 1899 - 19 October 1984) was a highly idiosyncratic Belgian-bornpoet, writer, and painter who wrote in French. He later took French citizenship. Michaux is best known for his esoteric books written in a highly accessible style, and his body of work includes poetry, travelogues, and art criticism. Michaux travelled widely, tried his hand at several careers, and experimented with drugs, the latter resulting in two of his most intriguing works, Miserable Miracle and The Major Ordeals of the Mind and the Countless Minor Ones.
Marlene Dumas (born August 3, 1953) is a South African born artist and painter who lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Stressing both the physical reality of the human body and its psychological value, Dumas tends to paint her subjects at the extreme fringes of life’s cycle, from birth to death, with a continual emphasis on classical modes of representation in Western art, such as the nude or the funerary portrait. By working within and also transgressing these traditional historical antecedents, Dumas uses the human figure as a means to critique contemporary ideas of racial, sexual, and social identity.
Gerhard Richter (born February 9, 1932) is a German visual artist. Richter has simultaneously produced abstract and photorealistic painted works, as well as photographs and glass pieces, thus undermining the concept of the artist’s obligation to maintain a single cohesive style
Atlas of Richter
Gerhard Richter
She was impressed with my head way and challenged me to find more source material. She thought the stains I was developing are beautiful. I am looking into maps, more stains, ect. I am also looking to learn more on mono printing, she believes this will build and add to the direction I am going.
I am next going to explore Rite dye and making stains more specific. She also really appreciated my process. Drawing, painting small scale pic, then growing to a 5 by 5 - then much much bigger.
My body of work - studio or art work - I have been understanding, learning and practicing staining, layering and dye painting. This is certainly not everything, but a good synopsis of what I have been working on.
Making a skin, layering, dripping, ect..Many many layers of drips, spills, stains and skin layered into paint. Great effect...e
Playing with letters as forms Jab at texture, word play and developmen
My small study on Rothko
Bigger study of Rothko with word play..Rothko Tribute - with my own language that I am creating using shapes, buried within layers of paint in the center/ right side and the bottom left. Top line wraps around the side and back of canvas.
Biggest Rothko StudyRothko tribute by dye staining. Softer and more feminine. GETTING THERE! :) Excited with progress
Lithograph - first exploratio
So much to comment on! First, I love your studio. What a dream. Are you loving every minute? Also, your work is amazing!! You have been holding out on us. I see why people were interested in buying your pieces! Looking at all this makes me miss our times painting our hearts out in College. Makes me happy to see you are living your dream.
ReplyDeletelove the work - some of it reminds me of the ornate screens used to block out light in North Africa - really interesting patterns there - also check out some of the Kuba cloth patterns and African writing systems...you gotta hold one of those paintings for me lol- I can do a layaway plan because I know you want top dollar=)
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