I have a friend named Diane who had a lovely book of the art of Frida Kahlo and she had "sort of" hinted that she loved the pictures of Frida with her monkeys and she also mentioned in passing that she had a colleague who even had a shrine to Frida filled with "Fridaesque" objects but no artwork to display.
So I thought it would be a good use of my talent to have a look through the book and choose a couple of appropriate images and make a smaller, modified interpretation of each image. These are the result and I hope she is surprised and happy when I give them to her later this week. Fingers crossed!
I just love the way actresses looked in the 40's. So put together, up swept do and ruby red lipstick...sigh! I happen to have a few of my mothers old movie mags and I just had to give this lady a try. Alexis Smith was a well known actress in the 40's and this cover shot is from Screenland February 1944 edition. Note the huge corsage! Wow! I may have to try more of these.
I spun off into a garden reverie and because it is too early to plant anything I decided to do my planting on canvas. It started out as an acrylic work and then I started experimenting. I had been playing with watercolors on tracing paper which is similar to parchment (in my mind anyway) and I loved the slightly blurred look of the colors. I had the idea that maybe adding some cut pieces of the paper to the painting might add a certain dimension to the flowers and leaves. That led to cutting out leaf and flower petal shapes out of organza ribbon and adding that with gel medium. I just had to add a lovely quote and some flecks of gold ink to the surface. I finished the painting with a coat of beeswax. I worried about that in view of the flexibility of the canvas but I had heard in thin coats it would stay in place and add a certain glow to the surface and I am happy to report it was true!
I have to tell you I have no idea where the time goes. I have days when I am in a creative fog and it seems to take forever to emerge from the mire! Sounds dramatic n'est pas? I think Spring does something to the brain and maybe that is why the old timers took what they called a "tonic" to thin the blood in the Spring. Maybe they knew something or had some inherent knowledge that we have lost in our more "modern and enlightened" times.
I am slowly dragging myself into the light though and am working on some new artwork that I feel is getting closer to who I am as an artist. I updated a painting I had done awhile ago and was not entirely happy with, I like it better now.
