New-ish work

It's been awhile since I've posted, but I'm back. The new posts will be about my paintings.

First off is a series I did, entitled Things I Carry With Me From My Childhood. These small acrylic paintings are approximately 5x3inches and relate to people and experiences from...you guessed it...my childhood. The little paintings are housed in "galleries" made from thrift store toddler's clothing. The pieces took quite sometime to plan, but I'm happy with the results.

The paintings were harder to make than I thought they'd be. They took days and days and days. I used tiny brushes (and even the tip of a straight pin and broom straws a few times), and I had to play quite a bit with the mixture of paint and medium to get the proper paint consistency.

The "galleries" were created by altering the small dresses (adding trim details and removing some really ugly plaid from one of them) and stiffening them (not nearly as easy as I'd thought it would be...there were balloons involved) with a product called Paverpol. After drying for several days, doors were cut in each dress with a tiny hand saw and a Dremel (also not as easy as I'd thought it would be, especially since I was using the Dremel in a manner for which it was not intended), and hardware and floors, etc. were added.

This one was created as a shrine to my Gran. I lived with her when I was little. She was quite eccentric and often awesome. Most of us have at least one person who played a large part in helping to nurture the good parts of who we've turned out to be. She was my primary person. I chose this dress because it was black velveteen and looked like something I might've worn. I made the frame for the painting out of wood, Sculpey, and acrylic.

This piece has to do with a painful memory, but it's one of my favorite paintings. It turned out exactly as I wanted it to, and I love it for that reason. I chose this dress because I had a red velvet dress with a white lace collar when I was little.

The painting is Mr. Pig. When I was little, I lived with my grandparents on a farm. My grandfather raised pigs. My grandmother, being the grandmotherly sort (wanting to keep me safe, since sometimes grown pigs can pose a danger to small children), proceeded to scare the living daylights out of me by convincing me that all pigs were monsters who oinked and ate kids. My grandfather watched The Untouchables and Humphrey Bogart on television (often, in vintage gangster movies, the bad guys would have a "Mr. Big" who was the head baddie). In my little girl brain, a freaky porker named Mr. Pig dressed in a fedora and trench coat and lurking outside my bedroom window every night made total sense. Open windows after dark terrified me because I was sure he was out there, just waiting to grab me. He stayed with me for awhile. I chose this dress because jumpers were popular when I was little.

The dress and tiny painting series was an idea I came up with when trying to move a bit beyond the confines of what's traditionally considered painting...painting-plus, I guess. I have a bit of background in working with fibers and although much more time and effort went into this than I'd expected, I seriously enjoyed creating them and I liked adding a sculptural component to my work.