poodles and play

fluffy poodles.

that's what i have been thinking about.  and beetles, both the car and the crawly variety.

i don't know why this subject matter has come to me.  john and i used to have a "new couple" inside joke about a poodle when we were first dating.  so maybe that is the culprit.  there was a poster by lynda barry out at the time.  i got it for john as a gift, and we thought it was incredibly funny.  

so what is it about us artists that get something in our head that we want to use as a theme in our work? some artists look for meaning and deepness.  others, like me, are just drawn to something for reasons unknown to us or anyone else.  

yesterday i played around with linoleum blocks.  i carved one to get back into practice.  it was really fun, and really nice to play around.  no pressure.  it's been the first time in months that i was able to do something artistic without thinking of the end product.  

i was lucky enough to have my booth next to signe and genna grushovenko at the cherry creek arts festival.  i overheard signe telling a potential customer that their technique (which is drop dead beautiful) happened by accident.  and i guess that's what it's all about.  

get something in your head.  play with it.  get messy.  fail sometimes.  and create something new.

so there it is.  my plan for the next few days, or weeks, or months.  ok, maybe not months.  i may run out of poodle and beetle ideas by then.

Signe and Genna Grushovenko

buff beachgoers

today i went to the cherry creek arts festival with friends tom, linda, teresa, and taylor.  we saw some wonderful art.  i bought a few pieces, one of which is pictured above, by signe and genna grushovenko.  i think it's amazing.  genna paints the backgrounds, and the signe paints on top, letting some of the background show through.  

true story.  a few weeks ago i was at the studio, and was playing around with the notion of using old photos along with the push/pull of an abstracted background.  you have seen some of this work on my blog in recent history.  anyway, i come home from the studio after working on these prints, and start looking at my various bookmarked blogs.  i stumble upon these incredible artists the very next morning, and voila!!!  i find someone experimenting with the same idea!  of course, our work is very different.  i am working in ink with the monoprint technique, and genna and signe are working in oil on masonite, but the push/pull idea is the same.

crazy.

anyway, i saw them at the festival today, and was literally shaking because the work is so beautiful.  i am so very lucky to now own a piece of my own.  my neighbor jane came by this evening and asked me why their painting spoke to me.  i didn't even understand that they couldn't speak to everyone who saw them.  but i told jane that the drawing skills are amazing, that the immediacy and confidence in the brushstroke is remarkable, and the understanding of value is incredibly sophisticated.  

how serendipitous that this would all come together today.  life is always full of happy coincidence, isn't it?  yay!!!