This is a little different post than usual, or at least lately for me – art related, yes, but a bit more introspective, which I’m prone to now and then, lol! What’s a bit different is, I’ve had an insight clarification about my art prompted by my combined recent reading in 3 different books (Kindle versions) —

• Turner, The Extraordinary Life & Momentous Times of J.M.W. Turner by Franny Moyle
  
• A Month of Dunkin’ by Armand Rosamilia
  
• Ninth Street Women by Mary Gabriel

They’re more than a bit different from each other, yet share creativity as their defining concern – at least as far as I can tell so far. See, like my half dozen works in progress right now (an occasional recurrent theme of how I work over the last 40+ years), I’ve begun all three of these books, like them, and dip into one or the other every other night, or so.

I’m not a consistent reader, but I am dedicated, truly 😊

Fanny Moyle’s Turner’s book is, so far, about the times he was born into and grew up within; which shares an evolution of how art and artist communities evolve with Mary Gabriel’s book on the New York abstract art scene in “Ninth Street Women.”

There’s differences of course, in the times portrayed, which group of artists struggled and why, how the art of the time overcame obstacles of showing – fascinating stuff.

And again, from the short start I have into Armand Rosamilia’s recent book, “A Month of Dunkin'” – he’s onto a search for triggers for his creativity, which he says he felt needed freshening, and, in interviews at a different Dunkin’ Donut Shop each day for a month, seems to be encountering everyday folks (so far) with amazing creativity of their own.

So me, I’m a coagulation of a lot of those themes 😊

My recent joining of figure work into abstracted surroundings (to some degree or other), has gotten me pondering again about my tinkering with painting and color fascinations when I was a child, I dash away paintings of Dali and others in my 20s, and this block of time from about 1978/9 to now, where I went from acrylic abstracts, to impressionism with water soluble oils applied to (mostly) Austin scenes (then later Vermont), to most recently, work with watercolors and once again acrylics – jumping from abstractions to figures to impressionist landscapes to now – more and more, a co-mingling of them all.

What the heck, I ask myself more and more, is all that about, lol!

I don’t know yet.

But, my preferred styles of painting are merging, more and more; and recently, the last few days, working on multiple canvases again (like the early 80s and early 2000s), I am reminded how often I was unsatisfied with a painting, no matter how nice it already looked, unless I could “improve” the surface of that painting.

Sometimes I attempted that, improving the painting’s surface, and succeeded. Sometimes I couldn’t think how to and then either foolishly tried too hard to make something happen, or, less often, wisely left the surface be. It was enough. Especially when I worked water soluble oils into impressionist landscapes. The very process provided more than ample leeway to create an interesting surface just in the process of layering and layering.

Now, since about 2019, I’ve evolved to using watercolors on absorbent ground, then watercolors and acrylics on light molding paste, plus occasionally painting on paper (something I hadn’t done since probably a sun tea jar I did in 1978), and have found the addition of those grounds, usually on stretched canvas (sometimes canvas panels), has created a rumply enough surface it’s intrigued me to find ridges and valleys and swerves of swells of ground to play with ❤️ and that has resurfaced my interest in tinkering with the surface of my current art work.

I enjoy doing that, immensely.

The surface of my work often being as important, or I should say, as interesting to me, as the image as a whole. And of course now I want to make the image as a whole, whether seen from a short nose-to-the canvas space, to the further distance where the image is, well, simply just an image as a whole.

Not too much to ask, if you have all day, lol! Which I don’t. So I guess that makes it at the least, a little too much to ask 😊 and I’m ok with that ☺️

Here then, are examples from 3 of my in-progress or nearly-done most recent work.

• Walking in Light, related blog post –
  https://felipeadanlerma.com/2021/10/11/october-11-2021-a-good-problem-lots-of-interesting-pics-and-posts-developing-in-my-blog-pipeline/
• Mother and Child (originally, Playtime Mother and Child), related blog post –
  https://felipeadanlerma.com/2021/10/13/october-13-2021-a-good-problem-lots-of-interesting-pics-and-posts-developing-in-my-blog-pipeline-part-2/
• Angel, related blog post –
  https://felipeadanlerma.com/2021/10/27/october-27-2021-new-masking-fluid-light-molding-paste-arcylicabstract-project-completed-angel/

To show the change stronger, I’ll be showing the initiating painting effort, then 2 current surface close-ups —

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Walking in Light

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Mother and Child

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Angel

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Stay well everyone! Creativity truly is a journey it seems, within and outside ourselves, intertwined and intermingling 💕

Adan

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My Latest Posts On My Website!

• November 30, 2021 – My Idea for Promoting My WordPress Blog Posts on Twitter (With My Pinned Tweet), Part 4November 30, 2021
  And so far, I’m very pleased with how it’s working. It’s saving me a bit of time, yet also keeping tweets going out promoting my more recent posts. I could probably do with slightly more frequently….
• November 29, 2021 – Fine Art America News : “Easy Morning” and “Walking in Light” Featured in Art Groups + Sold a “If Dads Were” Coffee CupNovember 29, 2021
  Both figures in the painting above and below are watercolors, though, Easy Morning is all watercolor on absorbent ground. Walking in Light’s paint, around the figure below, is acrylic; both the watercolor figure and remainder of my painting done on Golden’s Light Molding Paste. Golden has evidently been at improving acrylics a long time, as I learned in this post (with links to Golden’s article), and I can say that for me, working on their molding paste, in watercolor and acrylic, is a real treat!
• November 28, 2021 – My Most Viewed Image This Past Week @FineArtAmerica, Heart FragmentNovember 28, 2021
  If it was an amazing process to see older photos and artwork show up on my most viewed list last week (and it was 😊) then this batch is incredible! Work from so many years have shown up, and such a variety! It tells me, one can never quite tell what folks might be looking for day to day, week to week, and it’s nice for me to have the inventory assortment, “almost” a historical diary, of my work
• November 27, 2021 – LOL! I Don’t Like It, But I WANT It! : Preparing More Paintings and Applications for Places to Show and Sell!!November 27, 2021
  I squashed together what I could to show a “fair” sampling of my work recently finished or in-progress right now. There’s more, tucked here and there among these, lol! And on another wall! I choose to consider that a good problem 😊 Seeing these together like tis, If I had to choose one thing tying them all together – the impressionist skews, the abstracted slants, the washes, the thick tones, the high key and (nearly) BW work – I’d say it’s….
• November 26, 2021 – Working on Paintings; In-Progress : 2 New Lay-ins ( “Heart Fragment” and “Approach” ) Based on Details from Two Existing PaintingsNovember 26, 2021
  This has been something I’ve toyed with and talked about for a bit now — finding / picking a detail fragment of an existing painting (or photo etc) from which to base new work on. And I shoulda caught on to how well this might work for me, in terms of creativity and viewership, with my success with a related project where I painted an abstracted detail from an existing painting to create a new related one. That happened with Abstract Study 1 shown at the bottom of this post.
• November 25, 2021 – Happy Thanksgiving 2021!!November 25, 2021
  Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I’m posting the same header as last year, Norman Rockwell’s “Freedom From Want” oil on canvas from 1943, smack in the middle of the 2nd World War.
• November 24, 2021 – Working on Paintings; In-Progress : Valentines 2022, In-Progress Since Early October, lol!November 24, 2021
  Not quite finished, but looking fairly good, especially considering back in early October I thought, “Yeah, I can finish this quick then save it for early next year.” Now, I’m thinking, really? Will I really finally get this finished by January next year, lol!

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Thanks again, everyone! 😊

Adan

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