Posts tagged ‘lauren alexander’
And just like that, it’s summer time! Summer vacation at least. For the last couple weeks my daughter has been bringing home all kinds of stuff from her year in fourth grade. One worksheet particularly caught my eye; a little poem she wrote about the weather. It’s hard to describe but it is the exact personality of my daughter. I hear her voice and see her beauty in the poem.
Sunshine
You are so bright and yellow
How do you make a rainbow?
If I were you I’d make rainbows more often.
Sometimes objects will have a special meaning and inspire me to put them in a composition for a painting.
Last spring, my grandmother past away and left behind wonderful intangible things like love and spirit that will last forever. I hope I pass those along someday too.
Of course there are objects attached to her life and my memories of her that are here still too. When my mom gave me some of her jewelry I knew exactly what I would be painting next.
It was hard to set up a still life for very long because I kept wanting to wear the things on the table. There are no rings in this painting because the couple that I got are on my fingers most days. After I worked on the jewelry part for several days (weeks?) I felt a push to keep going and include more that reminds me of my grandmother’s sense of style. She was into accessories, she made things, and she was always put together in a colorful way. Maybe I over did it. Maybe I went too far. But in my opinion, I can’t say enough about how much the little things matter.
Finally. My perfect watercolor paper arrived in the mail and within minutes I began to work on a new painting. This one came to be faster than any other. I was anxious.
Birds have always been in my brain when it comes to painting subject matter. I love them, I hate them, I can’t get away from them, I wish I knew more about them, they live around me, they have threatened me, and overall I’m pretty sure they will take over the planet like that Hitchcock movie suggests.
When I was younger I had two pet parakeets that terrified me! They were escape artists and we had to use twist ties to close their food doors shut. When I forgot I would come home from school to find them flying around my bedroom free “as a bird.” I hated that! i felt my life was threatened. My mother, the warrior queen she is, would catch them in her hands and put them back in their cage. I could never do that.
Could I?
Regardless I present to you another (although this time extremely larger) painting of birds. I wonder if people look at my paintings and think that I am horrible and use watercolors in the complete wrong way.
I’m okay with that. As the child in me says, “But that’s how I want it to look!”
Nothing is more annoying than when people post on facebook, twitter, or their blog about how AMAZING the weather is. It’s annoying for a couple reasons.
1. Weather is boring. True fact; it’s exactly what you talk about when you don’t know what else to talk about. It’s right up there with what you ate for lunch. Snooze.
2. Sharing your weather related experiences is really just a cover for your will to tell people that you got out into the world and experienced something that everyone else didn’t. Bragger.
Now that I got that out of my system….Have you been outside lately? Oh…my….goodness is October the best month ever or what? There’s the changing leaves, the cooler temps…the sunny gorgeous days like walking through a scene from a Hallmark movie…only to be followed by the gray gloomy wind gusting days out of a Time Burton movie. Both equally worth sharing about.
Earlier this week I took a walk and I felt like I was in a snow globe of perfect-ville-mc-gloriousness with all the huge walnut trees turning a sunny yellow and blowing around like a ticker-tape parade.
The next day it was dreary. The wind died, the sun hid, the temperature took a nose dive…It was perfect for staying in and finishing a book and a painting. If that’s not the best week ever I don’t know what is.
At the library I picked up a book with a catchy title, Who Cooked the Last Supper; the Woman’s History of the World by Rosalind Miles. Recently, a paragraph jumped out and pulled me to my studio to paint;
The extraordinary continuity of women’s work from country to country and age to age, is one of the reasons for its invisibility; the sight of a woman nursing a baby, stirring a cook-pot or cleaning a floor is as natural as the air we breathe , and like the air it attracted no scientific analysis before the modern period. While there was work to be done, women did it, and behind the vivid foreground activities of popes and kings, wars and discoveries, tyranny and defeat, working women wove the real fabric of the kind of history that has yet to receive its due.
That paragraph reminds me history being made every day. People fight and survive (or die) in conditions I never knew existed. Thank goodness there are writers who will tell these stories.
I started weaving “strips” of paint together. I love textiles and fabrics. I love the idea that there is always a story behind every person and the things they make or do are part of a bigger picture.
Here’s the final result. Not often will I start and finish a painting of this size in a weekend (and I’m sure I’ll touch it up here and there) but something about that paragraph pushed me through.
Sunset; digital collage sheet by Lauren Alexander on Etsy
You know who you are. You walk into a garage sale and see a chair with three legs and shredded upholstery and think, “SCORE, I can’t believe they are selling this future shabby chic vintage ottoman!”
Foxy; digital collage sheet by Lauren Alexander
Yes you, who saves your wrapping paper, toilet rolls, and/or pine cones. Or maybe you just stroll through Pinterest marking amazing projects you never thought of because you don’t re-envision everything you see as a handy new paper towel holder. But someone does….
Today is your day! You are a visionary, and I applaud your talent.
You may or may not know it but over a period of about 5 years I made hundreds of small trading card sized paintings. Each of those paintings were sold, some were made into prints, and some just evaporated. Most of them were pretty cool though and I think they deserve a second life…
I will get to the point. All of my “old” small paintings are being re-born as a supply for your never-ending creative drive. I am making digital collage sheets for yo
ur downloading pleasure. There is no limit to the possibilities of what you can do with them, but then I don’t have to tell you that.
Right now I have 6 different collage sheets of my small original paintings. Each sheet has different designs from the other. So it’s best to collect all of them. Better get craftin’!
Which One Are You; Original watercolor painting by Lauren Alexander on Etsy
In March I traveled to New York City. I was lucky to stay with someone who took in a stranger and helped me navigate the high-pressure subway system. On one of our long rides from midtown to 170-something street we both stared up at an advertisement.
The person, a woman, a professional, and single Manhattan-ite whom I learned a lot from and admire to this day asked me a question that I never got out of my mind.
We were staring at a sign that displayed a row of models posing in lively happy ways in pretty bright colored dresses. I have no idea what the ad was for…hopefully dresses but god knows it could be for pest repellant or some unrelated thing.
“Which one are you?” she asked making conversation.
Looking at the row of ladies all in different dresses I knew exactly which ones I wasn’t. I was not the flowy flirty blue blonde….or the sassy strapless giggle box.
I told her I was the one in the black dress. “But if the dress were longer.” I must have sounded like someone from the “compound” in Utah with that qualification but to be honest I didn’t see myself as any of those ladies.
Her response was priceless, “With your legs? Oh puh-leeze.”
I love this woman.
-Emma Goldman
For Mother’s day I picked out some roses from the supermarket for my mother. When I brought them to her she commented that she really loves bright colored roses and prefers them to the standard red she usually receives. I was not humoring her when I agreed with the same preference. My favorite roses are the light pink ones that were in my wedding bouquet. Roses are inescapably beautiful. They have a complicated shape and when they smell good they hypnotize.
The colorful roses I painted above were inspired by a picture I took of those mother’s day roses. This is the second painting I have done larger as 9″x12″. It’s a little different than what I normally do. My husband’s quote upon seeing it, “I know what this painting needs….put a bird on it!”
He can always make me smile.
Updated to add you can purchase a print of this painting here.
Hi again!
It’s me, Lauren. Sorry I’ve been a little blogless lately. I’ve just been painting my little heart out and you know, working a full time job and trying to be a good parent. Other than that…I’ve been watching a whole lot of Mary Tyler Moore on dvd. I know, it’s a little random.
But it’s hilarious and beautiful and inspiring also, Mary Tyler Moore that is. She’s got spunk you know. (Go ahead….say you hate spunk!)
Well, I hope you’re doing okay. Thanks for reading and let me know which of those paintings you like the most up there. I’ve been going in all different directions and love to hear your feedback.
Till next time 
Lauren
This is the latest thing I painted and the first thing that I finished in 2012. It felt really good marking the back with the first day of the new year. This picture came about after a trip to a history museum that focuses on the evolution of the suburban life. I rode there in a minivan with another family and as we drove to the museum we stopped and called out to some horses that were by the road. Normally I wouldn’t think to stop a car and try to talk to some horses. They don’t talk back after all and if they did, what would I say to a horse?
Anyway the whole thing was surreal to me. Visiting an entire exhibit detailing the takeover of American Indian territory and the systematic separation of races. It’s a complicated history. I started to see my personal history differently. I think I see my choices from a broader angle. I don’t’ know if that will reflect in the kind of paintings I make or drawings I start with. But I know it will reflect in the choices I make in my life from this point on.
Oh – I called this painting Pastoral. It was a word that kept running through my head the whole time I was working on it (and this one took a while to come out). I read up on it and realized that in literature it is used to describe a complex idea in much simpler terms. I think I’ll borrow that meaning for my painting.
