Posts tagged ‘original’
Giving Thanks - Original painting 8x10 by Lauren Alexander
With so much to be thankful for, it’s hard to know where to start. But I’ll try. Coffee, sunrises, puff pastry, sweatpants…the list goes on.
Along with wishing you a very merry Thanksgiving I want to share my newest painting. Sorry but it is a re-run! But only for the better. Musicians do it all the time….take old songs and make them new again. So why can’t I? Yesterday I took an old painting idea and made it new and true to how I like to paint today. Click here to see the old version.
I do hope you all are enjoying some good food and surviving your families with grace and pie. Happy Thanksgiving!
Part of the great studio clean up I embraced the other day uncovered all my matted original paintings from my first solo trip to New York City over the summer. Uncovering them brought back all my warm fuzzy feelings for wandering the streets for world renowned art galleries, stuffing my face with food made by angels in heaven, and of course painting in my 10 foot by 10 foot cell, er…pod…I mean hotel room.
The paintings are gradually getting listed for sale in my Etsy store. And I’m completely torn about that. I am not sure I want to sell them. But I want them to be “out there” so up they go slowly but surely.
What are you doing today? I hope your weather is pleasant and you’re enjoying something good…tell me about it!
Lace; original watercolor painting 4x6 by Lauren Alexander on Etsy
This painting, Lace, got it’s name from my fantastic guess work. While walking in Iowa (before the bird attack) I commented to my dad how the roads were totally lined with beautiful snow-flake looking flowers. I guessed that they were called Queen Anne’s Lace – Dad said he had no clue. I looked it up when I got home and yes, I was right, it was in fact named that. I’m a useless information genius! This painting celebrates my victory. I think the blues are quite soothing, no?
Divination; original watercolor 4x6 by Lauren Alexander on Etsy
At first glance you might see a yellow fish spitting some kind of purple shape but really when I painted Divination I had a snail shape in mind. When I got started the purple brush stroke in the white shape on the lower left reminded me of a snail or slug head. I did all the other stuff around that particular part – sort of an “automatic painting” process or what I like to call paint-doodling. When I looked up snails on wikipedia it said snails are often linked to divination – a word I didn’t know and was pleased to read this: “divination is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of a standardized process or ritual.” I suppose painting is my divination.
Crystalline; original watercolor 4x6 by Lauren Alexander on Etsy
Finally, Crystalline, is my new favorite painting. It’s all about the colors. I’d say this painting is a reflection of my interest in a new sculpture I was visiting in my art classroom at the Nelson Atkins Museum; Roxy Paine’s Ferment. It’s a silver tree – everyone refers to it as that. “It’s a tree that is not a tree,” we tell our students. This painting is Roxy meets Diebenkorn (see this post) mixed with my uncontrollable impulse to decorate. I wanted to create shapes that are sections of beautiful layers of pigment and meld it with something natural and pretty. I want to live in that icy blue triangle just below the branch. Looks nice in cool on this hot summer day.
It’s been a work week for me. The kind when you have to go somewhere and punch a clock, get a million messy art supplies out, make things, wait forever to eat lunch, run around like a crazy person, and speak nonsensical jabber about the life and times of 5 year olds. So during a week of such nonsense it makes perfect sense that I would paint another picture of not really anything. It’s non-objective, I tell my husband. But there’s fish in it…he thinks…yes, there are fish in there…and that’s why I called it Tank. So maybe it’s abstract…I don’t know – not sure I want to get hung up on such grown up terminology. Look at the pretty colors…look at the diagonal composition….doesn’t it just excite your eyeballs to no end? Me too.
