Fente: Fragility in the Face of Time Part II

This is the second series on the idea of "fragility and decay". 

 I have had a variety of responses to them.   Most abstracts evoke images for us , that's just how our brain is wired. 

  I won't tell you the comments , as it makes it harder for you to have your own interpretation.   This is why artists don't always title their work.   Its not for a lack of imagination.

  The materials are epoxy, plaster, oil pastels, acrylic and ink. 

Technique mixte sur papier, 10x29 cm. 

Femme: Fragility in the Face of Time

I did this series by collecting bits of my degrading studio wall that is being eaten by moisture.  

 Fuzz and flakes of interesting colors and shapes were falling to the floor.  In fact they still are as it is a major project to fix it. 

 It is like watching a changing moonscape to watch my studio wall.

So related to my interest in the "fente", crack, or opening came this series based on what I like to call "fragility in the face of time".   

Looking closer, I kept seeing a woman emerging from my manipulation of flakes and pieces , thus the title.

These textured works on paper are composed of pieces plaster, epoxy, pastels, inks, and acrylics .

Femme, Technique mixte sur papier, 8x27 cm.

Art is experimentation

I don't know whether to tell this to you straight or make up a story about how this sequence evolved.  But if anything, art is experimentation and art school can be the ruin of the artist: two lessons learned.

So here's the story.  The first picture here is a painting I did.  Perhaps it is sort of "dark",  the image emerged as woman holding out something.  It kind of happened that way.

  Someone who saw this little painting suggested the song " Ode to Billie Joe", a ballad written in the 60's by Bobby Gentry in which a woman throws her baby off a bridge.  Sorry that wasn't on my mind when I painted it.  

At the time I did this I was taking a class at the Naive art museum here in Nice (Musee d'art naif) and the teacher took the painting from me and turned it upside down.  

This below is the original painting turned upside-down. 

"Well", said this fanciful instructor, "I see a dog!   I see a big afghan hound"... and everyone else in the class saw it too.  "Why don't you take that a bit further and do a series for me". 

 Now this is akin to subversion from an art teacher but I didn't think anything of it at the time.  I hadn't wanted a series of dogs but what the heck!  So I went home and obediently did two more "dogs" until I caught myself in a lie and couldn't go on, even to please her. 

 Still, these portraits have a certain irony that I like…. so now I enjoy them.

 This is the dog's master on the neckline, under the thrall of his huge hound….

These works are done on oil paper using my technique of inks with "resist" that…. as I say….I am sure I can claim as my own discovery. 

Series: Cosmos

This series, which I call "Cosmos" is an exploration and célébration of life:   " Les cellulose qui se multiplient,  les fruits qui murissent, les planètes qui tournaient…mouvement et changement inhérent a toute vie. " 

 That is what I have in my exhibition notes and I still stand by it. 

 These were done with the techniques of "monotype" printing on a sort of transparent felt that I found sold in the commercial sector.  These have to be backed with white paper to see the prints and that is how I showed them. 

Acrylique sur textile végétale 27x42cm

Celebration of the vibration of life: an allusion to the movement and change inherent in all of life. 

Fente: Series of eight

I call this sequence: Fente.  In french this means" a chink, a slit, a fissure, a cleft".   I have always been interested in the hidden, the secret, the unknown, behind the closed door... etc.  

When I take a hike in the mountains, I feel I want to explore the little holes in the rocks and I envision something living in there….. which is often the case.  In my garden,  everything is someone's home.  

Again I am using a resistant material, inks and textures like sand and the walls of my studio (yes, you heard right!) in the paintings. I wanted to create texture here.   Inks and acrylic have been used for a "nacre" effect, close to nature.

technique mixte sur papier, 13x24cm.

Figurative oils

I have gone through many stages of experimenting with oil paints which I prefer over acrylics.    Here is a sampling of some of my early figurative work.  When I talk of a sketch, it usually means that I did the painting in a matter of minutes ( under an hour) …  mostly with a palette knife. 

Oil on Canvas, sold

Oil on canvas

Oil on canvas, painted over

Oil on canvas, Sold

Oil on oil paper, sold

Palette knife sketch on oil paper

Oil sketch on oil paper

Oil sketch on masonite

Oil sketch on oil paper

Oil sketch on oil paper

Oil on wood

Collection Notes

If I am going to do this blog, I want to start with at least a little logic.  
So I will start off with the collection notes to the exhibition I did in 2009 at Tourette Sur Loup at Le Chateau.  Since that time, I have left painting and taken up engraving to the exclusion of every other art form save photography.    

But reading over this synopsis I did with a friend, I think it largely holds true for me now even though one could say I have gone through a long fallow period since then.  I would question "the exciting , emerging creator" bit.  That's a bit rich.  

But….. still, once an artist always an artist, I believe .   

I will get back to the first collections on the theme of "intimacy" later on in the blog.  

Mary PAYNE

Artiste, Plasticienne

The patina of an old wall, the gash in the trunk of a tree, the color of a dove’s wing…  these are some of the sources that inspire the art of Mary Payne.   

From these impressions, the artist creates pieces that vary from small, sometimes sensual images in nuanced, delicate tones to bold, colorful, even chaotic expressions. Using ancient motifs as a point of departure, Mary Payne paints from the circle, the crevasse, the almond, the “Y” for example, all elemental forms found in nature, which have the power to inspire us directly.   

In the collection are works based on textural interest, as in the "Ciacatrice" series, a multilayered work, which developed from the formation of rifts in the paper as the artist worked the material. These scars evoke the concept of aging and it's potential for beauty and force.  And in this first series, we see the idea of the secret, hidden place, as a metaphor for human connection and the struggle to be revealed to one another.

In the new collection of works on canvas, the artist departs from the theme of intimacy found in the small format pieces.   With the larger works echoing "Abstract Expressionism" of the anti- figurative school of New York, we see a purer form of abstraction.  Many of the large works play on the tension between control and its loss.  The artist feels that true abstraction is the artist getting out of the way and waiting for" an honest moment to arrive".   Always in all the work shown by Ms Payne there is an almost musical sense of composition, harmony and resolution.  Always there is attention to color as a driving force.   

For this artist, to create is to go to an unknown domain of new sensations, nuances and unforeseen movements.  Out of this universe, come her revelations of, the ephemeral, the fragile, and the mysterious.   We invite you to plunge into her world  and to discover an exciting, emerging creator. 

 

  

"The Others": mixed media and ink on paper

                            

                          

 Out of a recent request to see my work, I have decided to resurrect my art blog that really never took off from its inception.   I intend to put my own pieces up first but then if I like it,  I will start featuring other works.  

To begin…. in no particular order,   is a series I did which was inspired by a photo of a cave painting.   It conjures up "the others"….the other species,  the other life forms, the others that we miss every day because we are so focused on our own species and life. 

 The series,  on Canson paper, uses a modern material that I found to form the white surfaces and a variety of inks applied over the white.  The white once put down on the paper, resists color.  I have never seen this technique used.  Maybe I invented it!