CMAppleton

From the Painting Pile

I found this in my painting pile of rejects. I needed something to take to the gallery that wasn't framed. Usually when I like something I frame it so I thought I would have to de-frame something. Instead I decided to go through the stack (the rejects, Jackie went through these stacks with me once and pulled something out that later won two top awards!) I remember not liking this painting, two models, I don't usually like pairs, one or three work for me but even numbers – the symmetry is disturbing. But I decided I rather like some things about this painting so it's in the gallery now.
It's interesting to look at discarded paintings and drawings. I recently went through some sketchbooks and saw that some drawings that I once thought were ok, actually were really amateurish, awful, embarrassing. The learning curve does not go continually up, it goes up and down and around and gets thrown off course by life events and by laziness. I am puzzled why I don't just toss the bad stuff. (Maybe there is always the hope that if I set things aside for long enough, they'll look better at some point.) I do a lot of experimenting, playing with materials, colors, ideas. Sometimes they are good, they turn into something, sometimes they are hideous. The process though, fooling around, being willing to waste a lot of paint, paper, canvas, to break rules, is one I love and highly recommend. For me, so much of the satisfaction of being an artist is in the discovery – "What if I did this?" The end result may not be quite as many framed paintings, but I do have fun – and an enormous collection of art supplies.

Happy Holidays, Happy 2007

This is the Christmas card I created but then didn't send. I ended up putting it aside and doing the usual line drawing of Christmas stuff, this year the theme attempted to represent all aspects of the holiday season – the traditional Christian religious Christmas, Hannukkah, Kwanzaa, and even a few of the Islamic traditions celebrated at this time of year, and also of course the marketing extravaganza. It also included my usual personal stuff, things I had around the house, my dogs, my family, my interests, etc. The card shown above was intended, also, to represent all aspects of the holiday, but it was getting a little more irreverent than I finally wanted. Or maybe as I continued to work on it and time went by I was becoming more and more affected (infected?) by the holiday spirit and started feeling like it was a little nasty for the season. But now I look at it and kind of like it, so maybe I'll finish it up and use it next year.