There is a story to these scissors. It is about how I love tools and figured out a way to keep them, in spite of letting them go. Loving tools can be a good thing or a bad thing. When I left my home in Washington, I was determined to get rid of everything that was not absolutely essential. My new chapter in life had to be bare bones. I was successful. My wonderful friends helped me de-stash. If you have never done it, it is hard. They did a big 2 day garage sale for me while I left the premises for those days. That was a good plan. I did not want to mess things up. I know I would have cried and acted weird so they took over.
Here are just a few of the things they sold for me.
So how does a painting evolve from this? I took pictures before I left the house and even though they are not posted here, there were two photos that stood out. One was where I laid out all my hammers, every kind of hammer you could think of. The other was I laid out a shot of all the types of scissors that were in the sale. I drew the hammers on my sketch pad with walnut ink. Then I drew the scissors with a black pen on white watercolor paper, thinking maybe it would be a good coloring book page.
So what I did was paint these 2 sketches: hammers and scissors became patterns for clothing. aka wall art. I underpainted the scissors drawing with inks and then painted several layers over that when it was very dry. First I used blues and purples for the background, (cobalt blue and violet) and then several layers of transparent yellows and golds for the scissors. My favorite orange was the Maimeri “orange lake” which is a gorgeous and very transparent color. I layered a little Maimeri gouache white over the ribbon.
So here’s the point to this story. …You never lose things in life. They are in your memory, your heart. That’s what this making art stuff is all about. You make an effort to try to enjoy what’s in front of you before it disappears because you know you will disappear too. If you leave a little art behind, maybe somebody will get a chance to enjoy what you did too. amen
Painting Mexico 