Father-Daughter Paint Night

The oil painting above is 4x5 feet and was painted in 3 hours. Normally a painting this size would take me months.

It starts with a quick home cooked meal. Crab cakes and a simple salad. I open a bottle of wine and listen to the gurgle of the first fast pour. Dad cracks the pop of a cold PBR and takes a satisfying sip. There’s excitement in the air because tonight the two of us are going to create a painting. It a giant white canvas--I mean this thing is big. It rests directly on the floor and leans against the wall. No easel could support it. I turn The Stones up a little louder on the stereo while dad adjusts the lighting. The room is now very bright and it’s late and dark outside. We’ve done this a few times before. Sometimes we start with a photograph, the painting above we call Elk Creek. It’s on property our family owns in the mountains of North Carolina. The photo was taken in early fall just as the leaves were really starting to change. Or sometimes we’ll create something totally abstract--just because it’s fun to sling paint and see what happens.

There aren’t any real rules. Dad will sketch out the horizon line. I’ll squirt some green and blue paint onto my palette. Pick out a paintbrush and GO! It’s fast and furious. We paint like crazy people. The music is loud, really loud. No close neighbors out in Hillsborough to complain. I’ll create leaves on a tree that hasn’t been painted yet while dad fills in the deep rust color of the ground. After about an hour it’s starting to take form. It takes that long just to get paint over most of the large canvas. We’ll step back ten feet to get a good view of our progress. Make some suggestions, grab another beer, change the CD and hit it hard again. About two hours into it I’m covered in paint. All I can smell is the nutty linseed oil and the sharp note of oil paints. It’s really starting to take shape and I’m having a hell of a lot of fun. Dad starts critiquing my paint application and I tell him to shut-up and work on his shading. Somehow in the midst of it all, a random blob of yellow ended up in the creek. Neither of us know where it came from, probably a glob of yellow paint intended to be a leaf but fell onto the blue of the water. We decide that we love it and leave it to be. Sometimes art creates itself and you just get to be a part of it all. After 3 hours neither of us can believe how incredible our painting looks. Maybe it’s the booze, maybe we’re both high from all the paint fumes. But each time I’m incredibly shocked at what we’ve created. I would never have been able to paint this on my own, and the same for my dad. We each bring something to the canvas that is special. My mom can usually tell who painted what, but she’s known us for our entire creative lives. Others can’t tell all at. Somehow our brushstrokes and color choices are able to work together, as different as fingerprints but all on the same hand. We’ll price our paintings out loud. “This one is definitely worth $3K easy!” “No, there’s no way I’m letting it go for less than 5.” But we’ll end up donating it to a charity auction. The one below is being sold at A Tasteful Affair this year, a benefit for the Ronald McDonald House if you’d like to have a look in person.



One day dad and I hope to have a gallery showing of all our joint paintings. We’ll wear black and sip martinis and pretend that we knew exactly what we were doing every stoke of the way.

The Art of Boredom.

When I was a kid complaining of boredom during those long lonely summer days before drivers licenses and boyfriends, my mother would say “Honey, intelligent people are never bored.” Even then—bitter from the lack of sympathy--I knew she was right.

To this day, that simple truth resonates with me during my long lonely days of solitude. Now that I work from home as a full time artist I don’t have a boss to hand me work. I don’t have focus groups to keep me on track, no co-workers to fill the social void and the most foreign, I don’t even have a reason to get dressed for the day. I--like one in six people my age--don’t work for anyone. This recession has hit everyone hard. Thankfully I have a way of supporting myself. Art has given me a means to an end. I’m probably one of the luckiest people out there. I call all the shots and I can call them while in my pj’s after I roll out of bed around noon.

Most people stare at me with jealous awe when I tell them about my typical day. While more practical people instantly say, “I could never do that! I wouldn’t get anything done.” And they are right. It takes a certain kind of personality to be able to work for yourself. You’ve got to have an inner drive that never shuts up and you have to have a desire to create, produce, market and grow. Some days I don’t feel any of those things. Some days I just want to sip my coffee and think about all the other things I could be doing, rather than doing nothing at all. And then I start to feel sad about my lack of production, which turns into melancholy, and by the time I’ve poured myself my 3rd cup of 2pm coffee the boredom and depression sets it. Here I am. 28, in my pj’s while the rest of the productive world is working making money.

“Honey, intelligent people are never bored.”

The message hits my numb brain then slowly starts to sink in. My brain starts turning, my adrenaline squirts a little creative juice into my bloodstream and I begin. I start with something fun, painting bamboo cloth napkins. I’ll finish, photograph and post them for sale. Two days later they sell and I’ll have made $60. Inspired from having created something beautiful and profitable I’ll move to something more intense, a canvas painting or a new line of dinnerware. It’s addictive, creating that is. Once you’ve started—it’s nearly impossible to shut it off. The next time I look at the clock, it’s 10pm, I’m starving and thirsty for wine. I have an entire days worth of work to show for myself and it feels so good. So rewarding. I’m excited for tomorrow and I feel good about myself. So the next time you feel stagnant or bored. Remember my mother’s words. “Honey, intelligent people are never bored.” Get off your ass and do something. You can even do it in your pajamas.

Lets Paint a Peacock Feather-On Silk

I thought I'd photo document my most recent scarf creation. Hopefully you'll be inspired to create one yourself. Painting on silk is really very easy. I taught myself by simply watching some YouTube videos while ironing laundry.

What You'll Need:

1. silk you can buy this online or at Jerry's Art-O-Rama
2. silk paint
3. A tiny paintbrush
4. Gutta Resist and little squeeze bottle with a metal hollow tip (like a mini cake decorating tip) You can get these online or at Jerry's Art Store as well.
5 A frame. My awesome boyfriend made this frame for me with pieces of scrap wood. But you can use anything that lifts and stretches your silk off the table.

Using thumbtacks securely stretch your silk across the frame. All four sides would be best, but as you can see in my picture. My silk scarf is long and thin and I'm only able to affix three sides to the frame. That's okay, as long and it's tight enough that the silk won't touch the table.



Using the Gutta Resist draw out your design. It can be a simple geometric pattern. I'm using free flowing lines to create the individual feathers that make up the Peacock feather. The resist acts like a barrier and has the consistency of liquid rubber cement. Make sure your lines are thick enough to ensure that the ink won't bleed through. The resist can be removed after the scarf is finished by dry-cleaning it. And all that will be left is the pure white silk beneath.


Pour a tiny amount of the highly concentrated silk paint into separate containers. You can use water to decrease the intensity of the ink color. But keep in mind the ink will dry much lighter than it looks when it's wet. Use your paint brush to "color in the lines." It's that simple. The resist will keep the ink from going places you don't want it too--as long as you can color in the lines.

Careful for drips! The silk acts as a wick and it only takes a tiny drop of ink to create a large area of color. Feel free to mix and blend the paint/ink however you like. These paints do a lovely job of looking like a watercolor painting and it's hard to go wrong with color combinations




Half-way though my project I decided that I didn't have enough individual "feathers" so I went back in and created more using the gutta resist. You can always add to your design. This scarf is going to have several separate painted areas. Just make sure the ink is dry before you move the silk around.


Now one section of my scarf is finished. I'm going to let it dry before I move it to work on other areas of the scarf. Still to come... setting the ink so the scarf is machine washable and the colors won't bleed.

A favorite love poem

Image by: PhotoBird

Lines

Draw a line. Write a line. There.
Stay in line, hold the line, a glance
between the lines is fine but don’t
turn corners, cross, cut in, go over
or out, between two points of no
return’s a line of flight, between
two points of view’s a line of vision.
But a line of thought is rarely
straight, an open line’s no party
line, however fine your point.
A line of fire communicates, but drop
your weapons and drop your line,
consider the shortest distance from x
to y, let x be me, let y be you.

-Martha Collins

My Esty shop

My awesome friend David set up an RSS feed of my etsy shop marywibis.etsy.com
He also created my entire website meharts.com So he's pretty much the best guy ever.