Cardinals

These are details of a fairly large commission consisting of three wooden panels, each 24" square. I am having the worst time trying to photograph the entire thing; its subtle colors and the shifting sheen of the wood seem to confound my camera. I'll give it another shot this afternoon (if you'll pardon the pun), and meanwhile, here are the two birds I painted into the piece. 

Princess Crow in Her Parlor

The Princess at Home in Her Parlor, two 6"x6" panels with collage, oil paint, colored pencil, wax medium.
CLICK TO ENLARGE if you please. She loses a lot of detail at blog-friendly size.

On Monday when I took the trash out, I found a small bit of spangled ribbon on the ground, and thought that it looked like a collar or necklace for one of my creatures. And here's the creature, finished last night, still drying on the still life table in my studio.

I had already taken these two wooden panels -- small ones, 6" square and 1.5" deep -- and used wax to collage some interestingly patterned tissue paper onto them. The pattern is very wallpaper-like, and very red. And then I had the drawings I'd already done of the young crow I once rescued from entrapment in a deep basement window well.

I flipped the drawing and copied it onto one of the panels, then picked up a black wax-lead pencil and began drawing twigs, a nest, a moon. Layers of translucent wax/paint gave everything color, and I allowed the "wallpaper" to peek through, because after all the sky is a living room for our young Princess. Some of the pattern served as remnants of foliage on the tree.

The necklace had to go on carefully, because if I covered it in paint by accident I'd never get that off. A thick layer of translucent wax, a few slippery adjustments, a few strokes of black to soften the edge, and STOP NOW YOU FOOL, IT'S DONE.

Still, I needed a moon: Something silver, with a subtle texture, easily collaged into place, shiny enough to complement the crow's necklace but not so attention-grabbing that it stole the show.

Nothing I had in the studio would do.

So I put my shoes on and went down to the street, in the dark, looking for a discarded gum wrapper in the litter. That's what the moon in this piece is made of.

This Painting is Galloping Away

This is Black Mare in Summer, one of my personal favorite canvases. Based on a snapshot I took of my horse, it's made of layers of oil paint and wax, and measures 40" h x 30" w.

And I'm putting it in the Live Art Auction at Schmidt Artists Lofts on April 25th.

This may surprise those of you who read my recent post critical of charity benefit art auctions. I'm so burned out on those that I almost deleted the email about this auction without even reading it. 

Glad I didn't. This auction is put on by a group of people who want to support and promote the artists while providing a fun time for everyone.

How rare is such an event?

I have never seen one like it before. I have been asked to give countless times. This is the first time I have ever been given an opportunity to sell my work in an auction.

So here I am, sending one of my own very favorite paintings to this auction. Retail, this is a twelve-hundred-dollar canvas. My reserve on it at auction is just four hundred fifty. It could go for that; that's the gamble I'm taking. If you love it, and you want it, here's your chance.

Flying on Half-Finished Wings

Night Hawk, salvaged objects and materials with polymer clay, oil paint and wax.
Tracie Thompson, 12.5" h x 8" w x 5.25" d

I hope you'll click this photo to enlarge it; the pared-down-for-fast-loading blog version loses so much. 

This was finished last night, and in a sense it was 5 years in the making: that's how long I've had the main piece, which was once part of a wooden planter but which, when I found it, was debris along the tracks in Robbinsdale. I took home several of these slats, and have now used all but one.

The "2437" piece, I picked up in a parking lot on Ford Parkway about 3 years ago. It was night, and I had a fever, but I was out walking anyway. I recall that I had a reason for that, but not what it was.

Originally the plan was to truly finish the bird's wings. There were going to be more feathers and I thought I'd paint them black. Yet the longer I worked, the less I wanted to do that, and the more I liked the feeling of the wings half-constructed yet still somehow working: It felt like life as I know it, and so it stayed.

This piece is available, $350. 

Beyond "Yes" or "No" to Charity Auction Requests?

Today, I got yet another well-intentioned request to donate my art.

Once the initial flash of irritation passed, I had to acknowledge that this charity auction trend, and the damage it does to artists, is in large part our own fault.

Wait, what?

This pretty little landscape in oil on a wood panel, 9 x 12" sold in a silent auction for $35. Heartbreaking for me as the artist. It was the Last Straw for me and silent auctions; I never have or will put art in another one.

No, I mean it. We artists have helped create this monster. We've been complicit in this scenario in which, if you want original art, you stand a good chance of snagging it at 50% off retail just by waiting for the annual charity auction -- so why get it from the gallery, or directly from the artist? We've allowed the perceived worth of all our work to be driven downward by every piece that goes for 20% of its value on a "silent auction" table.

Most artists understand all this. Most of us (myself included) still donate to a cause or two each year, simply because we believe in and support it. Most of us complain to each other about the endless stream of donation requests. Then we say yes or no to the next one, and the next, and the next, and complain some more. We talk to each other about this problem all the time.

What if we started talking to the people who ask us?

Today, I did. My reply is below. It's a drop in a vast ocean, it will likely go unheeded, but it sure did make me feel better. Anyone else who thinks it will make them feel better is welcome to adapt it for their own use.

_________

Hello, [Donation Requester].

Thank you for contacting me. Like most artists, I do work with a few charitable causes each year, and have done so for a very long time. And, like a great many artists who have donated for years, I am having more and more trouble continuing to do this under the current operating model.

To be clear, I am not necessarily saying no. I am inviting the leadership at [Charitable Organization] to consider having an honest discussion with the arts community about the trend of charity art auctions, why they are almost always a bad business move for the artists involved, and what can be done so that artists can continue supporting causes we care about without undercutting our own livelihood. These auctions, especially because there are now so many of them, are actively harming artists. Very, very few of the organizations who ask us to donate understand this. I believe that if they did, the fundraising model would change in many ways.

If you'd care to learn more, I can put your organization in touch with resources such as [Local Arts Group], to help come up with better ideas for fundraising that, if it doesn't help the artists, at least doesn't hurt us.

Thank you so much for your consideration,

Tracie Thompson

Blue and Gold -- two Jays for March

Blue and Gold, 10 x 8" mixed media on cotton printmaking paper. Original sold; you can buy prints here.

These happened because a few people on Facebook voted for the Blue Jay as the next bird I ought to paint. Sounded good to me! I added forsythia for the lovely color contrast, immediately sold the first one, and then created a smaller second piece that same night.

Blue and Gold 2, 5 x 7" mixed media on cotton printmaking paper, available at $69, or buy prints here.

So now there are two, and they're making me happy, what with all the snow still on the ground around here. They're perfect greeting-card format images, too, so those will be coming soon to an Art Crawl (and a local retailer) near you. I will make two more Blue Jays and then it's on to the next bird, but which one?

Robins? Cardinals (which I've avoided because it seems like EVERYONE does cardinals)? Goldfinches? I don't even know. I'll have to have another round of voting.

"Who let in the riffraff?"

This is Jasmine, who knows she's upper crust and is quite selective about the company she keeps.

The source photo had her on a cream-colored sofa, which seemed visually not strong enough to hold up against her bright black coat, and in any case not expressive enough of this particular cat's bold character.  So I kept the basic shape, but made it more luxurious and bright, and gave our kitty some jewelry while I was at it.

Did Not Go as Planned

When you make art, it's common for the thing to miss that left turn at Albuquerque -- and take you somewhere you didn't know you were going.

Sometimes, that's a disaster. Sometimes it's not. It's what happened here ...

Kings of the Goldenrod City, set of three oil paintings on canvas, each 20 x 20"

First of all, these were supposed to be abstract, and they were supposed to be a continuation of my Cracked Concrete series, and there were supposed to be four of them.

If you look closely, you'll see the cracked concrete pattern in the lower parts, peeking through. It also gave me the basic division of space that I used between the lighter "ground" and the red "sky" areas. But once I got those lines and divisions in place, it all just stalled. Totally. These canvases sulked on the wall of my studio for something like six months, and might be there still if I hadn't had a DEADLINE OMG DEADLINE looming.

The first thing I did was recognize that the red paint I had already applied -- which up until then was a diseased patchwork of blotches -- had been a real mistake. I decided, if I was going to make a mistake, I ought to make a BIG MISTAKE, and I put a ton more red in.

Those odd, gourd-like "houses" are based on dry goldenrod stems I'd collected a while back. Something makes homes in these things while they grow, and then drills out, leaving neat little doors behind in the fall. I loved them, but the paintings needed something alive and in motion, and then I was playing around online and found a documentary about crows. I paused it repeatedly, took screen shots, and off I went.

By then I was running out of time, so I pulled the fourth canvas, the one I had the least idea what to do with. It'll reappear soon enough, not as part of this set but as its own thing. Not what I'd planned, but what happens.

Horse, Flowers, Owl -- Days 5 though 9

 

 Cocoa in Motion, about 3.5 x 8", for Day 5. Day 6 I chose to create something less tangible -- a new game with my own horse; Day 7, I went walking and came home with Stolen Lilacs, below.

Day 8 was probably technically Day 9, and is titled Sleepless in the Kitchen. A portrait of my little owl kitchen timer, done at *mumble* last night while I was entirely too awake.  This and the Lilacs are in the same small book, about 6.5 x 6".

Here's the Mystery Horse!

Bold Brigadier, watercolor, pencils and pastel with touches of white acrylic, on cotton rag paper. I used a deeper tan instead of my usual Rives BFK, because I felt this horse would look best on a slightly darker ground -- the better to make that beautiful blaze stand out. He may be the only one for whom I chose to leave the backdrop blank.  Oh, and there is a lot of violet, blue, brown/red, and even touches of green in the big black stallion. 

 

Center photo above, the portrait in progress. This was with the first layers of carbon pencil and watercolor. Last, my reference photo. Brigadier is no longer with us, sadly, and while I loved his sweet expression here, the photo ... you really can't see a lot of detail, and if you look at his ears you'll notice the camera distortion that made one of them much too large. I corrected that right away. The other thing I altered, you can't even tell: I made his neck thicker and more arched than it actually is in the photo. 

Yes, I know it looks exactly the same. But in order to get it to look exactly the same, I had to change it. I think it was another perspective/distortion problem, but when I drew it accurately to the photo it looked far too skinny. This kind of thing is pretty common when translating photos into art; the thing that looks fine in a photo can look very wrong as a drawing or painting. So artists learn not to let the photo be a tyrant, and to trust ourselves instead. 

Sir Lancelot, Pony the 24th

Lance suddenly left this world a few days ago, on the very night I was set to begin his portrait. I had been planning, really, to get out to the barn on a sunny afternoon (if we could get one where it wasn't also 0 degrees out, lately) and take some good photos of him ... and then, just like that, he was gone.

I didn't know Lance and I wish I had. By all accounts he was technically, in the put-a-monetary-value-on-him-for-insurance sense, not at all an unusual or remarkable horse. Not a champion show horse, or of spectacular breeding, or any of that. What he was, was much better: he was the horse who helped people learn to ride, or learn to ride again. The patient, kind-hearted guy you could put anyone on for lessons or therapy, the one who everyone loved. He was worth more than truckloads of ribbons or trophies.

Here's to Lancelot, and all the other very remarkable, unremarkable horses out there.

Clydesdale on the Easel

His Majesty's Nose Itches

 This is a big canvas -- 40 x 30"-- not one of the Christmas Ponies, though certainly adorable enough. Oil paint, wax medium, and a lot of solvent to create the fun washes of color in the background. I just finished it, like half an hour ago, and at the top of his leg you can see the glare of very wet paint! Update 1/6: Now that he's dry I have a better photo, taken at Frameworks Gallery where he'll be hanging for the month. I've got a couple progress shots and the source photo for this, so I thought I'd share.

My source photo, above. This is a big friendly Clydesdale who is out in the pasture with my Twilight, and makes her look like a petite little thing. He is HUGE. Thankfully, he is also a sweet, gentle goofball. I find him really attractive as an art subject, so I started snapping photos and caught this great one when he had an itchy nose.

My original drawing on the canvas, done in thin sienna paint. You can see how I'm already thinking about light and shadow as I start.

Earlier today. This is what my friend Jennifer Lowery calls "dangerously close to done." Lots of elements I love love love, but not finished, and it would be SO EASY to kill the painting at this point by doing too much more to it. A painting only needs so much work, and no more; the amount of work will be different for each painting, and the trick is to know 1. when to stop and 2. what to do if you realize you missed #1.

Another of the Crow Series, Sold

292, found sign, salvaged metal, oil paint, wax medium, colored pencil.  8 x 10".

This is the piece I made specifically for the Soap Factory's annual $99 Sale. I had fun with the idea that the crow this time had just flown off, leaving a couple feathers in its wake.

The feathers are cut from salvaged aluminum sheeting, and painted with a wax medium that gives them a realistic-looking texture. I have a great time with these, and will be making more.

Still living less safely: I just finished a submission disk for a show opportunity. I might or might not make the cut, but there's only one way to find out.

Done! Now I can make that BLT.

In It Together, 10 x 10" oil on canvas, $275

Apparently, as a still life painter, I'm nocturnal: this was finished around 2:45 this morning.

It has about a dozen titles. I'm only telling you one of them because I want to see what people come up with on their own for what it could mean and what might be happening in the little narrative, here. Everyone's answer will be right; that's what I love about these little paintings.

Here's where I have to credit my inspiration: this painting would never have happened if I weren't friends with Jennifer Lowery. <3

This does get my "living less safely" classification, mainly because it's never "safe" to make art. But I was also challenging myself. Those background greens and violets? All looked like mud on my palette. And I think painting deep red objects is about the trickiest thing there is. It's even harder than getting landscape-greens to work, and that's saying something. I knew that, and chose to paint tomatoes anyway.

So I'm happy. And drinking a lot of coffee.

Day Four, outside

Cattails, 6 x 12" oil on canvas, at Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary today. $145

 This was today at Derek Davis' class. It rained on us for a while, but we were undaunted.

Making art rarely if ever feels "safe" to me. Particularly if I'm making art of a kind I don't usually make, such as a painting of reflections on water. So this was today's first challenge, and the second one will be going back out to meet Derek and the Outdoor Painters of Minnesota at Murphy's Landing (I've gotta Google it; I have no idea where this is) and go for round two.

Across from Dayton's Bluff

Evening Across Dayton's Bluff, study, 10 x 8" oil on canvas board.

This got started last Friday evening while I was out with my friend, Tom Winterstein, hunting for things to paint (the usual problem there is that you find too much, not too little). I loved the way the evening sunlight was hitting the nearby overpass and the path closer to my feet, and then making a beautiful contrast with the violet shadows on the buildings downtown.

We lost our light completely before we could finish, but the thing about standing there and painting a while is that it fixes a lot of things in your memory that you'd otherwise forget.

If you don't have a travel sketchbook, this is a reason to get one, even if you are sure you can't draw. Anything you do draw, no matter how poorly or cartoonishly, you'll remember with a clarity that your camera can't offer. Something about the process makes connections that last.

Insomnia

And My Shadow, 6 x 12" oil on canvas.

I'm not sure if I was painting because I couldn't sleep, or if I couldn't sleep because I was painting, but whichever -- this was the result. I am less-than-energetic today as a consequence, but happy I started when I did, since the cute little flower was on its way out by morning.

Update: Sold.

Old Depot Detail, St. Paul

Depot Detail, 7 x 5" oil on canvas board, at Derek Davis' painting class 6/24

So this is What I Did in School Today. I learned a lot watching Derek mix the colors for this building, and realizing that although it is red brick, the actual color, in today's light at least, was much more ... reddish-violet, with hefty amounts of pink.

I have no idea what this small structure is, on the side of the building, other than "artist bait." If anyone can tell, I'd be interested in knowing. It's the old train depot at Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary. I stood literally in the shadow of the Kellogg overpass to paint it.

Computer Bugs (and traffic jams) for Art Crawl

 

These are made of salvaged electronic components -- transistors, resistors and fuses, oh my -- and polymer clay. All are quite small, and most are priced around $12 to $18. They'll be available at Saint Paul Art Crawl THIS WEEKEND, as well as more at Tarnish & Gold Gallery in NE Minneapolis.

 

I even made a  Trojan Horse!

If you're coming out from Minneapolis, be aware that I 94 Eastbound will be CLOSED from Friday night through Monday morning! Closure is from 35 W to 280, so be sure to find a detour if you'll need one.

Blue Pony, found objects, polymer clay, oil paint and wax medium, 12 x 12"

I lost some sleep creating this one. Kind of a lot of sleep in fact.

What happened was, I mistook one deadline for another and ended up with something like 72 hours to come up with two entirely new works. Oops!

This and the Red Bird are the result of that deadline. I had to simply make things; there was no time to second-guess myself. Though I hope not to pull almost-all-nighters again any time soon, I can't say I'm sorry I did it this time. 

What I'm loving are the various interpretations I'm hearing from people. Everything from "Aztec" to "Pony Express." I have my own associations with the piece, but I'm leaving those unsaid for the moment.

The Blue Pony and Red Bird are part of the This Old Mouse show at Tarnish & Gold Gallery in NE Minneapolis, starting tomorrow night at 7 p.m.; if you come out, I'll see you there.