Fogged in during the last days of winter

Days of fog …

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Santa Monica has been soaked in fog for so many days I’ve lost count. I have been continuing to work on some abstracts that were influenced by my trip to Portugal. I am posting a couple here that are hanging in an office now. The larger piece took some weeks to complete. I layered paint on it to resemble the way paint is layered on walls in Los Angeles. I often see squares painted over concrete to cover graffiti. The layers start to peel after time, weathered by sun and the moist film left after fog settles in for a night.

Sun bleached tiles

The second painting, the smaller of the two, is a bit creamier, like sun bleached tile near the beach. I’m not sure exactly where I have seen this, but it may have actually been inland Mexico in Cuernavaca. I remember someone saying that Cuernavaca is a city of walls.

Walls

To me, walls represented the separateness that plagues communities. Walls keep neighbors from knowing each other, although Robert Frost wrote that “Good fences make good neighbors” in the poem Mending Wall. However, it isn’t Frost’s words, the saying is a 17th century proverb. Frost though ruminates on walls: “Before I built a wall I’d ask to know / What I was walling in or walling out / And to whom I was like to give offense.” I wrote a poem after the visit to Cuernavaca, reflecting on the walled in residents of the city and how it feels to be walled in. It was published in an online at http://www.moriapoetry.com/falin.html …

Walls as art

This work is an attempt to turn the walls I see every day into an inspiration. If you drive around Los Angeles, walls take on various meanings depending on the materials used to create the wall, how its aged and weathered, and what people have added to it.

Walling in or walling out

I had the fortunate experience to live in a neighborhood without fences for a few years. I can remember walking to school through yards. I knew all my neighbors – good or bad – they knew me, too. There was a sense of freedom when I lived without fences and could run through the neighborhood to the park, school or a friend’s house. In spite of the feeling of separateness that a wall can invoke, there are some interesting and even beautiful walls. The second painting makes me think of a beach side wall, creamy colored, but sun bleached – maybe close to a hot tub.

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Spring finally did show up

The first day of spring passed and I am flying into autumn with a trip to New Zealand and Australia. I am looking forward to seeing new places, new art, and meeting new people. Look for some new stuff when I return.

Thank you

As always, my work is for sale and you can contact me at trishfalin@gmail.com if you are interested. All work is copyrighted, and can be used under the Fair Use guidelines (not for profit). If you share this web page, let me know. Thank you for stopping by …

Grit, concrete, rainy days inspire new vision

Black iron, copper, gray, titanium white and sand

12×16 Abstract 1267

Rainy days make the city feel more like concrete: gray sky, gray buildings, gray sidewalk. The graffiti painted over haphazardly with an off white. Lines beneath are ghost writing – visible in spite of the cover. Layers of patches and paint leave a gritty surface.

Etching stars into a gritty surface

The 12×16 Abstract 1267 has layers of black and silver with black lava, black and iridescent pearl underneath the top surface of unbleached titanium, gray and black. The shapes of stars were cut into the thick wet top coat to resemble the effect of cutting wet concrete or peeling paint.

Infinite love

Working with black iron metallic paint underneath gray and titanium white, the coarse, wet metallic bleeds through. I used a rust activator to bring the rust to edges. I used a copper metallic paint through the top part of the work and a blue patina aging solution brings out a bit of blue. This painting was inspired by the colors this past

14×18 Infinite Love

week on some cloudy days. The cliffs of Santa Monica appear to rust in the rain and water takes on a sandy gray color to blend with the beach. The sky boils with charcoal, gray, and small holes where I can see a hidden blue sky of a sunny summer day. This part of the year is full of weather transitions, turning winter to spring with brief reminders of how summer feels.

Valentine’s day

The painting also expresses a concept of unconditional love. I hope you have a good Valentine’s Day. Although the day is a contrived event designed to benefit businesses selling flowers and candy, I hope it can also be a time where people express love. On a dark and stormy day, the deep interior can still be warm.

New travel plans: New Zealand and Australia

This time of year is the best time to take a trip. I am hoping to find some summer weather or maybe an early autumn. I am heading to Auckland, New Zealand March 22nd to spend a few days seeing the area. This will be my first visit to New Zealand. I will fly from New Zealand to Sydney, Australia. This will also be my first visit to Australia. I picked Sydney because I have heard there is a big art community in Sydney. My visit to Portugal inspired my new work. I hope New Zealand and Australia will also be a source of inspiration. If you have any suggestions for what to see, let me know

Thanks for stopping by…

I appreciate your feedback and have been inspired by blogs kept by everyone who has stopped by. Travel pictures and experiences shared by you inspired me to choose New Zealand and Australia for my next trip.

Copyright

All work is copyrighted by me and is for sale. If you are interested in purchasing work, you can contact me at trishfalin@gmail.com. I am still researching how to sell work online. If you have a suggestion of a site or method that is working for you, let me know.

Other works inspired by Portugal… these are cell phone photos. I didn’t get a chance to photograph these five before they were went to their new home.

20×16 Abstracts hanging in their new home

20×16 Abstracts in their new home

Bare trees under a winter sky

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Under a gray winter sky

The days feel much colder now as January is half way through. After visiting Portugal, it feels even colder here in Santa Monica. The sky seemed to become an endless gray cover and I found myself reaching for black, white and every shade between the two. My own version of 50 Shades of Gray… This painting is a black and white version of the last post which was filled with rich and warn hues of brown and gold. I also used some mediums to make the surface appear rough and worn like an old tree weathering a winter.

Drifting from bright color to the gray day

This painting took some time to develop, and then a while to dry. I have continued to experiment with black and white with a small amount of color and will post some of those works soon. While in Portugal, I went to a museum dedicated to a woman who was an abstract artist. Maria Helena Vieira da Silva grew up in Lisbon and was greatly influenced by the structures around her. If you are interested, you can read about here in Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Helena_Vieira_da_Silva. I was impressed by the museum and the people who were there working the day I came were very gracious. The museum is near the aqueduct. I have been inspired by her work and inspired by a country that dedicates a museum to a woman who was an abstract artist – a rarity.

Less is more – the impact of sparse color

I am intrigued with the impact of very little color in a work. I have been experimenting with a more structured look like da Silva. It is strange to do something so completely different than my colorful work.

Thanks for stopping by …

I appreciate everyone’s feedback … it is inspiring to hear from others and also to visit your blogs to see your travel pictures, and read about your experiences. The best part of WordPress is that I can interact with people from around the world. I am currently trying to decide where to go next, so I will be reading about your trips. My next trip is the end of March and beginning of April… I’m hoping to explore a country I haven’t seen yet.

Copyright

All work is copyrighted by me and is for sale. If you are interested in purchasing work, you can contact me at trishfalin@gmail.com. I will be working on a way to sell on the web site during the next month and plan to put something up in February.

Framing a bit of serenity

Finding some peace

The first work after returning from the funeral came out looking like spring after a hard winter. I took this painting to be framed before I took a picture of it, so I leaned it up against my car and took this shot with my phone. I chose a floating black frame … one I like to use on my work.

Painting a bit of hope

I hope that my Mom found some peace after all the suffering. I think that painting is a form of expression of what’s inside that can’t find words. I started with a light green on the canvas and then let the colors fall through the layers of blues, greens, browns and purples. Although it has been foggy often lately, I have been painting a bit of spring color on my canvases. This one is 18×24, which is large enough to create complexity.

Thanks for stopping by …

I love the feedback on WordPress and I also like visiting other sites. I have been checking out a lot of travel blogs as I thought about where to go. I booked a flight to Lisbon in December. After reading so much about it on other blogs, I thought it would be a good place to go right now. If you know of any great art galleries there, please let me know. I know there will be plenty of good food and melancholy music. I’m sure it will inspire new work.

Copyright

All work is copyrighted by me and is for sale. Please ask permission before using images posted here of my work. If you are interested in purchasing work, you can contact me at trishfalin@gmail.com.

A Study in Color at The Art Center in Carpinteria

48 x 24 inches

A Study in Color

This painting, which will be part of The Art Center’s new show opening November 17th, seems to have every color I could find layered throughout. Photographing it was especially challenging, to capture the impact of a two foot by four foot piece and view it on a screen is not even close to seeing it in person. If you have a chance to see The Art Center’s show “A Study in Color,” then you will understand. The Art Center is located at 855 Linden Ave., Carpinteria, California. The opening reception will be November 17th from 2 to 4 pm … The show runs until January 6th.

Start of a New Trend

In many ways, this painting was the first of a new trend for me. The coloring is different, as well as the texture. Blending so many colors over such a large space takes time and patience. I was lost in the creation of this one for some time. Then, it took two weeks to dry. I actually completed this piece in August but hadn’t posted it yet. I have several pieces yet to post.

Bright Spot in November

The show is a bright spot for me this November. My mom passed away last month after battling cancer for more than a year. She loved art and had a special affinity for texturized acrylic works. She inspired my switch from watercolor to acrylic when she purchased a piece from an artist in El Paso, Texas. She gave me the painting and I still find it very inspiring.

Thanks for stopping by …

I appreciate everyone’s feedback … it is inspiring to hear from others and also to visit your blogs to see and read about your experiences. The best part of having a WordPress site is that you can interact with people. It’s the main reason I decided to use it to display my art. Your notes on my last post helped ease the stress and emotional ups and downs. Unfortunately, cancer strikes many and its damage is devastating to watch and painful to experience. I have a large family and very little experience with death. I don’t really know how to process it other than to paint.

Copyright

All work is copyrighted by me and is for sale. Please ask permission before using images posted here of my work. If you are interested in purchasing work, you can contact me at trishfalin@gmail.com.

Small view of coastal color

Small view

The beach in Santa Monica is layers of land, water, brown cliffs, and the green of trees and grass. On these beautiful fall afternoons, late afternoon, when the sun is starting to set, the colors blend in my mind. This abstract, inspired by the beauty around me, is only 8 inches by 8 inches.

I wanted to create a small work that I could take with me when I went to see my Mom who is fighting cancer. (She lives out of state.) She has a particularly aggressive cancer that started with a tumor behind her eye. She is blind in that eye and now has another tumor in the root of her tooth. It is difficult to see my Mom this way but also it was good to see her. I have been lucky enough to have my Mom in my life for many years. My Mom loves acrylic paintings with texture, so I created this one for her because it is small enough for her to hold to touch and look at closely. My time is short with my Mom and it felt good to share something with her. She is not able to travel to see my studio so this is the best I can do.

Art reflects life changes

I have been settling in my new place in Santa Monica and painting where I live while I search for a new studio space. The change in work space has inspired different approaches to my work. I also have been trying different brands of paint, which has also changed the outcome. If you paint with acrylic, then you understand the nature of working with it. Some brands produce a thicker paint that lends itself to the type of work I like to do. These works were done with the Blick brand of paint. It tends to be more liquid than what I have used in the past. I have been mixing it with different mediums such as glass beads, pumice, iridescent, crackle paste, and a few others to thicken it up. The work to the right is only 5 x 7 inches. It can be challenging to work on a small canvas…this one just happened. Often painting is almost an out of body experience – I am lost in the creation. I spent days afterword waiting for this one to dry. About a week later, when it finally dried, I still wasn’t sure what I thought of it, but it has a combination of some of my favorite colors of blue. It feels like late evening, last light of the day, the blue period before dark and the sky blackening behind stars.

Thanks for stopping by …

I appreciate everyone’s feedback … it is inspiring to hear from others and also to visit your blogs to see your travel pictures, artisitic photographs, design, art, and read about your experiences. I think the best part of having a WordPress site is that you can interact with people from around the world. I haven’t been able to travel outside the country for a bit and so I love seeing and reading about your trips. I will be going in December/January somewhere… I’m hoping to explore a country I haven’t see yet.

Copyright

All work is copyrighted by me and is for sale. Please ask permission before using images posted here of my work. If you are interested in purchasing work, you can contact me at trishfalin@gmail.com.

Summer dreams

Late August

On a hot evening, I grabbed my tools and lined up the paint and mediums and ended up with this work. I used some of the same mediums I have in other works, such as glass beads, but I included one I haven’t used in any of my works: snow flakes. It is like using a thick pudding that looks like snow flakes. You can see the white flakes in the darker colors toward the bottom of the picture. This is a small painting, only 11×14. I find myself packing more into small spaces lately.

Color of August

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One Hot August Afternoon

I finally made the space to start painting again in acrylic. I had taken up using charcoal and a pad of paper for a bit during my move to Santa Monica but it doesn’t compare to working with a tool to create a three dimensional piece such as the one I’m posting today.

Colors collide

I wanted to use a hot pink with a green and white, and so I began working on this piece. Just laying the colors next to each other created a glowing affect. I mixed in several other colors to increase its complexity. I used five mediums in this one to add some variation in the surface. Glass beads are one of my favorites, but this jar contained smaller sized glass beads so the result looks different than previous works.

This photograph

It’s difficult to see all the color in the darker area but if you click on the photograph and enlarge it, you will probably see it much better. I was using diffused natural sunlight to get this photograph. Usually I set up bright white light to increase the detail in the picture, but I thought I’d try the natural light that floods into my workspace. I also tried a different type of acrylic paint that takes quite a long time to dry. I have my floor covered with several pieces that are drying – one two by four foot piece is probably going to take over a week to dry.
Thank you for stopping by …

As always, I appreciate comments and likes… it is very motivating to have some interaction. Painting can be a solitary activity. I’m not saying that is always bad because it also is a great way to take your mind off all the frustration and stress our world can bring on us.

Copyright

All work is copyrighted by me and is for sale. Please ask permission before using images posted here of my work. If you are interested in purchasing work, you can contact me at trishfalin@gmail.com.