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

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.

California Hills

16×20

The hills in California are a source of inspiration for my work lately. This one has the dark shadows that change the colors as the sun sets. I paint in layers with a black textured surface underneath the landscape above. The color underneath gives the painting a certain tone. The texture below combined with the surface texture gives the hillside a rocky jagged surface. When my painting dried, the work underneath bled through to give the surface more dimension.

16×20

This slight hilly landscape focuses on the contrast between hill sides created by the setting sun. The red layer underneath the texturized landscape gives the painting  a different tone than the one above. The mixture of paint on the dark side give it streaks of a metallic shine. The light side is a more muted blend that bleeds into the color of the sky. The hills can take on this muted sandy color at times.

Capturing a sunset

 

Last week I received a photograph of the sunset that looked like two suns against a grayish sky over the water. After looking at it for a long time, I began working on this painting on a 24×48 inch canvas. The end result above is after coming back a couple times and adding to it. I threw water on it in the end and let it set. The water lightened the last coat and layers below it came to the surface. The effect makes me think of a view through a wet glass like looking at the window on a rainy day.