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.

Almost summer at the beach

Water 27 on 18×36 canvas

June gloom?

Summer is almost here as the crowds begin showing up at the beach, but this also means the sun light is brighter which creates lighter colors on the water. The layers of color from the summer sky contrast light and dark with shadows from life underneath the water’s surface.

In this painting, I tried working with several colors in each stroke you see on the darker, more texturized lower half. I started with a base color on the canvas, as well as a layer of texture. Three colors used on the base underneath the final painting included a dark purple on the bottom third, a medium shade of blue in the middle, and red on the top third of the canvas. The textured lower half of the final work includes a dozen different colors blended with a tool. In some strokes you can see four to five colors.

The top half of the painting was produced through combining a pouring method with the same texturing used on the lower half. The intent was to mimic a sky that has a swirling colorful cloud cover penetrated by sun. The summer afternoon with its puffy clouds becomes a mix as the sun begins to set and the marine layer moves in.

Some extra features in this painting include an iridescent/pearlescent tinting medium and some metallic mediums to give the water and sky a shimmer found in summer days. The dreamy quality of summer days makes me want to take a towel down the street to the beach for a little break from work. I usually get a little beach time before I begin work on a new painting. Many days what I see ends up influencing my work.

The play of color between water and sky is part of the vision for color here. This painting is also an effort to produce the effect of a wet rainbow on a canvas. Water is a darker shade, the sky is the lighter shade. Huntington Beach usually is locked in fog for most of June, but the first three days this June have been sunny for part of the day. It’s a taste of summer a little early… add a little watermelon and it definitely feels like July.

Thanks for stopping by to look at my work. I’m a little behind on posting pieces I’ve completed this past week or two, but sometimes it takes time to capture the work in a photograph. This one in particular was difficult because of its size and contrasting shades of color. I used natural lighting and a wall in the gallery where the light is less direct. The early evening fog helped to create the perfect lighting to capture the color and not be overwhelmed by the shimmer of mediums used.