Fairytale Narratives

When Fact and Fable Collide

48"x48" oil on masonite panel, Fall 2014

______Grocery shopping and driving have so many connections they probably met on eHarmony and dated a few times. When you're shopping for your canned foods, baked goods, and raw fruits and veggies, you want to push your cart at a constant speed, yield at intersections, and drive on the proper side of the isle, which could essentially be considered two-lanes sized for two carts to pass side by side, sans yellow stripe. You also don't want to shop under the influence, or the grocery shop cops will swoop down from the tops of shelves, place little yellow wheel clamps on your cart, and force you to use a shopping basket for the rest of your food-buying excursion.

______That being said, don't even try to free the lobsters from their glass prison as you saunter by the ground meat. The grocery store cops will scoff and not be amused. Though the beady eyes of the lobsters glint preciously and plead, "SOS!" it's best to turn away and recall how their brains are but a bundle of nerves comparable to those of a cockroach.

Whisking Sugar Lumps 

48"x24" oil on masonite panel, Fall 2014

______Of course, while grocery shopping, you're always going to run into those grocery shop drivers. You know the ones. 

______The ones that take up a whole isle, probably rationalizing that it's an opportune time to tweet about how the Honey Bunches of Oats were moved two cereal brands over, and the struggle was so incredibly real, gosh dangit! And now the world has to know, or at least their twelve followers do, even though nine of them are spam accounts and one is a goat pun account that last updated two years ago.

______Then there are the ones who put their cart in front of the bagged spinach leaves you so desire, only to wander all the way over to another vegetable, leaving their cart, purse, and screaming child for you to frown at until their slow, soul crushing return. 

______Then there's the old couple that slowly surveys each piece of lettuce as if they are picking out a wedding gown. "Oh no," the boisterous little wife says, shaking her head and raising her frail hands in defense, shaking them like wheat crops being struck by Western wind. "These leaves are far too wilted. We need something sturdier, but not too crisp and white as those, nay!" The quiet husband nods in agreement. He knows by now not to argue with his marshmallow haired wife whose skin sags like the floppy lips of a dog. 

The Organisms Are Introduced to Cotton Candy

48"x24" oils on masonite panel, Fall 2014

______The robo-zoomer is what I could classify myself as: my movements are intentional and swift as I dexterously zoom from foodstuff A to foodstuff B, like a pirate sniffing gold on the seas. I have a robot-like stare that resembles that calculates the quickest path to my next target, considering the obstacles that are humans and cart road-blocks. I go in. I go out. I occasionally stop to sniff the packaged roses that sit conveniently by the chocolate-covered almonds.

______There's the gazer. They glaze their slitted eyes over the selection hundreds of times like a lecherous man surveying patrons at a gas station even though he or she shops there every week and that same product hasn't moved an inch. It's in the same spot. Really. Your canned mushrooms haven't grown wings and flown to another isle.

______The post-workout chick. She's got her ponytail streaming through a cap, her snazzy printed leggings hugging her perfect gluteus maximus, and her neon Nikes keeping up with her quick pace as she moves the cart with one hand, cradles a small child in the other, and still manages to pin her Otterbox-cased iPhone 6 to her ear and carry a conversation. This girl is going places.

______What kind of shoppers do you notice?

A Good Stretch

Flex, 48"x48", July 2014

oil on masonite

______Woop-di-doop! I'm finally calling this painting finished after working on it for a couple of weeks. I eventually just had to pry myself away from it, because at one point, I almost got stuck to it starfish-style. I'm constantly fearful that I will overwork a painting, but I stopped just in time for this guy. Now nobody let me touch it ever again.

______The "problem" with posting traditional art on the interwebernets is that it becomes visually skewed in terms of size and texture. This painting is fairly big though not huge: four feet by four feet, or what I like to imagine is a perfect square but most likely isn't since I was the one who made the canvas board (wonky creator = wonky square). I googled "things that are four feet tall" to make a neat size comparison of painting to non-painting object, but all I learned was that turkeys can grow to four feet tall, which is absolutely terrifying. So yeah, this guy is the size of a monstrously large turkey.

______Stay safe with a set of skewers and jar of poultry seasoning out there, friends. There be large turkeys roaming the lands, lurking, waiting, anticipating you.

Carry On My Wayward Blobs

Watercharged, 44"x30"

oil on paper, Painting Composition, Spring 2014

______These are my incredibly infectious knuckleblobs. Yes, knuckleblobs. These knuckleblobs radiate with so much evil that horror movies contact them to produce maniac laughter sound effects, incite fear in small children, and reveal themselves in the corners of mirrors in darkened rooms. They absorb whatever is around them, process it within the confines of their malleable nodules, and suck out the color and life until it's greyscale. The more they seek out and destroy, the more powerful they are and the more nodules they grow.

______So twisted and dark, right?

Player Three Has Entered the Game, 44"x30"

oil on paper, Painting Composition, Spring 2014

______I am absolutely enamored with working on paper; it's thick, tactically pleasing to paint on, and easy to swirl up and lug around when you're done with it. I was certain I hated painting from the bottom of my heart when this painting class started, but then the last few weeks of the semester, I moved from bloody awful gritty canvases and masonite to the smooth, seductive surface that is paper. It's a paper that's commonly used for printmaking, too, so it'll be super convenient to purchase in bulk next year to save a hearty stack o' greenbacks.





______I wanted to thank you guys for your sweet congratulatory words and insightful ladyadvice on all my posts lately! When I read your comments, I beam like a bright little firefly and I truly can't thank everyone enough, and sometimes I even re-read them when I'm feelin' a bit down. You guys are just the darn loveliest blog frans, and I mean that from my bottom of my squishy, blood-pumpin' heart.

Figure Trasitioning

Figure Transitioning, December 2013

Acrylic on masonite, 48"x32"

______It usually takes me a few weeks to realize a painting has met a I conclusion (wise art professor voice: "Ah, but is art ever complete?"). I know that the figure is done as done can be, as is the hair at the left that's slowing being obscured by aqua and lilac, which is actually my favorite part of the painting since I tried a different layering technique which was surprisingly effective. I've been staring at Mr. Untitled Painting for three days, which is too long to be staring at a painting, and so I decided to focus my attention on something else. After coming back to it, I've realized, you know what? It is done. There's no use overworking it.

______Through painting this, I actually scrambled up an idea for another painting exploring the strictly rendered vs. the inherent gestural, and I think I'm going to toy around with that a bit in my next few paintings. I know I need to get looser and more deliberate with my brushstrokes, and I suppose that's why I like the part where the hair transitions the best--because that was so minimal and not harshly rendered, yet it's still a recognizable something.

______Welp, time to build more canvases! Onward!

Dreamscenes I

______Man, I've been slower than a fat Santa through a chimney on keeping up with my artwork this semester, but I feel like that's because I've been experimenting and learning new ways of approaching art opposed to actively working at producing end products. Which I am totally fine with. You can always make stuff on your own, but sometimes you need a little teacher coercion to tug you out of your comfort zone.

______I did come out with a few snapshot-worthy works, though, and I'll be posting those throughout the winter break (if I make it through exam week... insert frightening organ pipe music here). This was my figure drawing final, in which we were to create whatever we desired using anything at all.  I mean anything. One guy used butter, mustard, and vaseline to finalize his, and curiously enough, it was effective.

______I didn't add perishable food products in mine, but rather opted to scan through my Word document full of dreams I've scribbled down and use acrylic. I decided to base mine on an uber weird dream I had that involved a mushroom-cloud-like tree, two figures contemplating said mystical mushroom tree, and multiple crows delivering cobs of corn to the tree (which I chose to left out, because naaaaah). 

______There are lots of things I've learned through making this: 

______a) working on such a large scale is quite refreshing! 

______b) I need to paint more and more, for I've only produced a single-digit number of paintings and I know I could have done better than this. Painting should be second nature to me by now! 

______c) dreams are a rich source material, and having a fashion blog and a brother who is overtly willing to pose for you makes finding decent models easy peasy!

Dreamscenes I, acrylic on Rives BFK (60"x44")

Figure Drawing, Fall 2013