Work in Progress

I am actually finding some time to work on creative pursuits, just not as much as I'd like. However, I can't complain at all, life has been filled with good things. Friends old and new, huge bonfires, intimate campfires, beach time with my girls, all kinds of wonderful summer fun. I've got my time filled ahead of me as well. Birthday cakes need to be baked, trips scheduled, we're having to choose between events because there's just too many good things to do.

So the sewing, dying, shrine creation, and printmaking have all taken a back seat. I've been focusing on getting some paintings done in the moments I can snatch. The painting continues to obsess me more and more. Also not a bad thing.

Well of the Ancestors - Unfinished 16" x 20"

You can see this ones earlier incarnation here. I'm happy with how it's progressing, I feel like I'm focusing the eye better, controlling the light and darks and bringing in some midtones to connect the two. Continuing with my use of pthalo blue I brought in washes of it and I'm working on developing some misty areas. I love the translucency of it, it makes a wonderful glaze.

Jurate-Unfinished 8"x8"

This is another of my small canvases. I posted originally about them here. She's about ready for some collage work, and I'd like to try and emphasize the depth of the water and the light filtering through once that's done.

Just in case you didn't know, Jurate is the Baltic goddess of the sea. It is told that she loved a mortal man, Kastytis, who was a fisherman. He had been too successful pulling in huge catches of fish, and so she had gone to punish him. Instead she fell madly in love with him. He agrees to go away with her to live at the bottom of the ocean in her amber castle. However this angers Perkunas, the thunder god when he finds out. He shatters her castle with his axe and leaves her chained to the sea floor, alone and homeless. Kind of a bummer, huh?