This evening, after I took the masque out of a warm oven of 200°F, I cut cardboard into the shapes I wanted, added picture wire and taped that as well as the headdress, which is in two parts, to the masque. The fronds on the masque in this photograph of multiples and cut-outs now have a layer of papier-mâché, which is weighing them down, and so the shape is not exactly as pictured here.

I think I am spending as long composing these images for you in Photoshop Elements as I am creating the masque!

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*Note: To see the finished masque, as well as two short slideshows of the process of making it, go here: Green Goddess Papier-mache Masque.

This is a challenging project. Will the masque hold? Each layer needs to dry fully. Will I be able to create enough layers for strength and have it painted by Friday night? And, most importantly, will my cat play with the torn paper, which is one of his favourite activities? Oh, Green Goddess, meow!

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*Note: To see the finished masque, as well as two short slideshows of the process of making it, go here: Green Goddess Papier-mache Masque.

While I played a little with filters - it was irresistible - I hardly think this project is going to turn out anything like I had envisaged. The tin foil face masque challenges me to imagine its future, especially since it is a rendition of my face. Still, it is the base on which I will layer papier-mâché. Who knows how this will turn out? Or if it will. My aim was to make a "Green Goddess" masque, and perhaps in the end something to that effect may miraculously appear.

I hope to document the strange organic growth of this masque from its tinfoil beginnings.

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*Note: To see the finished masque, as well as two short slideshows of the process of making it, go here: Green Goddess Papier-mache Masque.

Slipstream, the Tangled Garden, 11"x14½", 28x37cm; mixed media (oils, acrylic varnish, markers, parchment) on canvas tablette

Today I pasted poetry printed on parchment paper onto an oil painting. The poetry pasted into the painting from the first lines of a prosepoem I wrote in 2006:

Slipstream, the tangled garden

Furrow in the tree. Leaf flapping, a green flag. Leaves sprout endlessly, each different. Why does it have to tick every second? Give me the skin of the drumbeat of time. Leaves dance in the solar wind. Blow time away. Enfold me like a furrow. Encase me in wood, the roots, the branches. Let tendrils be the leaves, or my fingers.

Rise from
this womb of roots.
_

Listen to a slightly earlier version of this prose poem (5min 4sec) at SoundClick. Or by pop-up window: highspeed; dial-up.

Flower Scene, 11"x14½", 28x37cm; mixed media (oils, acrylic varnish, markers) on canvas

Just fooling around today - painted most of this without my reading glasses, which felt freeing. Think  I will add a poem to it.

My thought is to find something I've written or write something new and print it on parchment paper and varnish it onto the painting.

Sounds like an idea, but finding the words and materials... now that's another matter!

That rather clumsy lining of the trumpet vine flower will decrease in visual dominance when there are words in black with their letters of lines.

When this painting is a little drier, I'll work on the details - though surprisingly if cropped a bit it looks almost finished now. It was not easy to come back to this figure when I have let her sit in storage and my rooms here and in Vancouver unfinished for 5 years. With courage and force of will, I began to complete it. First I tried painting her on an easel, which  perhaps isn't my style in that I probably dance over the work as I am painting. A quick trip out to purchase 2 yards of thick clear plastic at Honest Ed's, the kind for tables in Italian restaurants, would protect my living room floor. I placed it on the floor, with a little prayer that neither my cat nor my dog would inadvertently wander over the painting space, the canvas surface of wet oils, along with a long piece of unused canvas on the side in case of spills, and shone a clamp lamp with a daylight bulb on the area. And then carefully laid the painting flat and wetted it and painted from the tube with fingers and washes with a large thick brush and oh solitary dramatics in an attempt to feel my way into the movement of the dance, her moment of stillness... she is graceful, beautiful, I don't know if that comes across. Hope so!

Celestial Dancer III, 2004-2009, 2'x3', 61x91.5cm, oil on canvas

Earlier versions: ink drawing; mid-way.



Tea Ceremony

The grace in living,
teapot, tea leaves, steeping.
She bends to pour.

When the waters
washed away the homes.
Clotted blood
of his wounds.
Petals floating on dirges.

Yet laughter of lovers,
her heart of memory.
Landscapes of green
move through us.

Comfort of the gentle
and exact tea ceremony.
Love is everything
the great artist sings.

©Brenda Clews, 2009

                                 

The background was painted five years ago, and today I determined to finish the painting. Nightfall has come, and no. Perhaps tomorrow. She is one of my Celestial Dancers. Why do I resist her?

My apartment is small; my two children, son, 22, daughter, 18, live with me. That is my dining room table, yes.

We make room for our art, we have to.

I've put my website buttons (that I use as a 'signature' in each blog post) in a table ( that you can't see because I gave '0' border to the lines so they are invisible) to see if they line up better at sites that link here. The html I used at the site has the images sit in a nice row, but I notice that places like Facebook put each image on its own line underneath the post. I'm hoping the invisible table solves the problem.

While the spacing between icons isn't quite right, it's close enough, and, if the table works, I can fiddle with that later. Also, probably I need to add another webpage & link - so there is an 'intro' page, and a 'recent paintings' page. So far, I haven't been able to figure out how to arrange the 'intro' page the way I'd like - though I've tried a few things, none of them have worked.

There is much writing that I have yet to add to the site as well - though that'll be embedded with links to unlisted pages in the website here & there.

:-)

Julie McGregor is a Toronto artist and jazz singer.