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I’ve done quite a lot of sketches now for the numbers series. The canvases were all ready to go by Friday morning, so I started laying out some of the drawings. By evening I painted on the first layer of burned sienna onto the canvas on numbers four and five. I really like the symbol for the number four, with its inward and outward pointing arrows.
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These would make excellent tattoos. I might have to contact the excellent Pat Fish.
I’m putting in the last details on the Fama piece, simultaneously working on the numbers paintings. Two photos here to show where things are going.
 
  
I’ve added in some knifed on lead white highlights with a lovely transparent iron oxide laid into it while it’s wet to set the highlights back into the underlying flesh. I love the transparency of the oxide as it lays over and into the white.Â
Here’s an earlier shot of the same face, prior to the blue glaze and highlighting:Â
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Jean Amador has asked me to show my “A Girl Swimming” and “Two Girls Swimming” oil paintings in her exhibit opening March 15th at the High Studio. They’ll look good in there. Come to the opening reception, won’t you?Â
“A Girl Swimming” (above) shows an Ophelia – like maiden beneath the water, the surface of which is covered by water lilies. I used the water lilies in the pond outside the Santa Barbara Mission as reference material for this painting.Â
Two Girls Swimming has a double helix of Jasmine flowers floating in the water as the twin girls swim.Â
“CALIFORNIA FLORA AND FAUNA”
Group Show: Fiber art, Oils and Watercolors
Open March 15 thru April 25, 2008
Artist Reception: March 22, Saturday, 6pm-8pm
 
Moving ahead with the boxes, I poured good quality gesso onto the previously primed panel and used a 1/4″ quarter round piece of molding to spread it around the surface. This gives me a nice thick textured surface to work on. I began shaping the gesso into a circle for the first piece, which will be a representation of the monad.
Laying down the gesso with a dowel rod or a piece of quarter round can make a big mess of the floor of the studio, and of the new shoes that your wife bought you for Christmas. Just sayin’…
I’ve put an upside down table outside the gallery at CLU ready to receive empty water bottles. I hope our students will help me collect enough of them to do the installation. 534 to go! HELP! I guess that a lot of the students who would be interested in recycling are already using those refillable bottles in order to cut down on the amount of plastic going into landfills.
Last night someone came and stole the bottles we had gathered, so I’m going to move the table inside the gallery.Â
Onward, upward!Â
Stephanie made a video based on the performance lecture I did last month. Here’s the link.
I’m beginning a series of paintings of numbers using Pythagorean and Renaissance alchemical ideas about how numbers represent divine order. I have seven boxes that I have stretched canvas onto, now I’ll lay on plenty of Gesso to prepare them. Some of the pieces are going to be quite three dimensional, so I want to be sure to create a really solid ground for the paint and medium to hold onto.
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I like the way these panels will push out from the wall, requiring the viewer’s interaction. I can use the sides of the pieces as much as the front if I choose to, inducing much neck twisting and investigation. Â
To the Pythagoreans, some numbers are representatives of the fingerprints of G-d on the universe, like Phi, Pi and the units. Pythagorean interpretations of these numbers explain the divine order of the cosmos.
I loved this! The reeds have been cropped back to about 6 inches high, creating these little islands of reeds distributed in the mud. Great imaginative food for me. I’ll make something inspired by this arrangement sometime in the future.
Reality imitating art!Â
