Cricketts Inky Art Blot

After messing up my back last August, I had been unable to paint. I finally decided to seek help for the back, but not until after dragging myself to Burning Man. Obviously this was not my smartest move, but who can resist partaking in the delights if the Playa and seeing the man burn? It appears that I have arthritis in the back bones (surely I am too young?!) and 3 herniated discs. I have stubbornly refused surgery and have so far had a month of physical therapy 3 times a week to straighten a twisted pelvis and strengthen my muscles. What a wreck! Anyway, tonight I was invited to what I know is to be an epic party for "Dias De Los Muertos". I was excited to go out after a very unsociable time healing... However, my husband is resting in the bed that is crammed behind the canvas storage and my kids are sat in front of a movie in the studio parlor. I am guiltily enjoying mixing paints and smelling the wonderful scents of the oil paint glaze I have mixed for my latest creation

I took a family vacation to Alaska, which complicated things as I now want to do a bunch of landscapes.. Sigh. Anyway, fighting that urge I painted a little more on the moth painting. I am trying to create some dimension now, details come last.

The composition is almost complete, but I still felt something was missing. I added a clock hand to help ground the moth. Now it is time to build up the layers of color and depth. Location: Twin Lakes Studio

After selling some paintings at Nada, I need to fill in the gaps and also expand on the body of work for my paintings exhibition in August. I started this new moth painting last week. I worked out the composition and started laying it down as an underpainting in ultramarine and sienna. This last photo shows my progress after a few days. I am felling that there may be a missing element, but I will reassess after laying down more color. Tomorrow I will be helping to hang another show. This show is the Printmaker's Conspiracy Summer Show for Artown. Artown is a month long series of art events, performances and exhibitions that take place all over the city of Reno.

NadaDada finally arrived and it was time to hang the show. I was interested to see what kind of feedback I would get from visitors and other artists. Here is my exhibition: I had a small table so that I could carve or paint while I was there. I sold most of the prints in the racks which helped cover the exhibition costs. The peacock painting seemed surprisingly popular! I built a little glowing Absinthe shrine to be reminiscent of French shop windows. I did a small performance as an Absinthe server at the closing show, dressed in a fun costume with a peacock top hat ;-) The whole NadaDada show was both exciting and tiring in equal measures. I grew from this show in many ways and mixing with other artists helped to stimulate and inspire me for the future. This was my third Nada show and this time I left feeling like a seasoned Dadist artist, I can't wait until next year!

Last Friday I hung some of my art in a group show at Wilderness Gallery in Reno. This reminded me that I have to have my prints signed editioned and framed in the next week. Eeeek! So I am spending the next couple of days tearing down, signing and matting; not my favorite part of the process...

Switching the paint to a more traditional oil painting, I can now give the painting depth. At this point, I went away for a few days and the painting had some time to dry. I prefer a week between colors, but time pressures are building up so I waited only 4 days. I am referring back to a moth photo to help with making details. Now I am working glazes into the painting to give allover color and softness. The final glaze is a yellow. The painting is almost finished and I will just need to add some highlights and lowlights.

Continuing with the under painting, I added more elements to the composition. With the moth shape in, I only have a few more elements left to add to the composition Now I am going to switch to oil paint to provide the depth and detain I need.

The last 3 weeks (gosh, am I that slow?!) I have been working on a Nada Dada Moth. I have been cogitating over what I believe Nadist Art is over the last few months. I feel I hit my personal Nada style with the tradigital paintings I made last month, so I started work on making a canvas in this style incorporating a moth and other imagery that I feel are tied to this style I am developing. I am posting the photos of the work that I took during the last few weeks, to show how the painting developed. I started with an acrylic under painting to lay out the composition. I have always used a brown under painting, but this time I went further and painted in a turquoise also in acrylic. The painting is approximately 3 x 4ft on canvas.

Continuing with my series, I have been working on a linocut featuring an old fashioned alarm clock and an eye. I used an a la poupee dabber to add a smokey white to the eye and the clockface. I found a dial stamp at a scrapbook store and inked it with my speedball ink and brayer to add to the clock. I then carved an eye detail from soft cut to stamp back over the eye. I used a red Bic pen then carved with a number one blade. I then stamped this over the eye. The final step was printing hands onto the clock, which I did Friday.

I have enlarged a few tradigital art pieces and framed them. I am getting quite excited about this direction and already have a few new images in my head for the next pieces. Not the best of phone photos, sorry!

I have been working on a ton of tradigital pictures over the last 2 or 3 weeks. I had 145 proofs printed over the weekend and excitedly picked them up this morning. I have picked a handful out to be 20 x 30 photos and about 20 to be 8 x 10 photos. Tradigital art is where a computer generated image has been formed from a traditional fine art piece as it's base. I used some of my oil paintings and hand carved fine art prints as my foundation image and digitally altered them to make the final piece of work. I'm really excited about this work and the direction it is taking me in. My influences and inspiration for this work come from art movements from the late 19th Century and early 20th Century. Here are the sneaky peaks: These are going to be 20 x 30 prints:

I'm working on the peacock paintings at the moment and some relief prints. I am slowly filling in the shapes and colors of the paintings, starting from the top and working down with each color. I'm grouping them with my 8 color reduction cut relief print. Also a feather linocut and painting, both in their early stages. The linocuts below are variation experiments based on the imagery above. It still feels like I am a long way to completion, but hopefully they will pull together fast at the detail stage.