Cricketts Inky Art Blot

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.