Spring Tea for 2June 5, 2009
16" x 20"
Oil on Canvas
I was asked again (well alright the truth is I asked) if I could paint as live demo/entertainment at the Allied Arts Council's 'Wine and Cheese Open House'. It was a fantastic evening and gave me, the artist with a sopping wet train wreck of a studio, a place and a time to paint. I brought in some fabric to use with the AAC's beautiful tea cups and saucers. I set it up and I had to stop people from picking them up. Everyone wanted to clean up someone's left behind cups. There are so many countless instances were I find myself shouting "Please don't touch, that's my still life!" I once had a very pleasing still life with a bunch of random dishes, plastic colanders, pots, bowls, and such sitting in the middle of my kitchen table. Well my mother came over for a quick visit and started looking at the funky new colander that I had laying on the table and before a word could slip out of my mouth she started putting my still life away in the cupboards. I don't know any other profession where you would yell and get upset if people tidied up after you.
As for the actual painting, I do admit that it is not perspectively perfect, but I do love the fabric. I had brought it in to one of my still life classes for my students to use as a background. I was completely amazed with one particular student's work where she painted a pair of black shiny shoes ontop of it. Since that class I had been yearning for the chance to tackle it. I am most positive that it will appear in future paintings. It is weird because it is both a challenge and a pleasure to paint, usually challenge and pleasure don't occur in the same sentence for me. I have to be attentive to detail yet aware of the whole thing. Though I do think it has this strange softness that it naturally forces the painting to take. It really is not about the cups at all, they just help to define what they are sitting on which is the true subject matter. You wouldn't read it as a table cloth unless there was something sitting on top of it. Let me know what you think, right now just my family sees it in my kitchen. With all the paintings coming and going from my walls they don't really give a hoot about it. After about the 700th painting I have stopped asking for opinions. I seem to get the same answer anyways. "Yeah, it's good", translates to -yeah it's another painting. I ask so much of my family as it is, I take up a lot of space, hang my paintings all over the house, and of course I end up yelling every now and then "Hey, don't touch that! That's my still life."
2 comments:
Now why have I not been over here to see your paintings and have a good laugh? I am always telling my husband not to throw away the rotting fruit in the fridge, and every time I buy a 'prop' (deemed, something that you don't need) he rolls his eyes. Ah.. life as an artist. We're currently locked in a struggle to make our one extra room into a studio/guest room/computer office room. Can't agree on the built ins I would like and his solution is an armoire into which every thing would be stuffed, never to see the light of day.
Anyway, your painting is very well done particularly the fabric.
I also appreciate how you assess your work.
Some paintings just don't come out well, or they may not be what was intended but they are still good. It's almost impossible to be objective about one's own work. There's always something learned in the process.
I have to remind myself of this as my desire for perfection holds me back some.
I'm on you email list so I will be back for a visit. You are funny ;)
I meant to reply earlier. For some reason this summer, blogging has become the last thing on my to do lists (not that I follow the order of my to do list).
Anyhow, thank you for your wonderful response. It is really encouraging. Sometimes I feel like I am just writing to myself. It's nice to get a reminder that people sometimes do read my blog and are seeing my paintings. That is really the goal, and I can prove to my husband that I am not just piddling around on the computer fooling around, what I am doing is important.
So, thanks again to you and to anyone else who spends time on my blog.
-Daphne Congo
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