Pop-Up Recap

Carolyn and I had a great pop-up on Saturday, attended by friends, family, and lots of new faces. Thank you to everyone who came out.

I'm emerging from a period of severe burn-out, and it's a welcome feeling to want to be in that space again, to want to show my work again. I am particularly excited about how the gallery is looking these days. Lots of color and flowers and patterns and texture. And finally the mix of paintings and jewelry is making sense. A final bonus is that Carolyn's jewelry mixes in so well with my paintings, and complements the assortment of wearable pieces that I have in stock as well. Yay all around.

Here are some photos from the beginning of the pop-up, with everything nicely displayed and ready for visitors.

Freeform Patterns

I love painting multi-layered patterns with no plan other than to mix some colors and be loose. No overthinking allowed. No worries about how ruined or unattractive my expression might become. Every brush stroke will take me exactly where I need to go, so I just lay down the colors and shapes and enjoy the surprises that emerge.

I've been designing patterns my whole life, so by this point I know how to engineer a pleasing result. But that's not what interests me per se, so a lot of this exercise is about finding ways to move beyond the predictable and into whatever exists beyond the prettiness.

Above is an example of a pattern that went somewhere new for me, away from the Marimekko/tropical/floral aesthetic that is my first language. It started out looking like a giant abacus, then got some florals and geometry, then got way too messy with too much going on, so I wiped all over the entire surface with a big, dry brush. Finally I drew a vine/chain pattern over the plaid with a light hand.

This blurry, pink plaid is exciting to me because it represents a new strategy to explore: make a pattern, then blend everything together. Lose the details. Throw a layer of fog over what once was clear. The results will be softer and quieter than my usual frequência operacional, I imagine.

Azulejos in Portugal

I am obsessed with decorative tiles, so being in Portugal was visual paradise. There are azulejos everywhere: on building façades, covering churches, in public parks, in kitchens. Many of the tiles have geometric patterns, evidence of the Moorish influence in the Iberian Peninsula; others are narrative, often showing religious scenes, historical events, or scenes from daily life.

I photographed hundreds of tiles while on our trip, and not once was there a repeated motif, which is pretty incredible. Here are a few of my favorites: