Fibermania

Tommy Says: Paint the Quilts!

Unaccustomed as I am to holding back anything that I feel from this blog, it is needless to say that I was majorly in the dumps and ran off to visit Tommy as a remedy. At least I was thinking clearly about that choice.

I am so smart.

Tommy is so smarter.

Plus she is not encumbered by my baggage and hysterical insecurities. ( she has her own, but this is all about ME).

I brought seven quilts that she had only seen on the blog and upon viewing them in real life, gave me all sorts of helpful encouragement. Even the scraps that I also brought along were greeted with enthusiasm. Then she got my attention when she repeatedly said, Paint these! Or Paint the Quilts! Why look at other artists when you have all you need in YOU!!!

To clarify...not to put paint on my finished quilts. No. Make paintings that are like my quilts. Color, design, pattern, layout, shape, colors...the WORKS.

Brilliant!

I felt UNDERSTOOD and slept like a baby. The next morning I felt renewed and having the foresight to bring my entire stash of fused fabrics, I set out to make a quilt while Tommy (hell bent on becoming the trimmest gal at her college reunion) went to work out.

Here she is posing like the painting I sent her by Skip Lawrence (title: Carly)

Her studio is rife with lots of possible ideas and I was inspired by this tiny photo of art glass

By the time she returned from the gym I was totally out of the dumps and almost finished with my first composition of the day. I had scraps leftover from another project and that became the sourdough for composition #2. I think I have figured out what the problem was now. Phew! What a relief.

You can stop reading now, while I open my veins. This will interest only other artists. If you are a well balanced individual, thank your lucky stars.

When I was a painter I did paint realistically. I don't want to paint like that anymore. I want to paint abstractly and with abandon. But I couldn't get around seeing images in the way. And the more I painted, the more the images had to be defined and brought to clarity. So I fussed and dinked around and that made matters worse. When I tried to learn from artists whose work I admire, by copying them, I did learn something: i.e. that I can't make someone else's work and be happy about it. Gack.
So now I see that I can make paintings that have the essence of my own work in them and can make them non-pictorial and still make them look like I know what I am doing. Which is the sticking point. I hate that amateurish look...
Of course I haven't done this yet, but the brain is in the right gear, I think.

But first I have to get that awful painting off my wall and outta my sight.