Latest Abstracts

Here are some abstracts I've been working on lately:

This one is 16" x 20", acrylic on wood panels mounted on canvas. The surface is comprised of four 8" x 10" wooden panels which were glued onto stretched canvas. Each square is going to be treated as an individual painting, with it's own composition and color scheme.

This one is 8" x 10" acrylic on textured canvas.

Iguana Commission

One of the pieces I've been working on lately is a commissioned iguana piece. This piece is 8" x 8" and is comprised of a background of book pages, taken from an old I Ching book and an old physics book. It's kind of a cross between this painting and this painting, both of which have been sold.

Creating artwork on top of book pages is quite fun; it adds an interesting layer both conceptually and aesthetically.

Here the background is pretty much finished, with a textured maroon on the bottom with a silver art nouveau design, and a red-orange wash over the text highlighted with a gold wavy design. This pic shows how the colors are starting to be painted in the iguana.

This is how the painting looks tonight. The basic underpainting of the iguana is finished, so the next step is to go in bit by bit and tighten it up and make everything come together.

More Sheep Updates

I had a relatively productive day today, which made me quite happy. I've spent the past few days splitting my time between 5 paintings and 1 drawing, moving from one to the next as the mood strikes. Here's how the sheep painting is coming along -





My next step is to make the middle green section look grass-like in some parts, then I should be done. This is one of those pieces that just looks so much better in real-life than on this screen.

Right now I'm listening to the Tori Amos version of A Case of You. The first time I heard this version was in France a few months ago, listening to newly-burned mixed mp3s while painting the annex walls. It's funny how with certain songs, you can remember exactly where you were or what you were doing at specific times... or how you felt, what you were thinking, where you were at in life. The same thing happens with most of my art - I can look at a painting, drawing, or doodle and usually remember the moods, feelings, and general atmosphere at the time that I was creating the work. I suppose it's nice to be essentially leaving visual imprints of these temporal occurences. Every brushstroke marks a moment in time, moments which may otherwise slip by.

Inspiration

I was recently asked "Where do you get your ideas for your art works from?"

It was hard to supply a succinct answer in one paragraph, especially since I work in a variety of styles encompassing a variety of themes. (Multiplicity, I love it.) I thought I'd share my response:

I’m inspired by everything, really. I suppose my main driving force is a desire to convey a message relating to the hidden things of life, which are always there underneath the surface… ideas such as spirituality, interconnectedness, chaos & order, and the unexpected. I am obsessed with painting detail, whether it’s photorealist or abstract… I think I like to dive deep into the essence of what I’m painting to pull out an intricate sense of reality. I like to paint things that people can get lost in. I am currently exploring the use of color and design in a meditative, tribal sense. For the past year I have begun working on a few different series combining abstraction with photorealism, in an attempt to marry my two favorite styles of painting in some kind of holistic form that embodies both the spiritual essence of abstraction with the more object-oriented materialism of photorealism. Other than all these philosophical ideas, I also get ideas from everyday life – from looking at folk art of various cultures, from my travel experiences, from random doodles in my sketchbook, from books I read and conversations with friends.

Trampin'

Today I took a friend out for a birthday lunch at a local Thai restaurant, where I indulged in my perennial favorites; Pad Thai with tofu and Thai iced tea. After that we hit some thrift stores and a library, where I checked out a few cds, one of them being Patti Smith’s 2004 recording, Trampin’. I listened to it tonight while painting, my head embroiled with various thoughts, quandaries, queries. As the last song rolled on, Trampin’, I was attracted to its quiet simplicity – Patti’s soft but soulful delivery punctuated with piano. The main chorus goes “I’m trampin’… trampin’… tryin a make heaven my home…” The song is a “negro spiritual” from 1931 and carries the beauty and weight of its time. The song actually made me stop and think, a cliché occurrence on one level but nonetheless a much-needed reminder of what gives life meaning. As I’m sitting there, painting, absorbed in color and texture, being vigilant of the movement of my hand and the information transmitted to my eyes… where is my mind? Tonight it was running around in circles. And getting nowhere. And I was getting mentally exhausted just listening to my own mind-chatter. But I didn’t stop perpetuating those annoying thoughts until this song came on and gave me pause. What did it make me think of? Well, the obvious first things were heaven, and home. I was thinking about heaven not in a far-off Christian sense, but in a more universal and concrete “Bangles” sense (“They say in heaven, love comes first - we’ll make heaven a place on earth...”). I’d like to think of “heaven” and “home” as the same thing. That’s the ideal, isn’t it? But sometimes (often?) so hard to internalize, let alone materialize. Spending 3 months at the Dharmahouse this summer gave me a glimpse of what life could be like if people of varying nationalities, ages, and interests came together for a common purpose. Beautiful at times, stressful at times, wonderful at times, claustrophobic at times… but still a microcosm held together by the commonality of positive intention. It’s this concept of intention that I find to be so important. One recurring thought I’ve been having for the past few weeks has centered around the concept of intention and its relation to mindfulness. They seem so intertwined – to be mindful you must have the intention to be mindful, but where does the intention come from exactly…? Is it something that can be pin-pointed? I suppose the answer to that is different for each person, but I imagine that the intention to be mindful is related to the intention to manifest “heaven on earth”... in other words, to live in community, which all stems from a fundamental sense of goodwill and benevolence. I think that fundamental sense is what lies at the core of all of us, underneath all these whirlwind thoughts that so easily captivate our attention and carry us along from moment to moment. How easily we lose touch with that core! But when you wipe it all away, when you have a Patti Smith moment, when you peer through the dross, it’s still there – familiar and welcoming.

The next time I paint, I’m curious to see where my mind will be.

Sheep - Vamoose

A quick update on the sheep-Vamoose painting. The sheep is finished! I've come up with some ideas for the background, so I'll be working on that next.

Scattered Energies

It seems like I always have a to-do list that is ten miles long! Perhaps that is the Gemini in me - I love keeping busy and having many different projects going on at once. It keeps my mind active and my creative pulse flowing. Right now I've got several paintings, drawings, digital work, and commissions all in varying states of progress. Not to mention the long list of art admin stuff I have lined up...

I finished an intricate ink drawing that I started in France:

close-ups:

This piece is 8" x 10", ink on paper. The abstract designs are so detailed and tiny that I had to blow them up in the above two close-ups in order to show the detail. The idea behind this piece was to create a fun, whimsical abstract composed of many separate, delicate designs. The designs are playful, doodle-like creations that resemble microscopic organisms.

I also worked on the first in my long-awaited ZenPop series. The surface is a giclee of my painting Vamoose. I am in the process of painting a photorealistic sheep over top:

This series is going to rely heavily on a stream-of-consciousness method of allowing images to arise and suggest themselves. I may consider the piece finished after the sheep is finished, or I may decide to add more... who knows! That's part of the fun of this series.

Fun With Prints

My prints arrived today, much to my delight. They turned out fabulous! The colors are really well-saturated and rich. I've started listing some in my Etsy store and I'll be adding more the next few days. I really love working in this style - digitally combining drawing and painting to form whimsical prints. Here are some that I uploaded to my shop -

Iggleby-Squirt - 4" x 6" - Print from Original Drawing & Painting

Purchase here

Copacetic Bunny - 5" x 5" - Print from Original Drawing & Painting

Purchase here

This morning I got a couple of immunizations for my upcoming Thailand trip. As a result, my left arm was sore for most of the day. Although I'm right-handed, I was surprised to learn how much I do use my left arm! I decided not to overwork it so instead of painting, I felt that drawing would be much easier because I could let my left arm hang limply at my side. I worked on an intricate 8" x 10" abstract ink drawing that I started in France, which I'll show when it's done. I also spent lots of time organizing my art files and continued scanning stuff. Hopefully my arm will feel better tomorrow, because I'd like to spend more time off the computer and on my art!

Diurnal Dialogues

I'm trying to get back into the habit of posting everyday. I had a really good time with it when I did the 30 Day Artist. Although at times it was difficult to maintain the discipline of blogging my daily art-making and reflection, in the end I always found that it was very beneficial and worthwhile. So, here I go. Now that I'm back in Florida and armed with a laptop, it might be easier!

So what did I do today... I worked on some new abstract paintings and continued scanning some of my ink sketches from Europe. I feel like I'm kind of in a limbo period, because I just got back and I'm trying to get up-to-date with the whole admin/business side of my art. I have a few loose ends to tie up before I can finally get tucked into executing some of these new ideas that I've been carrying around for ages. I also have a few commissions to work on.

I've been looking through my old sketchbook from last year. It's fun being reacquainted with it and browsing through all the doodles, drawings, thoughts and ideas. Since I don't have any new art to share in this post, I thought I'd share the first drawing from my 2005 sketchbook. It was an idea for a whimsically surreal stream-of-consciousness type artwork that never got fleshed out beyond this, but I do have a fondness for it...

Back in Florida

Well I'm back in the States now! I've spent the past couple of days recovering from jet lag and reorienting myself. I'm looking forward to unpacking all of my art supplies, so I can get stuck back into some serious art-making! I have so many ideas and so little time to execute them all. I also have quite a few paintings to photograph and scan and list on the Internet, so I will be keeping pretty busy until I get caught up.

In France I started a series of ink bird and flower drawings, done in a detailed, Mexican-folk style. The drawings were then scanned in and colors were added using Photoshop. I plan to sell prints of these in various color schemes, and in different sizes.

Untitled (for now) - 4" x 4" - Ink & Digital Media

www.thaneeya.com

Un moment...

Hello! You may have noticed that I've been a bit quiet on this blog lately. We've been having some technical difficulties with our computer, so I haven't been able to update this blog as much as I would like. Basically we are at the end of the electricity line, which means we can't have certain appliances on at the same time, and if a neighbor starts using more electricity, it takes away the amount of power we get! Which is not good for the computer, because it causes the computer to shut down whenever there's a power blip. But hopefully we will get all these things sorted out for next year. I'm only here for another 2 weeks, so it's kinda bittersweet... I'm looking forward to getting back to Florida and seeing friends and family, but at the same time I will miss this beautiful and enchanting place.

Well, I better hurry up and publish this post before the computer crashes! Thanks for reading this, and I will update again as soon as I can.

Finished Frog & Strawbales

Untitled (for now) - 6" x 6" - Prismacolor Colored Pencils on Paper

www.thaneeya.com

Here is the finished frog drawing! I'm quite happy with the colors and composition of this piece. I think the detailed text balances well with the detail in the background leaf design.

It's been a busy week here at the Dharmahouse, so I haven't had much time for posting lately. We've been working on building a strawbale meditation hall, with helpers coming from England, the US, and the Netherlands. Here are some pictures of our progress (you can click on the pictures to see a clearer version):

Here we are on the first day, enjoying our freshly-delivered pile of strawbales.

Beams are up, tires being put in place.

The foundation is coming together.

More beams are added to the roof, more strawbales are stacked in place.

The end of seven days of building!

As you can see, the building is not yet finished, and we will be doing more work on it in the coming weeks.

Frog Drawing Continued...

Untitled (for now) - 6" x 6" Prismacolor Colored Pencils on Paper

I've been working on the frog drawing more. I added a decorative white leaf pattern to the background, and I'm starting to go over it with color. This one should be done soon!

New Frog Drawing

Here's a work-in-progress view of the second frog drawing in my Deep Thinkers series. This little guy is sprawled across a page of Japanese math equations, with white word bubbles floating above. This piece has a lot to do with holes, but I haven't thought it out thoroughly enough yet to be able to explicate much further.

I started this drawing nearly 2 months ago, when I first arrived in France. I set it aside for awhile, in favor of painting, which I had sorely missed during my month in England. But now I'm picking it back up again, as my urge for photorealism returns.

His feet look really white right now, but they will be colored to match the rest of him soon! I find that laying down a white layer first helps lend the frog's skin a sense of vibrant translucency.

I worked on this drawing a bit this morning, and I hope to have the frog finished soon. It was a nice respite to pick up this drawing again, because for the past few days I've been spending lots of time working on my small, detailed abstract paintings. Since we've got a Natural Agriculture course going on at the moment, I've been able to steal away loads of free time to work on my art, which has been a real godsend. I've been spending 6-7 hours working alone, listening to mp3s and painting tiny dots and strokes of color onto wood and canvas. Working on art in such an intensive manner has a really calming and focusing effect on my mind, which is something I start to miss if I can't work on art for prolonged periods. After spending a few hours painting abstracts, I find that long after I've stopped, I still see colors, forms, patterns, and designs floating around in my mind, kind of superimposed over the real visual world. Sometimes it can be distracting, because it causes me to focus more on my inner world/vision and makes me content not to engage in conversation (or perhaps it is conversation that is the distraction?)

We went for a walk last night along the ridge behind our property. There was a lovely and peaceful area with a wide variety of plants sprouting from between the rocks. The variety of different life forms emerging from the ground was really inspiring, and I hope to return to that spot soon to make some sketches and take some photos. I'm starting to become more and more inspired by natural forms, so I feel lucky to be in a place where there is so much wild nature just outside the front door.

Long Walks

We've gone on a lot of nice walks in the past few weeks, so I've really had to sift through all the photos to find the best ones to put online. I tried to pick the photos that best captured the essence of the local nature and scenery. So here are a few that I feel really demonstrate the range of the natural beauty surrounding us. This is the view along the ridge behind our property. We are right at the foothills of the Cevennes, so from here we can see the mountains unfolding in the distance!

Here is one of the local fields near our house... such an idyllic shot!

Here is our local river, La Ceze.

A very quaint and picturesque French scene.

In art news, I've been continuing to work on lots of small acrylic abstracts lately. Here is the smallest one I've ever done... approximately 3" squared!

This one will be for sale in a week or two, so check back if you are interested, or keep an eye on my ebay store, http://stores.ebay.com/thaneeya.

Cockatoo Evolution

As promised, here is an image file that shows the progression of the cockatoo drawing in one easy glance!

Insect Life

There are so many butterflies here! It's enchanting to go on walks through the fields, with butterflies fluttering amidst the flowers. We managed to capture a nice photo of two lovely black and white ones:

And we got a nice shot of a big fuzzy black bee:

I love those black bees! They often buzz near these purple flowers in our front garden. I've never been that interested in insects before, but now that I'm around them so much, I find them fascinating. It's fun to just watch them go about their daily business.

Bonjour!

Hello! It's been over a month since my last post, and so much has happened since then. We had a two day road trip from southern England to southern France, and now we're settled on our new 8-acre hilltop property, which is surrounded by nature and magnificent views of the nearby peaks, valleys, and villages. I've never been so immersed in nature before, and I've found it to be quite inspiring. I'll wax more eloquently on this in the future, but for now I can show you the first abstract painting I completed since being here. I've started a new series of abstracts based on the changing qualities of nature. I've termed this new series Anicca, a Sanskrit term meaning impermanence. Sitting outdoors on this hill surrounded by trees and lush views of the nearby terraced hills, I finally had an experiential understanding of what the Impressionists were after, in terms of capturing the changing atmosphere and lighting of a scene. I have recorded my observations of the visual changes in the landscape in a series of small paintings that are done in my usual funky and vibrant abstract style.

Quoi d'autre - 6" x 6" - Acrylic on Wood Panel

This painting is SOLD.

www.thaneeya.com

In the past my abstracts have been very abstract, so it's been invigorating to move this style into a new theoretical terrain. It has been refreshing and mentally stimulating to use my abstract style to express not only philosophical concepts, but also tangible reality as well.

And finally, I can show you the completed cockatoo drawing!

Celestia - 6" x 6" - Prismacolor Colored Pencils on Paper

This drawing is available for purchase here.

I'm quite pleased with the way this one turned out! I think the colors work well together and there is a nice balance of detail between the bird and the background. Next time I'll post an image file showing the drawing's progression from start to finish, so you can see how it evolved in one easy glance.

In the meantime, here is a pic showing my view as I paint... the red oil drum has since been moved!

Here is another view from the front of the house:

There are many lovely walks in the surrounding area, so next time I'll share some photos of the gorgeous French countryside!

Up, up and away!

Tomorrow I'll be embarking very early in the morning for the long haul to France, driving from urban southern England to a small village in rural southern France. I'm not sure if we'll make it in one day; the trip could possibly take up to 12 hours or longer if we do it in one go. Although the weather the past two days has been sunny and gorgeous here in England, I will be looking forward to a bit more continuity in the warmth that I hope to find in the south of France.

I'll be staying in a beautiful setting... a ranch-style house on top of a hill surrounded by 8 acres of farmland and forest. I'll be there with my boyfriend and some friends, working to set up a spiritual eco-community based on principles of sustainable living. You can find out more about this project at our website, http://www.thedharmahouse.com.

It will surely be an interesting experience, one that I hope to blog about along with my art. At this point I'm not sure how often I'll have Internet access. For starters it will be 2-3 times per week, since I'll need to use the local Internet cafe (which is a 40 minute walk up and down hills, from the house to the village). In time we may get Internet access at the house where I'll be staying... but it's so rural that we'll be lucky if we can get dial-up! (It was tricky enough just trying to get the water turned on!)

Because of this Internet access dilemma, I may not be able to list new art updates for a few weeks... we'll see! At the very least I can post words, if not pictures. It's funny that the birth of this blog one month ago coincided with my travel from Florida to England, which inhibited my ability to create new art, due to housing circumstances (no studio). And now my relocation to France will further stifle my Internet access, although my studio circumstances will be rectified - I'll be getting my very own small wooden shed which I can convert into a studio. It won't be easy though, since the shed is currently roofless and dilapidated and filled with the belongings of the previous owner. It will be a fun project nonetheless, and I'll be sure to post pictures of the studio space before and after!

In other art-related news, I've finished the cockatoo drawing, but unfortunately I don't have a picture of it yet because the battery charger I've been using hasn't quite been charging up to par. But that will be remedied soon, because I will set up my scanner in France. Then I can keep you up-to-date on my latest drawings, since I've also started on another frog piece in the same series.

So thank you for keeping up with my journal... have a good week and I'll catch you again soon!

The cockatoo is coming along...

I've finished the cockatoo and started on the background. I'm really happy with this piece so far!

Untitled (so far) 6" x 6" Prismacolor Colored Pencil on Paper

I'm not sure how accurately the color and lightness/contrast is showing up, since I'm using someone else's computer. Hopefully the image looks alright and isn't too off.

I've been having a good time here in England, going on lots of walks around town and into the surrounding countryside. Today we got up early and went on a morning walk through some woods and saw some deer, which was a nice surprise! As much as I'm enjoying the beautiful Sussex scenery, I will be glad to get to France next week and get started on painting again. I miss painting, have I mentioned that yet? Drawing is fun, but it is much more time-consuming than painting, and it is a much more cerebral activity. I've been working on really tight photorealism with these colored pencils, so I'm looking forward to letting loose with some abstract paintings in France, and maybe trying my hand at some looser still lifes.