In the Mixed Media gallery here, you’ll find some locals, including a collage artist, an artist who is our high school’s excellent art teacher, and our local library manager.
As an outgrowth of this, I have started a series on portraits of local artists. I have started with Laura Fogg, a world famous art quilter and teacher as well as an energetic advocate of the arts in our rural county.
Many area artists have enthusiastically agreed to be painted and the Ukiah Public Library will exhibit my show next spring!
June 2022: Three different portraits
A key project for me was completing my self portrait by early June, so it would be dry enough to submit to Art Center Ukiah’s July show. I wanted to do a fairly classical portrait, and ended up going very dark on background in order to let the face come forward.
At the same time, I was working on another portrait of Tori, from a photo in which she was simply part of a larger composition. This ended up expressing itself with a looseness I have only achieved with the mixed media portraits, and I am very pleased with it.
So I started the portrait of my husband, Stuart, in a classical mode, but the dark background just wasn’t working for me. It took a while to figure out how to get a looser feel, and fortunately an old photo of him in the Fantasy Records vault provided the key to a loosely brushed background.
May: going to the dogs
I was again a volunteer artist drawing pet portraits for the Humane Society for Inland Mendocino County’s April fundraiser. They collect donations and pet photos, and we select which pets we want to draw or paint.
I ended up doing dogs, even though I love my cats. After the third portrait I realized why: doggies wear their hearts on their faces, which is the essence of what I try to capture in my human portraits!
