A Note on My Banner. . .

I want to write a few words about the image I’ve chosen for my banner. It’s a piece I created a few years ago when I was finishing one series and wanted to begin anew. I thought it would be perfect for this blog as it speaks not only to my process but also to the image I’d like to think I project - with a wink and a nod. . .

The Palimpsest series started with my penchant for recycling, using what I had at hand to inspire new work. At one point, I had done a series of abstract watercolors with intense, saturated watercolor inks on very expensive hot press watercolor paper. Some had sold. Others were languishing in frames waiting for what - new home? . . . a possible new exhibit? . . . a chance at being rotated onto a prominent place on one of my walls when I decided to re-hang my work? None of that was happening.

This piece, Studio Reverie, came at a time when I needed a push to move in a new direction. I took a few of the old watercolors out of the frames and decided to work with what was on the page to create something new, not by just covering over it, but using what was there, the colors, the shapes, the lines, to inspire new visions, new images, a new story.

I was doing a lot of collage work at the time, and this was a chance to use it in a new way, taking the collage, making a color Xerox copy which could then be placed strategically onto the watercolor, then blending it into the background with prisma color pencils, craypas and oil pastels. Here I actually took another watercolor, cut it and collaged in onto the first watercolor and then continued its patterns by drawing them into the background watercolor.

This is one of my favorites in the Palimpsest Series – it’s a little joke about just how an artist spends her time in the studio. . . lying naked on a chaise lounge, eating Godiva chocolates and dreaming of armadillos with a lucky gecko as her muse. . . well, we can always dream.