Tuesday, October 18, 2011

SHOW...TELL...Part Eleanor.

It is coming down to the end of the day here in California you international folk. My studio wall (as I don't have a picture for you like JAMIE does) is rather bare as I have stripped it to share it and tell it!

So, I moved back from Madrid to San Diego- two places that have nearly nothing in common. But I have got these images that I started working on in Madrid and the shapes continue to bounce around in my head...the floating/flying girl who keeps relocating herself and turning up in different places, the seed pods, the cathedral ceiling shapes. There are no hidden messages here, I too am just swinging around with color and meaningful shapes until something catches my eye.


So this is a strange colored paper, it's not quite gray and not quite cement colored, and I have limited myself to watercolors, pencil, ink and paper.



This is a strange painting I've started and that remains silent. I don't know what to do with it but I like it and it is currently the only thing hanging from my wall, dead center.


Here I used two colors of acrylic...the other limitations apply and now, the paper is white. Dead sunflowers whizzing around and things dripping from a bird's feet. I do not know why I keep coming back to using sparrows, although they have played a large role in my young and present life, but I see their bodies as carries, they hold things in their claws and in their beaks and I like how they cry out...


This is a series of drawings that I am working on and they are simply based on photos taken of placed observed by myself over the past few years. I suppose you could call these the two veins of work I am currently following.


I find I am not too interested in reading these days, strangely, but have been doing a lot of looking. It is too early for me to jump back into large scale pieces, I am reschooling myself in some of the basics. But I am in love with the sunlight here and I am interested in natural shapes such as the leaves and seed pods I am collecting on my table. Like this one:


I am reading: Things I Didn't Know and I don't know if I like it. Hughes allows his personal opinions and biases influence his memoir writing SO much that the book kind of reads like his history writing.

1 comment:

Sydney said...

Elly,

It is encouraging that you are continuing to paint and draw and I think they look great. I wish I still had it in me to bust out my gouche set and set to work.

I like the patterning, though I am not sure if that is intentional...I say keep going in that direction. Do you want these to be larger eventually?

I am curious to hear what you are thinking about in regards to grad school--are you still moving in that direction?

I think it is great that you are working at Starbucks--it is a great job, well, at least I think so. Which one are you at? Seems that you are keeping busy, nonetheless, with two jobs. And which restaraunt is Riccardo working at? I bet you both are getting in good shape riding bikes everywhere! (P.S. Mark mid-February down on your calendar for a visit from me--I think I am getting a free plane ticket to the States!)

Thanks for the update on what you are doing, as well as getting this whole thing going, it has been good to see what everyone is up to!