Tag Archives: color

Year Long Canvas Project #8

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

 

her2 Year Long Canvas Challenge, Week 8, copyright 2014, Jo Ann Brown-Scott – untitled

Time flies when you are having fun – here we are at week 8 – about 44 or so to go. (for you new followers thank you so much for coming aboard, and please refer to my archives for an explanation of the Year Long Canvas Challenge).

And as of now, she has totally lost her original identity. The old “year-long” as we remember her is nearly gone. She is in the witness protection program hoping for an entirely new start.

Yesterday was CRAAAzy. She took off out of the blue and left me in the dust….the canvas I mean. I believe the mood in the classroom was partly responsible – people were laughing and talking as they painted, and some were  actually told to dial it down and be quiet. But see what good energy was unleashed as a result? Silence is over-rated.

She has gotten a life of her own. My head was spinning. I was out of breath, trying to keep up with what she was telling me to do….yelling at me! Commanding me.

She is all up in my face about wanting to be FREE.

She told me that last week’s additions were pretty much OK  but she wants more – she wants to have it all.

Color, line, rhythm, movement, sensuality. Mystery! A message! Is she asking me for calligraphy….???

So what is all that going on in the left-center of the composition? All the shapes, and the dots and the compartments of color and black? Even a couple or three triangular flag shapes….HUH?

I believe it has something to do with the week I have had – a week of LIFE issues, the kind everyone has – and all the compartments I place them in. There was a death, the announcement of a pending birth in the family, a bit of drama I will not go into, a health thing, an amazing dream and even more. I watched a cute kid in the park flying a kite – a flag? I see the whirl of the wind in the composition – and chaos. It is all a big Rorschach image – you see what you want to see. And if you are not seeing anything much at all except bold color, that is also just fine.

So I had fun in class yesterday – my esteemed instructor, Homare Ikeda, likes it and he and I both threw out some suggestions – I tried a couple of them in this newest incarnation and covered one up already. Three steps forward, one back.

It is almost May and I am trying my best to be carefree. So far it seems to be working.

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The Creative Epiphany – Seems like a Pattern Might be Forming

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

stairs  If you are a junkie for the sensuality of color, the allure of textures both worn and shiny new, and the perfectly fascinating personality of various patterns, then you must take a look here. I am an artist – I paint. I am especially passionate about color, texture and pattern which are always present to a certain degree in my artwork. I just returned from a trip to Singapore and Thailand – can you imagine my delight, observing such magnificent color, such tactile and time worn textures and such intensely busy pattern?  I was on such a happy/goofy level of sensory overload the entire time I was there that the culture shock of coming home was evident to me on so many levels…I flew through Seattle back into the states…and it was raining and gray….coming home…leaves gone from the trees…winter.

In this photo gallery I hope you will notice that this much color and pattern and texture brings a joyful response from your senses, a few audible WOW’s I hope – yes it is a lot to see all at once so take it in small doses if you’d like – but please do accept these pictures as a sign that the world can still present you with visual delights that make your heart race. Surprisingly the restaurant shophouse entry with white chairs, so uninhibited in color that you might suspect it of being Mexican, is actually located on Arab Street, where some of the most fun and friendly people greeted us. The ornate temple facades, reminiscent of icing on birthday cakes (no disrespect intended!)  are of course from the Grand Palace grounds in Bangkok where the three-dimensional tiny mosaic pieces are not much larger than your thumbnail. The gorgeous mural at the top of the stairs in the first photo is in the entry foyer of the Four Seasons Hotel in Bangkok.

Have a look – I hope I will detect a smile of pleasure on your face. If it makes you dizzy, enjoy the ride.

photo 5 (2)photo 4 (2)photo 2 (2)

photo 3 (3)   arab  urn  manone

mosaic  monks   flowers  mantwo

mosaictwophoto 1 (2)

The Creative Epiphany – Gone

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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I am gone – I left the island in the dead of night with a stiff breeze behind me, embarrassed almost to be leaving because who in their right mind would leave, and flew back to northern Cal. I didn’t really want to leave and my dread of the long night ahead of me on the plane was punctuated when the person next to me spilled a full glass of tomato juice all over my carry-on.  I took it as an omen that I was going to hate the trip home. I really didn’t want to leave, or did I already say that. The island life is alluring, delicious, sensual, colorful and it grows on you. You roll around in the ambience, like a dog on a good smell, wanting to get it permanently into your pores. It is sensory overload 24/7. I wanted to really be there – not just visiting. I met a lot of new people who I already believe will be friends, I painted, I wrote and I thought a lot. We took day trips, we went to street fairs and markets, we visited art galleries and many beaches.  I took about 7 million pictures and told myself I was absolutely allowed to stand there on my beach of choice for over an hour if I wanted to, attempting to capture the perfect wave in one magnificent photo.

But now, as the James Taylor song says, “Say nice things about me – cuz I’m gone.”

The seduction of color hits you at every turn in Hawaii. Those of us who are hooked on it, who must have our daily fix, who lap it up and eat it whole with juice dripping down our cheeks as we photograph it, who live and breathe it and cannot possibly get enough of our junkie habit, our COLOR drug of choice, well we are happy as hell on the islands.

The paintings I finished over there in lala land were like alien creations – colorful, wild and a little bit too free even for me. Like craft day in the loony bin. Kind of mindless and silly with metaphorical smiles. Abstract to be sure, and I know it was my hand that painted them because I watched it happen, but somewhere along the way they went all goofy and the color became almost the only thing. It was fun while it lasted, however. I worked fast while held in the zany clutches of some island gremlin and lost my common sense as I flung the paint around. I guess that would be called painting with abandon. A good thing, really, to be able to unleash that inner 3 year old and give her an afternoon purely for her enjoyment. She got her wiggles out.

But she grew up fast on the ride home when that tomato juice hit the fan. It seemed symbolically rude. Like a smack in the face that said, “Ha Ha, nanny nanny foo foo – you have to go home now.”

And so I did – I took my toys and went home.

Wow is it drab here at home in the middle of February. When I returned from the island, the barefoot confetti life gave way to the black frost bitten gerbera daisies in the pots around the patio. Spring is still a way off here.

But I have pictures to prove the validity of paradise and what it does to you. Wanna see some?

And don’t you know when the cold wind blows it’ll turn your head around.  55 degrees seems like freezing as I leave baggage claim and load my stuff into a friend’s car for the drive back to Lincoln.

Was that place a dream?

The Creative Epiphany – Painting Away

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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There is a certain charm in painting away from home “on location” as they say – remotely – in a studio not your own. It is liberating – everything’s arranged differently and it forces you to leave your routine behind and get loose. Where’s the paper towels? Do you have a squeegee? How about some light blue violet? The light is best at this window except the ants are crawling across my canvas.

The locale offers you new colors to consider, new views, new sunsets and exotic fruit. That is all true and on steroids here in Hawaii. The visual display begins with breakfast and continues throughout the day – kinda makes you want to take notes, and you do – mental color notes. You wish you had more paint. You wish you had more time. You wish.
Purples with sunset orange, pineapple, lime, papaya, mango – all translatable into colors splashed on canvas. Juicey and delicious.

To have two paintings completed before lunch seems ridiculous. That just never happens at home. To be certain that they are truly finished by mid afternoon is crazy fun. To see colors flowing from some resource you had no idea you could use, as if channeling the island ambience just for yourself, is a delightful discovery. Being away is an epiphany.