EVOLUTION OF A JACK RABBIT PAINTING

While loitering on Pinterest one day I saw paintings made of mostly torn pieces of colorful papers. I had started an 8" x 10" portrait of a jack rabbit but did not like it much. So I tried my hand at this new method, using bits of paper from magazines, maps, and Gelli prints I had made in the spring. The evolution of J is for Jack rabbit speaks for itself:

 

J IS FOR JACK RABIT
With a barn wood frame from NORTHWEST HANDMADE in Sandpoint, ID
now proudly resides at the home of Sherry and Sam Irwin in Priest River, ID

ART-MAKING ON SUMMER 2015 ROAD TRIP

Every summer I drive all over Northern Idaho, NW Montana, and over to Bellingham, WA, to be with people and landscapes I love. This last summer I also took a wonderful online art workshop with the fabulous mixed media collage artist in Colorado named Kellie Day and made art along the way. Basically, you use acrylic medium to "glue" meaningful scraps/pieces of paper -- old letters, images of birds, maps, flashes of color, poetry, etc. onto a canvas. Once that dries you sketch your main subject free hand with fluid black paint using an eye dropper -- which resulted (for me) in  a globby calligraphic outline. Then you paint the background, removing paint in some areas to reveal some of the collage elements. Then you paint the main subject. All paints/mediums are acrylic. At any time you can add more collage elements. YOU CAN'T GO WRONG with the fun method. You just keep playing until . . . well, that is the mystery. When is a piece "done?"

Here is the basic process in photos:

F is for Fireweed -- 12" x 24"
After  doing the collage I outlined the fireweed from a sketch I did years ago, and then painted
a cream background. I repainted the background in light blue. No cigar. 

Then I painted the fireweed and repainted the background a pale cream
 -- losing most collage elements. I threw and drew bits of white onto the fireweed.

I added a few more collage elements and touches of white. I gave the painting to Bobbie Ryder,
who has generously shared her cottage The Vinyl Villa at Sunnyside with me for many summers.
She had Ward Tolbom of Hen's Tooth Framing and Gallery in Sandpoint frame the painting in black wood.

RAVENS MATE FOR LIFE – or – THE STORY OF ED AND LENORE

For fabulous facts about ravens please click on this link:  http://www.whitewolfpack.com/2014/12/10-fascinating-facts-about-ravens.html

The comments at the end of that article are also fascinating.

In February I had a visitor named Victor Jacinto Cano from Bellingham, WA. He arrived in his small motor home with his small and altogether adorable Havanese doggie named Lola. While Victor and I have nine mutual friends in Bellingham, we had never met. He and Lola found a mostly level spot to park the RV and stayed two nights. We had a nice time and Sudsie liked having Lola around as we drove to sights on the Grand Staircase.

Vic and Lola at Devil's Garden

Sudsie and Lola

Prior to Vic’s arrival, he had posted photos of his travels on Facebook – including several pics of two ravens.  He had taken these photos while camping in Northern Arizona. With Victor’s permission, I set about painting the ravens in various poses using mixed media techniques with acrylic paint.  After learning that ravens mate for life, I decided this particular raven couple had relationship issues. My friend Howard Hutchison, a world famous paleontologist and a very witty person, suggested I name the ravens Ed (for Edgar Allen Poe) and Lenore (for the woman EAP wrote about in his most famous poem).

The next thing you know, I started having “commercial” thoughts about my experiments with ravens in art. I would make prints of the three paintings as well as note cards. I gave the paintings titles – captions, really – of what Lenore might be saying to Ed, based on their “body language.” Remember, their relationship is troubled. It was great fun thinking up titles.Then an artist friend, whose opinion I value, suggested that I might sell more note cards if the titles were “friendlier.” She probably has a point.

Below are the images along with their current titles, which will be changed for the note cards. See what you think.

You Know I Love You Just the Way You Are **SOLD**
Mixed Media, Acrylic, 12" x 12"
by Rae Ellen Lee

Ed, look! It's Your Higher Power!  ** SOLD **
Mixed Media, Acrylic, 12" x 12"
by Rae Ellen Lee

We Could Just Ask For Directions! **SOLD**.
Mixed Media, Acrylic, 12" x 12"
by Rae Ellen Lee

SUSPENDED

When you make a mistake in real life, it is sometimes difficult to mop up. And it’s nearly impossible to extricate from some choices one makes. It can take years to set things right.

But . . . with painting, If you don’t like a color you just applied, well, just paint over it with a new color. It’s as if that icky color choice never happened. I love this about painting. 

I recently spent entire days painting a large (for me) painting – 18” x 24” I believe it was. The scene was a rock wall which contains a hanging/suspended pothole beneath what we call a “pour-off” -- a late afternoon scene with big shadows. I called it SUSPENDED. This is from a sketch I did on the way to Zebra Slot Canyon here on the Grand Staircase. As I painted and painted, I had to keep painting over areas – mopping up. As an exercise, a learning experience, it was quite grand. However, when I could fix on it no more, I realized the thing did NOT hang together as one whole piece. A more professional statement would be that it “lacked unity.” See what you think:

SUSPENDED
Acrylic Mixed Media  at 18" x 24" by Rae Ellen Lee

Almost without hesitation, I got out my utility knife and a scissors and cut up the offending canvas into small pieces -- none larger than 5" x 7". Quality and quantity were increased with a few slices of the knife, a few quick snips with the scissors. Other problems in life should be so quickly resolved. Oh, there were new needs to be met – sizing, adding a raven or a tree or two, finding appropriate frames, etc. Here are 5 pieces I consider finished. I'm "resolving" 2 more (one of them with the feature that looks like a lizard's head). I’m rather pleased with the results.  These are highly textured (with layers of tissue) and sport a sheen of metallic gold. They look better in person, but you can get an idea from these images: 

"Tree Shadow" **SOLD**
5" x 7" Acrylic Mixed Media
by Rae Ellen Lee

"Look! It's a plane." **SOLD**
4" x 6" Acrylic Mixed Media
by Rae Ellen Lee

Pinion Pine on Red
4" x 6" Acrylic Mixed Media
by Rae Ellen Lee

Canyon Shadows
6" x 6" Acrylic Mixed Media
by Rae Ellen Lee

Canyon Colors **SOLD**
4" x 4" Acrylic Mixed Media
by Rae Ellen Lee

RAVENS ON RABBIT BRUSH

RAVENS ON RABBIT BRUSH.  **SOLD**
Acrylic on wood block -- on rabbit brush stems.
Total size 7" x 7"

While the actual painting in this piece, RAVENS ON RABBIT BRUSH, is only 1.5” x 1.5” x .5 the “twig” base is actually rabbit brush stems in winter. These soft green stems are woody in winter and will die and turn gray in future seasons.  The reference photo of the two ravens was taken by a new friend, Victor Jacinto Cano, an artist and musician from Bellingham. We have about nine mutual friends on Facebook but had never met, so he stopped recently to visit me while on a road trip around the southwest. He’s traveling with Lola, his adorable little Havanese doggie companion.

I have decided to include this piece in my #70Paintings70Years project.

A few of the #70Paintings70Years pieces I posted previously are in my first art show, with friend Reiser, at the Anasazi State Park in Boulder, Utah. I wasn’t actually ready for a show, but could not pass up this fine opportunity.  It runs until April 11, 2015, so if you are passing through the area check out this fine state park. Before or after you watch the video about the Coombs Archeological Site, look at G. K. Reiser’s colorful paintings and whimsical sculptures (occupying most of the wall space) and my paintings (at the back of the room).

At my first art show (paintings look better in person)
Anasazi State Park gallery
Boulder, UT

Victor Jacinto Cano and Lola

One of Victor's mask carvings

Lola and Sudsie running free 

THE COLORADO RIVER, acrylic on paper
by G. K. Reiser

BULLWINKLE
by G. K. Reiser (stone, wire, wood)
about 18" high

CONVERGENCE

To go with the latest painting done for my project #70Paintings70Years -- One Woman Paints Her Life, I found an autobiographical piece I wrote while messing with words in a group of wonderful writer friends in Bellingham. I added a few words and here it is.

“Please, God,” she said as a child. “Don’t let me grow up to lead a boring life.”

In winter she looked out the window at the snow and wrote a poem that started with “the wood violets sweet. . .” and went on to win a contest so at the age of eight she became a “published writer,” no matter it was only in the Priest River Times. Encouraged, she wrote more often and climbed higher trees to look out beyond the valley of the creek where she lived, over the fences and cows to the river that led to the ocean where she would go someday. After she climbed down out of the trees to graduate from high school, she left the valley to search for big vistas that led elsewhere, always elsewhere.

When she finally found the ocean she’d always longed for, the water was so very cold, and she got lost. She longed for trees and land and for creeks you could jump across. How could she get it right? How could she discover where she belonged? Then she met a new friend and moved to a small desert town, where she found a convergence of air and scenery and endless big vistas to explore. Life is definitely not boring in the desert, and this is home, for now.

The making of CONVERVENCE 

Ready to paint - but first decide a color scheme.

One would expect the sky to be blue and the ground in the
desert to be orangish. But since I have neither a "brand"
nor a reputation as an artist, I am totally free to experiment.

CONVERGENCE, 9" x 12", Acrylic on Wood Panel

RICKY BOY

Occasionally I take care of my friend Louise’s llamas. Louise has installed a curious fence – not really like the one behind Ricky -- but one made out of sticks from a couple of beaver dams that had been disassembled by people who aren’t so smart about the value of beavers and beaver dams to the watershed, here in the desert. But I won’t get on a soapbox now. Louise had permission to gather the sticks, because it so happens that sticks from beaver dams are all fairly close in diameter and length. 

Back to the llamas. They are friendly and enjoy smelling one’s face. When their muzzles actually touch my face I hold my breath and make smooching sounds. They don’t seem to mind. Ricky is the friendliest of the 4 llamas, and his mostly black coat makes him particularly photogenic.

RICKY BOY, 8" X 8"
Acrylic on Wood Panel

Ricky Boy and the fence constructed of sticks
from a disassembled beaver dam

Ricky Boy, Cristo, and Friz the Goat

I saw a travel show once in which Anthony Bourdain ate goat's bladder stuffed with spleen, roasted over an open fire. I have not told Fritz the Goad yet.