Urban Sunset

Jo Reimer.  Urban Sunset.  24x30".  Collage

It's not at all obvious but this piece started out with an under-painting of orange, magenta and yellow and somewhere along the way all the yellow was covered up except for that tiny bit in the lower right corner. That yellow presented quite a struggle to me because the papers I covered up were quite beautiful. Precious, even. The last of the lot.  Gone.

When a paper or a painting or even a passage is considered to be too precious to cover over it can become a stumbling block to creativity. It certainly was for me, and for the longest time I couldn't move on. The original direction of the colors in this piece was simply too close, too boring, too analagous.  What did the work need, I asked myself.  Gray maybe. A city is mostly concrete, after all.  So out came the collection of gray paper to cover those four corners. And there it lay for a few days while I gathered the courage to cover up all that lovely yellow. 

The lines of magenta on top of the brightest orange were done with a stencil which I took with me the day I painted at the Glencoe HS Art Week  last month.  I wanted to repeat the shapes in the stencil so I held it in place on top of some of the gray area and dabbed on some white paint and then added shadow, working with pencil and thinned down paint until I had it just right. 

The figures in the cityscape are all me. Shadow photographs printed onto painted papers and added as collage elements.

Urban Sunset is on view in the current show at Oregon Society of Artists.

Fantasy Flowers

 

Jo Reimer: Fantasy Flowers  14x11" acrylic, watercolor, ink, paper

Sometimes a piece comes out of left field and insists upon being present within my body of work. This started one morning last year as I was dinking around with paint and a brush, just spreading color around and seeing where the wet paint would go. It got ugly fast so I put it away thinking I still had one side of the paper I could work on.  

Months later I spied it among the "works in process" drawer and decided to play on it with some ink. Hours and days later this is what emerged. I could keep working but I won't. It delights me just as is. The only bit of collage is the big yellow rose that satisfied the need for a place to rest my eyes.

More Little Jo Stories

Little Jo Rides Again...

Little Jo and Her Dolly

You've seen Little Jo before. I used her photos several years ago when I first stated making a collage a day and I ran across some of her prints while preparing for Collage BootCamp which will be this coming Saturday, March 12.  (There are still a few spaces, if you can join us. Click here for more information.)

One doesn't usually find much use for childhood photos, but I'm having such fun with mine. These Little Jo photos are of me at 2-4 years of age, taken by my dad who loved me with his camera, for which I'm grateful.

Now I'm at it again. I won two canvases for the Village Gallery of Arts May show, Art Adoption, and bought two more and am running with the Little Jo theme. 

Little Jo and Her New Trike

Two of the collage processes I teach in my one-day collage class, BootCamp, are used in all four collage paintings which are made on the cradled canvas. The background was built up first, using the inside of security envelopes. I didn't really think much about what I was doing once I chose and trimmed the papers to size.

After the background dried the front and sides got an isolation coat and then I started playing with scraps of brightly colored papers that contrast strongly against the gray ground. 

Little Jo and Jimbo

I call this type of composition, Layer Cake. It's one I teach in BootCamp, where you make a cattywampus paper layer cake. Little Jo was added here and there and then I spent a satisfying evening doing lots of line-work.  I don't think they're quite done but that's okay because they'll hang around the studio for two months before I have to send them out into the world and I'm sure I'll figure out something else to do to them.

Little Jo Joins the Party

I'll remind you about the VGA show later on in April. There will be 180 6x6" artworks on canvas available at bargain basement prices of $25-$50. It's a benefit for the gallery. Long lines form at the door the morning of May 3 at 10am so come early.