Vessel Collages

For several years I cleaned my paint brush on a large sheet of MDF which I kept on my work table. As it became covered with paint and ink I realized that I had a good first layer for a painting.

I drew a grid over the surface, added paint deliberately, and simply played until it got to the point where I realized it was actually four smaller paintings. My friend ran the board through his table saw and then I went back to work with more paint and collage elements, now working each section individually. They each measure 11" x 22".

The vessel shapes, bowls, eggs and circles crept into each piece and finally each was finished.They've been sealed, varnished, framed and photographed.

I can't tell you the names of each of these vessel paintings; the names are on the back of each piece, at the photographers'. Naming is the hardest thing for me and I often put it off till last, just before I add each piece to my inventory sheet. Another thankless task... at least until it's time to show or sell the work and then I'll be glad I took time to do all the final steps.

Show and Tell at Home

There's a long narrow powder room next to my studio at home which I use as my personal art gallery. I can change out the artwork whenever I get tired of looking at it because the nail holes don't show in the texture of the wall paper. The room has a north-facing skylight so the light in that room is pure and clear, and even at night there's enough light from sconces and the little lamp to see the work. In fact, I've toyed with the idea of setting up an easel under the skylight so I can enjoy better light as I paint.

I've noticed that friends make a point of going to the bathroom whenever they visit, whether they need to or not, and they stay a while longer than one would think.

We like this bright, slightly chaotic room though it might cause an interior designer to shudder.

I'm of the opinion that when one is an artist her own works should be more prominent than works by others, shown without either pretense or shyness. Put it out for others to enjoy. Who know, maybe someone will want to buy a piece. And no, there are no prices displayed.

I have other of my art throughout the house, along with collected originals by other artists. They're sometimes conversation starters and reveal a bit about the people who live here. Even my husband's study is papered with art, though none of mine. He likes realistic works, especially farm scenes so there's lots of scenic watercolors and art he's purchased when he travels, along with his collection of carved birds.

What hangs on your walls?

The Sense of Touch

I delivered the following three paintings to the Cannon Beach Gallery to be juried for a January show with the theme of The Six Senses. None of them were accepted into the show but at least I stretched myself and increased my self confidence.  I was disappointed that the work was rejected but after seeing photos of the show I understood why the juror passed over these... they didn't play well with others. After all, when a juror makes selections from available works her job is to build the strongest, most cohesive show possible. My work simply didn't fit.

 Each piece is 12" x 12" on stretched canvas with a 1.5" cradle (side depth). They are mixed media, mostly acrylic with cheesecloth.  The titles are: "If I Could Touch the Night Sky", "Close Enough to Touch", and "Beyond Our Reach", and as you can see each name could go with either piece.

My work refers to the sense of touch.  One wants to touch the work because the visual texture is appealing, and also I considered the universe of stars and planets in our night sky that are absolutely too far away to touch... beyond man's reach.

It's an interesting theme. Doing work about the sense of touch was personally appealing because I am drawn to texture having worked with fabrics and threads over a lifetime. I can't keep my hands off appealing surfaces.



Workshop Report

Spot On
Jo Reimer
10" x 10"
Mixed Media

 It's been a week since I began the workshop with Donna Watson and time to post a report. For two days we worked with Japanese Rice Paper (washi) painting one side with acrylic paints of a consistency that left fibers visible on the reverse side which, in many cases, became the front. Then we cut and tore these papers and made collages. Spot On was my first one and if you look closely you can see the visual texture of the papers which were actually quite smooth to the touch.

The Good Life
Jo Reimer
10" x 10"
Mixed Media

I'm showing each collage in the order in which they were created. This one is a mix of papers, moving away from using lots of black and including more color. The lower left quadrant was painted with ultramarine on the other side. Remember that every piece of paper has two sides. The text in the orange band features painting over writing; the white vertical band features what I call "writing that can't be read"; some of the orange bits papers painted over a laser copy of names of women who've influenced my life, and at the top left is blue and black painted washi over handwriting. Because the washi is so thin it will show the layers below.

Torn
Jo Reimer
10" x 10"
Mixed Media

Torn is a quickie collage using just three papers. Donna tells me that this is more "me" than the others because I'm all about color and organic. I think she's right and perhaps that's why it went together so quickly. The piece on the left is white spray paint through a stencil onto brown. The orange stripe is painted tissue from my painted papers stash. The piece on the right is washi. I worked on palette paper, mixed raw umber with black and white and rolled it onto the palette paper, then combed through it to create the undulating lines.

Falling Leaf
Jo Reimer
10" x 10"
Mixed Media

Falling Leaf is my personal favorite. The top and bottom bands are washi painted in class. The orange band at center left is from my stash of tissue painted with inks. The leaf is from my garden, pressed last year and saved for just such a reason. The leaves are turning again and it's time to gather and press another batch. In our family we're all about trees. We have a family wholesale nursery where we grow ornamental trees which are sold to nurseries across the country. The crops include lots of Japanese maples and we have many growing around our home. I love to draw the winter skeletons of trees so using leaves in my mixed media collages is a given.

Now you wonder if I've followed through since the workshop and the answer is yes and no. I got sick the first day with a chest cold and since the workshop I haven't felt like doing much of anything other than reading over my class notes and summarizing them. My intention for tomorrow is to gather my stock of washi and tubes of acrylic and get busy painting more papers. That usually leads me directly to making and then I'll be off and running.

Pueblo Pottery - Along Old Route 66. collage painting

Pueblo Pottery - Along Old Route 66
Jo Reimer
Collage Painting
22" x 17"
Acrylic, paper

As a young teenager I traveled from my home in Arkansas along route 66 through Texas and New Mexico to Arizona to visit relatives and was struck by the beauty of the pottery made by the Native Americans of that time. I particularly remember the matte black pots with glossy black designs, especially those made by Maria Martinez.

I traveled to Taos for an art workshop some years ago and was again impressed by the gorgeous pottery. I've tried my hand at molding clay but these hands are made for stitching and painting, not pottery.

Then a couple of years ago my husband and I took a long road trip from Oregon through Idaho, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico and once again I was drawn to the pottery. Though styles have changed here and there we saw similar work among the more contemporary, all beautiful in their workmanship.

This piece is my way of mapping the memories of my travels through the Southwest.

Grass and Forest painting

Grass and Forest
acrylic on paper
15" x 11"

Today felt like a painting day but I needed to stay indoors so I pulled out a photo from a hike last year and went to work. I'm just getting a feel for the materials again so I didn't expect to produce a masterpiece but I'm satisfied with the work. I'll probably paint this again and again, and maybe soon I can return to the reserve and paint directly.

I used both fluid and heavy body acrylics, a mix of Golden and Holbein. with lots of water to make the work juicy. I'm leaning strongly toward using the thinner paint because I invaribly like to work thin so I get to play with drips and splatters.

Small Town Oregon... mapping

by Jo Reimer



Small Town Oregon
Collage Painting
14" x 18"

Like many of you I often being my day with quiet meditation and writing in my journal, morphing from what has been into plans for the coming day in the studio. I explore ideas about current work during this time and jot down sketchy ideas about what I'll do with my studio time. 

I'm continuing to explore ways to use my connection with maps in my artwork and am finding even more excitement in working through this series.  This journey via my old maps just gets more interesting.

I've shredded maps; I've cut maps with scissors; I've torn maps; I've drawn the lines of highways, roads, and streets on paper and canvas; I've used maps as the substrate upon which I paint; I've glued maps onto just about anything that will hold still...  

....and the ideas keep coming.

Small Town Oregon began as an atmospheric landscape painting in acrylic.  It needed something more interesting than soft color so I asked the What If questions and decided to lift the maps of small towns upright as though the maps were being projected onto the sky.

Before I go much further I'll write a statement about the series so that it become clearer in my mind, not that this will be the final statement. It'll be refined as I work, but simply stating some of my intentions should help me leap ahead. It's one of the things I remember from Journalism 101... answer the questions: Who, What, When, Where, Why and How... and and my own mantra, What If...  what could I do next because of what's been done.

Mapping New Work

 

by Jo Reimer

I've collected road maps since our initial trip west, many of them free from gas stations along the way. Some are tourist maps of cities, some AAA maps, some hand drawn. Maps have been a large part of my life, and maybe yours, too, though we now rely on Google Maps and the maps in our smartphones and our GPS. I still print out maps because I'm so used to the paper map.

So... one day I decided to shred an old map see how I could use the strips creatively. To me the strips of map are the roadway, the directions for how to get somewhere, the path I traveled, and because I make an effort to make art that reflects my own life history and emotions it seemed appropriate to investigate where my map collection would take me on canvas and paper.


Crossroads
22" x 17"
acrylic and collage on paper

 

 

 

Crossroads was the first in the series. Here I laid down strips of map to indicate a matrix of roads leading away from a city somewhere west, near the water.



From Franklin to Oneida
22" x 17"
acrylic and collage on paper

From Franklin to Oneida, 22 x 17, grew out of imagining the chaos of traveling through unfamiliar landscape, following a straight highway and suddenly coming upon a small town out in the middle of nowhere and wondering why people settled there in the first place.

Sea City
10" x 10"
acrylic and collage on paper


The design for Sea City came about from looking at an actual map of a coastal city and adding the main streets to the painting as strips of maps, though not cut from a map of this actual city.

 

Toward Mill City
5" x 20"
collage on board

Toward Mill City veers away from strips of map to using larger torn scraps of map to indicate the city and the straight shot of freeway driving between one town and another.

Wetlands
20" x 20"
acrylic and collage on board

As I was painting Wetlands I imagined looking down on the landscape from above, seeing a small town nestled between the rivers and creeks that flow through a rather wet landscape. Homes and businesses were built above the flood plain but were controlled by the flow of the water, while nearby the freeway soared above the landscape, bypassing the town altogether.

From San Antonio to OKC
6" x 24"
acrylic and collage on board

From San Antonio to OKC uses larger portions of the maps of two large cities as well as painted papers and slices of maps. 

As you can see, I continue to experiment with ways to use my maps. I've only scratched the surface as I search for more ways to use the idea of maps, travel, journey, and exploration.  I have lots more ideas and since this work is moving along so fast I'm confident that I'll have many more pieces to show you in the future.

Garden in Bloom

by Jo Reimer

Garden in Bloom
30" x 22"
Collage Painting on Paper

Set a sheet of white paper on the table with the tools of your trade arranged within easy reach and paint all day. Cover the results with a coat of gesso and start over. Repeat 3 more times. Decide that this one won't be a masterpiece but it WILL be a fine birthday present for an appreciative granddaughter.

I struggled with this sheet of 300# watercolor paper for several days and nothing I did seemed to work. Finally I decided that some of the lines looked a bit like stems and some of the circles looked like flowers. A friend advised turning back to collage, so this is what resulted. It might be done. I might draw on top of it. I might move on.

detail

Random.. a painting

by Jo Reimer

Random

acrylic on paper

22x30"

This is what happened recently when I set out to paint with absolutely no intention other than to use complementary colors, in this case orange and blue. I chose lines and circles with grid lines and just kept painting until the composition came together. At first I called it ugly but after looking at it for a few days I find I quite like it. But for sure I prefer to paint with some realistic thing in mind... landscape, flowers, still life... although with my surface design and quilting background the geometry of pure design continues to pop out of me now and then.

Randall David Tipton workshop

by Jo Reimer

Refuge
Watermedia on Yupo
20" x 13"

Refuge
matted

I participated in a workshop with Randall David Tipton over the weekend, making paintings on Yupo, a plastic "paper" from Japan. Randall shared his methods for using watercolor and acrylic paints and mediums on this interesting surface, but most importantly he talked to us about interacting with the landscape and remembering the emotion of the moment in order to make a painting without being photo-realistic. We mostly painted from memory.

In the past as I've moved through the landscape and been moved by the beauty of this earth, my thoughts have been rather useless for informing future work. I didn't think carefully about what I was seeing. I didn't ask questions of myself, like 'what is it about that patch of brush that I find beautiful?' or 'why does this particular sunset move me to tears?' 

I do take a lot of photographs and am careful about compositon which does help with memory, as does sketching. But being mindful about the emotions of the moment is necessary to making good paintings later.

Undersea
Watermedia on Yupo
20" x 13"

Undersea
matted
A mat makes a big difference in
the presentation of a finished piece.

Randall's website is here and his blog is here. His work is available at the White Bird Gallery in Cannon Beach and directly from him. His price list is on his blog.

My work is also available.

Sango Kaku... an acrylic painting

Sango Kaku

 

 

This acrylic painting was done on a cradled 12x12" canvas.

Our back yard is filled with beautiful trees, many of which are Japanese Maples that we grow at our nursery. The Sango Kaku, aka Coral Bark Maple, is amazing any time of the year with green gold leaves in spring and summer, turning yellow and then coral in autumn. Then after the leaves drop the twigs and branches turn bright coral red to brighten our winter landscape. 

I stare at the tree from my studio and kitchen windows and have taken several photos over the years. Finally I decided to paint it. Why render an exact copy in paint? That's not my kind of art. So I set out to paint my feelings about the tree. When I finished I thought I had failed, but today I realize that I managed to capture the essence of the tree. A burst of yellow orange. Accents of bright rusty orangey red at the edges. The afternoon light striking the leaves, making them glow. Coral bark. Blue sky reflected in the pond. 

I'm not so sure about the underlying grid... but that's part of my history and way of working. So there!

Hillsboro Plein Air Paintout - downtown

While I was painting in downtown Hillsboro on the second day of the paintout a reporter for a local paper stopped by to take some pictures and ask some questions. I didn't think much about but a couple of different people who take that newspaper brought me copies of the next issue of the paper, showing me painting. Then today some pictures of the various artists were published on Flickr here.



The Flower Seller
oil on board
8" x 10"

We were in central Oregon last weekend; the following sketches were done in my little Moleskine book which is slightly smaller than 4x6 inches:

A view across the river from Greg's Grill where we lunched.

This view of the Deschutes River was done on the riverband at Lava Island Falls. The reddish brown is a large lava flow from ancient times. The forested land in the region is mostly lodgepole pine.

My husband and I enjoy visiting the High Desert Museum south of Bend. The best part of the living museum is the grounds surrounding the buildings with trails, forests, and a rather new replica of a pioneer farm, complete with a hand pump, a wash tub with scrub board, a garden and a corral made of 'found' timber. All the little kids were enjoying playing house: pumping water, watering the garden, washing clothes in the washtub and then hanging on the line to dry. I remember when that was a chore rather than an interesting activity to do in an interpretive museum.

The view from our balcony at Sunriver was looking out over the golf course which is dotted with small stands of pine trees, with some of the Cascade mountain range in the distance.

This view is looking across Sun River toward Mt. Bachelor in the near distance.

The Flower Seller, plein air oil painting

 

 

 

The Flower Seller

 

 

I've survived my second two-day paint-out, though it took a few naps after the day. Saturday's location was downtown Hillsboro. I walked around the area for quite awhile, taking lots of photos and assessing the area near the courthouse and the farmers market and finally decided to combine elements from two Vietnamese flower seller booths. The day was gray and rainy so I chose a spot under cover of a building overhang and set up my easel. The first step was to make some compositon/value sketches. Once that was done I sketched in the basic design using a brush and thinned blue paint, laid out my colors and started painting.

The painters and interested public were invited to the Walters Cultural Center for a mid-afternoon party on the lawn with live music, food, and wine tasting while the juror decided on awards. No, I didn't take home a ribbon this year, but I did win a large drying box and some panels from RayMar so I was a happy camper. Having this 12 x 16 panel box will enable me to work on larger oils in the field by giving me a safe way to carry the work home.  My work will be shown along with others during August at the Center.

I didn't photograph the painting I did Friday but as soon as I can do so I'll post it for you to see.

I'm happy with both paintings, and even more with myself because I gathered the courage to step up to the challenge of painting in a rather new-to-me medium in public alongside lots of people who do this on a regular basis. Everyone was kind and I hope to paint with a plein air group again.

Hillsboro Plein Air Paintout in Jackson Bottom

Today was the first of two days of the annual plein air paintout in Hillsboro and I decided to pack up my oils and participate. After checking in and having the back of my boards stamped I drove to the refuge and set up with a wide open skies viewpoint and commenced to paint what I saw. I like the work I did but it isn't a winner, just practice with a deadline, thank you, Randall. 

My daughter arrived with her three youngest and Sarah, who's nearly 11, wanted to try her hand at painting with oil. she took to it like a duck to water and finished a very sweet little painting that's mostly sky. One concept she picked all up by herself is that she can look at what's in front of her and paint that rather than what's in her head.

I'll be painting again tomorrow in downtown Hillsboro, first at the 'Fast Draw" at the Walters Art Center, and then I'll set up downtown and tackle an urban scene. Painting commences at 9 am, and Fast Draw is at 10. We turn in our work for jurying at 2:30 at the Walters Center.   The Farmers Market is Saturday so the town will be hopping with activity, what with all the artists and farmers around. Maybe I'll see some of you there.

Splashing oil onto canvas

Field of Canola
8x8
oil on canvas

I've decided to concentrate on working with oils for the next couple of months. I've put away the acrylics, most of the journals, the watercolors, the sewing, the Little Jo collages, the daily collages. I'm in the process of decluttering my studio so there's room to breathe and to think in a new way.

I have a bunch of gessoedstretched and unstretched canvas and a drawer full of oil paint and mediums. The plan is to paint large and with abandon, putting my heart, my emotions into the work and see what comes out. I'll try not to critique my own work, not yet. I'll just paint one thing after another, working on several things at a time, but working in series, on landscape and maybe some abstracted flowers.

As you see, above, my work is more than a bit constricted. I remember how I felt about seeing that huge field of canola flowers, brilliant yellow stretching to the sky. But when I put brush to canvas my feelings won't come out, not yet... but I'll get there as I put miles on my brush. Big brushes. Big canvas. Splashing on the color. I can't lose.

Even that field of canola with the same composition would be pretty impressive if it was 6 times as large.

Right now I'm experimenting with the materials. I've worked in oil before, under direction in a workshop situation, but now I want to spend the time to see what develops.

Repurposing Children's Board Books

Children's board books, the kind with super heavy pages, make great substrates for small paintings.

PREPARE THE BOARDS:

1. Tear the book apart, page by page. Leave the tatters on the edges.
2. Tear strips of cotton fabric, any weight from gauze to heavy duck, whatever you have. The strips should be approximately the size and shape of the boards. It's okay that the edges won't line up. This fabric helps cover the original images and colors and is used to add texture. Skip this step if you want smooth pages.
3. Use any white glue (Elmer's, Sobo, PVA, etc.) to glue a strip of fabric to each side of each of the pages. Allow to dry.
4. Optional: Coat all surfaces with acrylic gel medium to seal in any acids.
5. Apply gesso liberally to all surfaces of the fabric and board. Dry.

USE THE BOARDS

1. For the above book I painted, stamped and stenciled my designs onto 5 prepared book pages, allowing paint to dry between coats.  I set 2 grommets in each page on the inner edges where one page would attach to another, and then used short chains to bind the pages together.
2. I have used some of the single pages for the substrate for small paintings. Sorry, no pictures available.
3. Some board books have large holes which can be useful to create a niche by gluing a page with a hole on top of a solid page and then put something into this niche.
4. Of course one could tell a new story on the painted pages.

Calla Lily - finished

Calla Lily
22 x 30"
acrylic on paper

Here's the completed painting. I like it more every time I come back to have a look.  If you click on the image you'll be able to see some of the detail. I'll put it away and put up another sheet of paper and see what happens.

Portrait of a Calla Lily

Painting again
I've been painting again and it sure feels good. It's been way too long since I felt the need to pick up my brush and move the paint around. What set me off was a bouquet of white calla lilies with their long stems and graceful shape. I very nearly waited too long to start... the blooms had started to turn brown on the tips before I set up at the easel. But since I don't want to worry about realism in my approach to the canvas I didn't let a few dead bits stop me.

The painting isn't finished but here's an early view to show you that I'm actually working.

And you can also see a bit of the area where I've set up my easel. It's a tight fit between a bookcase-turned-paint-storage unit and my flat files-turned-taboret. This isn't a perfect setup, mostly because the light is bad, but I'll play around here for awhile and see if it grows on me. I do like having the easel against the wall instead of in the middle of valuable floor space, and it's positioned so I can easily get a long view from across the room or even out in the hall.

Catalog as Journal
The Anthropologie catalog arrived in my mailbox a couple of days ago. Now mind you, the clothes in that store don't suit my style but whoever designs the catalog appeals to my sensibilities in a big way. The pages are spare with lots of negative space that just cries out for journaling and the beautiful scenes are perfect backdrops for more collage. Maybe Little Jo will go visit India along with Anthropologie.

My plan is to take the catalog apart by removing the staples.  Then I'll sew strips of fabric to the spine of each double page to stablize it, and add more bits of fabric and lace and collage bits here and there with machining. When I've redesigned the pages to suit myself I'll sew the pages back together and into a more sturdy cover, and I'll end up with a new daily journal for the rest of the spring.

My blog buddy Susie LaFond had a similar idea and posted about it on her blog today. Click here to read what she has to say.  I loved her encouraging words, "Go out and find a puddle to play in". Amen!

Stormy Day Gray

Coastal Storm

It's not fit for man nor beast outside and I'm counting my blessings for a snug place to spend the day, for heat and electricity and plenty of food in the cupboard... and especially for a blank canvas and a few tubes of paint with which to record the many grays I see.  When the sky is such a whitish gray and the clouds are so low there isn't much definition anywhere. It's difficult to get the waves right when they change moment by moment, but I think you'll get the picture.  The only thing that could get me out of here today is a trip to Seaside to get some acrylic medium that's fresh and juicy to replace this dried up stuff I brought with me.