Tag Archives: feathers

Moonlit – abstract painting, Peacock series

Moonlit
Moonlit, 24″x36″, acrylic on canvas, © 2015 Donna Grandin. $1400

Can you feel the movement in this painting?

Although my interpretation of the peacock feathers is more plant-like in Moonlit, I think you still get the feeling of them being swooshed around in the currents.

This was the first painting I created in my Hamilton studio during my 3 month “self-hosted residency”.

I remember there was a little happy dance involved. I shut my door, turned on the radio and stood at the easel. I was euphoric with the possibilities ahead … I’d carved out the space, privacy and time to work on a new series of abstracts. Freedom from photos, and any preconceived notions.

It was exhilarating. As I moved to the music I sketched a whimsical image in charcoal, and wrote down lyrics that resounded with me.

Eventually I started adding colour and the painting evolved, but I did take a photo and will show it to you … if you are the one who ends up collecting this piece. Otherwise, it’s WAY too embarrassing to put out there!

I will have Moonlit at the art fair tomorrow, but it may not be on display, so if you want to see it specifically, just ask!

Have you enjoyed my week of Peacock Painting Previews?

If you are on my Blue Roots Art Studio Mailing List, even if you’re reading this blog post now, take a look at today’s e-mail because there is something special in it for you!

I will probably not post for a while, as I will be wiped out after this event, and I will have some follow-up items to take care of … not to mention hanging out with my boys. Summer is flying by faster than I thought it would.

There is a big new art project on the horizon, I don’t want to announce it until all the signatures are on the contract etc, but it will keep me busy for the next 2 months. Just a hint though … it does not involve peacock feathers OR tropical foliage.

I am looking forward to seeing some of you at Art in the Park Oakville tomorrow. I will be in booth #143.

It looks like there will be rain, but the show will go on. I invested in a waterproof tent, to protect my paintings, so just dress accordingly and come on out!

Welcome to my Peacock Garden

Peacock garden, 24"x36", acrylic on canvas, © 2015 Donna Grandin
Peacock garden, 24″x36″, acrylic on canvas, © 2015 Donna Grandin

I love the mysterious, magical quality of this painting. It started out as a follow-up to “Fernscape 2”, and was supposed to only have ferns in it, but it just wasn’t quite working. So I put it aside for a week while I worked on something else, and when I returned to it, peacock feathers started appearing.

A few of the paintings I worked on last year had this Night Garden feel to them. For example, “Choices” and “Behind the garden gate”. 

You are not imagining it, my art has become darker over the last couple years. For so long my attitude was that I just wanted to paint upbeat, joyful images to increase the beauty in this world, and not dwell on negativity, which would just be feeding it.

At the time, that meant bright, vibrant, “sunny” colours … sometimes I literally painted on yellow canvases.

But the times we live in have a dark undertone, and I am not immune to it. As artists, it is not just our nature, but our job to FEEL, and to be a channel – through our art – to make others FEEL.

And a big part of that is in being honest, and open. To be sensitive to our surroundings. To be vulnerable. That is how we make art that people can truly connect with … because they recognize the truth in it.

Yes, there are people – artists and non-artists – who will manipulate. And there are times when the price of being honest is high, but I think for an artist especially, the price of remaining “on brand” is even higher.

I am thinking of Robin Williams… or rather the idea of him, someone who brought joy and laughter to so many people, people who had no clue of the darkness he was going through.

And what does this have to do with the painting?

Well, I’ve often thought of the Caribbean landscape as being a metaphor for life … the bright sunlight creates long dark shadows.

On one hand there are the vibrant, happy hibiscus flowers that I have painted so often before – reminiscent or maybe even symbolic of lazy days by the pool of some tropical resort. Some days I just need to paint hibiscuses.

But life has more nuance to it.

The thing that grips me, that I discovered when I painted my Jungle Rhythms series years ago, where I played with the organic shapes and visual rhythm of tropical foliage, was an abstract sense of “growth”, the cycle of life, being swept up in something that is bigger than oneself.

It is that spiritual connection you feel when you are mindful in a natural setting.

And there is so much life in the shadows.

So much beauty.

Not the kind of bold, in your face beauty of a close-up of a detailed realistic painting of a flower, but the overarching flow and harmony of an impressionistic landscape, semi-abstract, or abstract painting.

The interesting thing about blogging, is that there is a flow to it too. Some weeks or months I only get on to post about upcoming events, and it is all about the facts.

And other times, when I get into a daily posting habit, my reserve wears away, the words slip by faster and faster, from a trickle to a flood. And all sorts of flotsam and jetsam is dragged along with it.

There isn’t time to edit and polish. I upload an image of a painting, and I begin typing this “stream of consciousness”.

I hope that you find it entertaining if not insightful, but if you have read thus far, you are certainly in the minority as most people these days seem to just skim through to look at the images.

So, thank you for joining me today, for this walk amoung the ferns in my head.

Two more days till Art in the Park Oakville! I’m getting excited now.

Eyecatcher – Peacock abstract painting

Eye Catcher
Eyecatcher, 30″x30″, acrylic on canvas, © 2015 Donna Grandin. $1400.

What I really enjoyed about painting this Peacock series is that while all the artworks are tied to a central motif (peacock feathers), each one – as someone remarked on Facebook today – is so “different and unique”.

It’s like jumping off a rock into a river … you can keep returning to the same rock, but the water keeps flowing so the conditions are never exactly the same twice.

Each painting is a result of similar, but slightly different circumstances … I might stand at the same easel, with the same paints and brushes, but now I have the experience of another painting behind me, and whatever happens to me before I come to the easel – or even while I am at it – affects my thoughts and moods, so that I am never exactly the same twice.

I also like to remain flexible so that I can try out new ideas – they don’t always work out, and in fact the painting often goes through ugly stages, but as Anne, of 337 Sketch Gallery once said to me “You, will keep working at it, until it does work out”.

As a younger painter, I always felt I was doing something wrong … theoretically I knew of a faster, simpler way to get an image down on the canvas, but I just could not bring myself to go that way, no matter how many times I tried … I always ended up taking the long way around.

Finally, after years of painting, and having a certain amount of success, I realized that I’d been slowing myself down, fighting against my natural process.

Even up to a few years ago, when the Burlington Fine Arts Association had John Leonard (established artist & teacher, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, ON ) visit to do a critique of member paintings, and he was very complimentary about my work (tropical florals), I still couldn’t resist bringing up the issue with him. His response was “Just keep doing what you’re doing, because it’s working!”

When I accepted my own way of working, instead of trying to fix it, I realized that the very things that I saw as my challenges, were what made my art interesting, because of the specific solutions I had developed to accommodate those challenges.

Our personal style, lies in our imperfections! I mean no-one goes around saying “Van Gogh could have been such a great artist, if he’d just have learned to draw more accurately!”

Eyecatcher is my painting for today. I think it is the kind of image that is fun to sit and contemplate … there are all sorts of possible interpretations. What’s yours?

Art in the Park, Oakville – Monday August 3, 10-5pm.

 

 

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