A New Year!

Happy 2013 to you all! 

Tomorrow begins another year of Libby's New Painting - and then some. I am accepting Leslie Saeta's Challenge: 30 Paintings in 30 Days. I've wanted to try this for a long time, so I jump at her suggestion. Doing anything for thirty days in a row will be a huge challenge for me - your above-average focus-challenged person. Your comments on my past entries have been really helpful and encouraging. Thank you so much for taking the time to look and offer a word or two.

Two weeks ago I moved my studio to a new location in Historic Tiverton Four Corners. I can't wait to start exploring the area and this challenge is giving me a little structure to map my progress. In fact MAPPING is going to play a role here.

Here's my plan for the next thirty days of painting. Mostly I paint from observation - a comfort zone for me to start from. Last fall I began to study a kind of journaling using different mediums, lots of photos, patterns, colors, papers, collage and mapping in a way totally new to me. It was called Nature Lab. We went there just once. I felt like I was trying to put a round peg into a square hole. I had a devil of a time getting a handle on the concepts and how to depict them. But the teacher's inspiration has stayed with me making me want to move on here. So instead of painting a series of flowers, or birds, or lampshades, I'm going to carry on with what I began and focus on various elements of the landcape, exploring ways to present ideas the landscape suggests to me. I don't want to copy a scene. I want to have the art bring you into a place. It might suggest a still life, interior study or a piece of place I paint from my car. I'll be working with other mediums besides oil paint.

I'll begin with one theme a week as a daily experiment. Maybe it will end up being just one theme that keeps us there for 30 days. I invite you to come along with me as I set out on an uncharted journey in the South Coast part of Rhode Island where my studio is now. I'd like you to let me know what is coming across to you from these little works. I welcome all of your suggestions. The drawings or whatever they are will be tiny, no larger than 6 x 6 or 5 x 7, small enough to add to your collection if something appeals to you. If you have time, I would be really happy if you would forward the blog or URL to another one or two you think might like to see it too. Thank you for that!

Here we go...

VROOOOM!!!!