Goodbye Curacao (2)

In this post I told about my recent walk through Punda.

At the ferry I saw this man and I couldn't resist taking his picture, I'm sure you know why

Like places of public transport throughout the world, there was so much to see. But crossing the Annabaai does not take that long and I went ashore at Otrabanda, 'the other side' in Papiamentu.

I decides to visit one of the island's galleries that took a five minute walk, but once there it appeared that the gallery was not there anymore. All beauty I saw during my walk made up for this, however...

for I discovered some walls outside a restaurant that had 'poststamps' on it: all my favorites were present: Amsterdam, New York, India and also Spain! These pictures are a wealth for me, as I can and will use them in future digital collages. An unexpected treat!

One of the streets, needless to say I was thrilled...

and then this one!

and this guy, for me this looks like a 'he', but I know almost nothing about them, not even if they have a 'gender'... but I am always impressed by their preshistoric looks

by the time I got back, the bridge had been closed again

and I joined the many pedestrians that went to the Punda side.

Next time Westpunt,

thanks for visiting,

Regina

New work

Three of these squares were the design for the work below


Translation series #8
I started with plain white pfd cotton, that I painted with textile
paint and diluted acrylic, stamped and stencilled and
finally raw edge appliqued


Translation series # 9

This one came out more neutral, which was one of my goals
Normally I work in bold colours, so it was pretty hard for me to stick to
my original plan,maybe that's the reason that it has much contrast.
I was told the design looks like a bird in flight, which I can see also,
but it surely is not intended to be 'something'.
To me it is abstract, the letters are not words either, you can make your own!

Translation series # 10

The fragment with text was added by me,
because I thought the design was missing something.
This decision appears to have turned it into a tree,
with a giant piece of fallen fruit on the ground

Originally I was going to make four pieces that could be hung in a square.
The fourth did not cooperate, I tried and I tried, but it did not please me at all.
Too havy, to dark and all my attempts to bring some light in it, failed.
I then jumped to a very simple solution: "Just forget it, throw
it away!", which I did.
Having worked sufficiently outside my comfort zone for the moment, I am looking forward
to the next one which is forming in my head

Thanks again for visiting!

From the archives

Hi!

After yesterday's pretty ugly SXM Unpolished picture, I am glad that it is time again for more beautiful stuff. I have been posting in the unpolished catagory during four weeks now and only introduced it the very first time, but yesterday I realized (afterwards..) that maybe I only chase away accidental passers-by on my blog by showing all this ugliness that's is alas all day reality for lots of people... Maybe it is better to write a little sentence that's pointing out my intention of this unpolished sxm photos.

The weekend was lovely with some goodies for me: it was Art Lovers weekend (yes we do have artists here, but mainly on the French part of the island). Once a year the artists of this organisation open their studio to the public and this Saturday I visited the lovely venue of Norma and Corinne Trimborn, two sisters that paint and who originally are from Germany. I enjoyed their art and as a bonus had the chance to refresh my German!

On Sunday the local Rotary organized a fleamarket for the very first time and as I am always the first one to tell how I miss that here, you can be sure this was my day! I 'scored' some books on Canada and Alaska, some novels and my biggest catch was an Eileen Fisher dress, brown tricot, almost new, not my size really but it has potential ;-), which means that I will remodel it and then will have a very fashionable new tunica that goes fantastic with my new pants. I love remodeling clothes, call it recycling or whatever, but for someone that can hardly find new fashionable plus quality clothes here this is like finding a treasure, you see?!

detail

now from the archives a little collage I did last year and have not shown until now: I only rediscovered it last week in the big book I wrote about last week

Bird

mixed media 5"x7"

Surprise

we discovered some new, future bananas in our garden!

this picture is from last Sunday, taken from above on the veranda

and this is how it looked yesterday, picture shot from below. It's amazing how quickly they developed in only 7 days

***

On another note, here is my last collage from the recent series. I enjoyed making them very much, also learned quite a bit! My next series will be about the states we visited in the US last summer. I took home lots of brochures, tickets and pictures of course, now what better way than to finally use them in a collage?! The plan is to make them in a travel-chronological order, so the first one should have New Mexico as a theme, stay tuned ...

(clickable)

Serisie
Mixed media
5"x7"

This week's collages (2)

Ik Heb Eb

5"x7"

This title needs some clarification I think. 'Ik heb eb' means asmuch as: 'I have low tide'. It is the sea's answer to the question: how are you? I found this little poem of Franck Eerhart in an old Dutch magazine. It is a kind of dialogue between the sea and a visitor and I like its simplicity:

ik zie de zee/I see the sea

de zee ziet mij/the sea sees me

dag zee hoe gaat het?/ hi sea, how are you?

ik eb, zegt de zee/I ebb, says the sea

wat heb je? zeg ik/what do you have? I say

ik heb eb/I have eb

doet dat zeer?/does it hurt?

nee, zegt de zee/no, the sea says

een zee heeft geen zeer/seas don't have pain.

Frank Eerhart

Both collages are made in the technique of my previous post, paper collage, gesso, acrylics and stamping with stamps made by me.

Buckle
5"x7"

This week's collages (1)

Four collages after glueing down the papers

(click)

the bottom right one

La Vie en Rose
5"x7"
mixed media

Wild Alliance

It is all collage with me at the moment... I'm happily playing around in my studio, trying to find my style (and in doubt whether I will ever find it)

These pictures are from a collage I rediscovered in one of the big, heavy books that I use to store my collages. I was putting the latest results in, when I found this one among others that are either finished or still wait for that final touch ;-)

About a year ago, I think, I made collages inspired by Martha Marshall's blog .

I used a big patternsheet of an old sewing magazine as a base, painted big areas in all kind of colours with acrylic paint and pasted pictures and text pieces at random. Then, using a window (frame) marked 5" x 7" rectangles that I liked and cut these out: you get a lot of collages from one pattern sheet I can tell!!

I showed some of them in this and this post, below is another one:

detail

Wild Alliance
mixed media, 5" x 7"

P.s: I love how everything falls into place, it seems, when making collages!
Only one week ago I was sailing the Heineken Regatta, across wild seas between the islands of Anguilla and St. Maarten/St.Martin and now, one year after making it, I find back this collage and can only agree with the picture and the text: wild alliance

Le soleil joue

first results

same technique as my Saturday post,

skipping some pictures and

then:

'magic' happened,
finding this picture suddenly made the collage look like an old stucco wall.
Somewhere in a sunny, faraway place, might be Tuscany, could also be the Provence,
imagination assisted by the text:

Le Soleil Joue
mixed media

Stingray collage

phase 1: magazine cut-outs on watercolour paper

phase2: after applying some glazes of acrylic paint

phase 3: gesso, some stamping, violet acrylic paint with palet knife
and finishing with a glaze of goldyellow

Stuck!!
Finding this picture of a stingray that made the collagebackground look fresher...
I think it is finished now...

Stingray
5" x 7"

collage on watercolour paper

Encouraged and aknowledged

These words come in mind when I have to describe the overall idea that is left with me after participating in Art in the Park. There was a big amount of visitors and there more and more artists showing their work, the event is growing and successful. Big compliments for our parttime island lady from Boston that organises this all, thank you Barbara!

These panels were sold the very moment they were hung, what a start! And I felt sorry for the folks that were disappointed when they saw the stickers SOLD.

detail

The weather was fantastic (no rain this year), there was live music and all in all I look back at a very busy day with lots of interested people, surprisingly there were many men too which showed real interest in my art. There might be a few commissions following, I even met two nice ladies that live on the island and want to work with me.

I have been talking with people from Canada, Rhode Island, Colorado, St. Louis and many more places, so at the end of the day I was thinking in English (that being Dutch), I felt like having done a workshop and maybe you recognize the feeling that your head is full with all this new information.
So: back to work now, in the direction that is more clear for me. I feel encouraged and aknowledged by the words of some of the visitors that said (a little stunned!)

this is amazing, this is eh... this is ART!

Thanks for reading!

USE Update (2)

While I am in the day after :-) of Art in the Park, the only thing I did today is (apart from household chores of course) ...

USE

my newly bought sandals as their soles are wonderful (I already discovered in the shop, always on the lookout), my heat gun, and some foam blocks I ordered online last year. Sorry folks, for me no diamonds on the soles of my shoes, though I love that song ...

Encouraged by the lovely people I met yesterday, I looked up the How To I had saved on my computer and gave it a try now, minutes ago, hot from the pr... eh heat gun:

it looks promising to me

but will need a while to cool down!
More tomorrow,

Thanks for visiting,
Regina

Sunday collage

New Mexico Sunset

digital collage

And so it happened

... that this little piece of fabric turned from what it was here to this blueish result!

As I wrote on Saturday, I worked without planning, as I often do. It sometimes happens when I am in my studio, listening to e.g. a French chanson or classical music, that I am completely caught by it, by the text or whatever about it, and I simply have to start 'something', do you recognize this urge to create? Caused by the beauty of something, in this case music?

Back to this work above, I have to say that I already learned a lot of the mistakes made. I knew before that the use of acrylic would make the fabric stiff, which I considered no problem as it is not a household piece plus it was only a try-out! Yet at some moment during the process of painting, in between the several layers, I considered it worth finishing with a binding, so I did, which led to the first mistake (I expected it to be a process of trial and error...)

1. I should have put the binding on before painting, bc though I had squared the work it is slightly wavy now. Probably caused by ironing the binding on the back.

2. the acrylic paint has also made the fabrics look dull, which I don't like either. A solution to this could be adding medium to the paint.

What I love however, is the quilting pattern that is being highlighted by painting, the places that are recessed show different colours than the top, which gives a beautiful layered effect. It is clearly visible in the first picture (please ignore the difference in color of both photographs, since the first one is made inside and the other one in daylight on my veranda).

In the first picture you can also see that I added some bronze paint by stamping with one of my favorite found objects (I found it at one of our beaches and it is a weathered old buoy of a sailingship I guess, and has hardened out and burst into a circular pattern).

All in all I found this first experiment in sewing, quilting and then painting worth to be continued. What I will try next is using textile paint, or maybe even thickened dye. We'll see!

But it was fun to do, and for me this is maybe the most important part. It gives freedom to enjoy the process and not having to worry about the outcome.

Today's collage

From seas to pueblo

In this digital collage I combined images of urchins, fabric printed with handcarved stamps and found objects, and a picture of a pueblo painting in the Buffalo Thunder Casino near Santa Fe

Sea urchins (1)

My creativity level these days is not too high.

It has been a while since I worked in paper, since I have glued, painted and sewn (a few weeks is a very long time in this regard!)

But this caribbean island, and more especially the surrounding beaches and tropical waters, is constantly inspiring me. If you are a regular visitor of my blog you might have noticed that I am completely in love, in awe I must say, with the wonders of Photoshop.

I admit that I'm just a novice, but the possibilities that are within reach seem endless. So I am trying to make a combined kind of 'soup'' today of all things mentioned above.... caribbean, fabric, tropical etc.

Come and join me on my search for inspiration...

sea urchins, found on the shores of St. Maarten. If you see the amazing pattern of the little calcium dots up close (click the picture) then you can only admit there must be something more...

inspired by these urchins,

I made a stamp some time ago and printed this piece of cloth. Hand dyed first, then stamped and stencilled with my own 'products' and fabric paint. The turquoise motive is from a pod of the Flamboyant tree. You can read more about these stamps and stencils here and here

Thanks for visiting my blog today!!

(to be continued)

Building

a body of work...

Simple Solutions

collage

mounted on watercolourpaper

picture: 5 x 7"

paper: 9 x 12"

GPP Crusade No. 29: more playing

Caribbean waters are too rough for swimming today, so I tried the brush theme once again!

Started with a waxy paper that was a bag for a surfshop in it's earlier life, tore it open, crumbled it and folded out again. I tried to imitate the batikked tablecloth of my second GPP entry, initially...

dry brushed Paynes Grey, Brilliant and Cobalt Blue

and here it is!
I listened to some of you and carved a stamp, applied it with white acrylic paint and across the surface it went

awaiting my punchinella, I made some p-ish myself with freezer paper and my
Crop-a-Dile

pounched gold paint through it at some places

and finally monoprinted the back of an alphabet stencil

in brown, hardly any letter visible, but brush effect all the more

(all pictures are clickable)

Have fun brushing!

Are you in for some COLOUR?

Since I expect to be very busy next week, and have an unexpected evening to spend on my own as my husband is stuck on one of the neighboring islands, I thought: let me try to do my brush-thing right now! Here is my process of something old, something blue and something new:

I started this experiment last year, really don't know what I

was thinking...

a la kindergarten cut out some freezer paper and used both stencil and mask...

though it's not clearly visible, I really used a brush with the acrylics,
then went on in my newest
addiction, playing with Photoshop

detail of a tablecloth we used with yesterday's lunch!

used layers, colorburning and what not in PS!
(I only just started learning, hence the word process, would not call it art, but I was having fun!