Yesterday, I finished this piece and spent a while last night just staring at it. Again, I used the layering technique with primer and watercolor ground. At some point the layering had a diminished return, so I may pull back and see if I can get good results with less layering. This piece looks better at a distance than up close. My camera on the iphone 11 is too good.
This is a small piece (4.5" x 4.5") that I did to have some art to put in frames I have that I never got around to using. One of my long term projects is to do art specifically to fill frames. My goal is to fill the cottage with my art. I picked the color palate that would go with the color palate of my cottage. The accent colors I have are green and orange with colors of reddish brown, grey, beige, black, and cream. This is the style art I am interested in. I am a huge fan of early 20th century expressionism. I am more interested in conveying a mood, emotion, and interesting subjects.
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This is my latest work I finished. This is a result of a favorite technique of using multimedia primer and watercolor ground to layer different mediums like graphite and watercolor underpainting with soft pastels, pastel pencils, graphite block, oil pastel, and acrylic pen. This technique results in really interesting texture like it is on a fresco wall. It also gives it an old school oil painting feel. The green underpainting allows the skin to reflect the background and ambient green and also contributes to the old world painting look.
I tend toward expressionism than hyper-realism since I do not like spending a lot of time on a piece as I get tired of it. I like color and boldness. I want whatever I make to have emotional content. It is more important to make you feel something than to present a realistic depiction. I love chunkiness in my art and I am trying to inch into abstract expressionism, but I am not quite there...yet. Anais Nin's influence on me has been significant. More than 30 years ago, a close friend gave me one of her Diaries and she blew my mind. Here was a woman deeply stuck in the 20th century living mostly in the beginning and mid century, but more modern than many today. She introduced me to the idea that one can live an artful life. Being fascinated with the period between World Wars, Nin was another figure to know in the vast cast of everyone who lived in the early/mid 20th century.
It is not enough for me to just animate old or new photos, or my artwork. The next step is to see if I can create new art with it. So, I took an old photo of my great-grandmother, Mabel Parnell Jones Salyer, and gave her butterfly wings. I colorized the photo and uploaded it to the photo animator app. Then, I saved the animation and brought it into Photoshop video editor laying the animation on top. I added shadows on the wings. To me, this had a handmade feel to it and it looks like an intro to a movie.
I added music which is "Life" by Ludovico Einaudi, Daniel Hope, and Virtuosi Italians from the album "In a Time Lapse." It was the perfect song for this. Sitting back watching this, it occurs to me that I can make components of video art by hand, scan them in, and make them part of a movie. My friend, Ruben turned me onto a new tool provided by MyHeritage website that animates old photos. It was surreal to animate the faces of old ancestors. My friend sent me one of my artworks animated and it got my gears spinning. This tool gives you about 10 animations, so I put two of my favorite portraits I made through their tool and I am pretty happy with the initial results. I am excited because since I love doing portraits I can actually can create video art.
There are few bright spots about Facebook, but one of them is that we were able to reconnect with classmates from Middle School and High School. One of those people was Annette, who was a cheerleader who everyone liked. Even though we were not in the same circles, we reconnected and I would enjoy her posts of her life with her husband and her adorable daughter, Tatum. Then six years ago, in the beginning of 2015, sudden and distressing news trickled in. At first, it was a mention that her daughter had stomach pains and then a life flight to a hospital. As a mom, I felt so much empathy and worry for Tatum and Annette. I asked a mutual friend to let me know if there was any news. I was not a praying person, but I prayed and sent all sorts of calls to the universe that Tatum would recover.
I was out to dinner, when I got the awful text. Tatum did not make it. I was absolutely heartbroken for Annette and her entire family. The worst possible thing that can happen to a human being is to lose a child at any age. I remember going to buy a sympathy card in a store in Downtown San Rafael the next day and I burst into tears at the card rack. The unfairness and tragedy sunk deeply in my bones. I was buying a card for a friend who lost a child who should be here. I joined many people from my high school to give our support at a memorial service and wake for Tatum in Menlo Park. It was beautiful as it was sad. The priest had the impossible job to find words. I felt like so many of us that it was now our job and honor to sit with Annette and her husband Darren in this impossible journey of grief. I was proud of our high school alumni community that showed up for her and for the last six years everyone has pitched in to be there. I remember coming up to her at the memorial to give condolences, but also say that she has us and will need us from now on. There is no end date for grieving especially if it is your child. This is going to be a journey. Every year on the anniversary of Tatum's passing, we light a candle in her memory. Every time we see a rainbow or lady bug, we take pictures of them and tag Annette. We believe that Tatum communicates with us through these signs so we can keep her spirit alive and support her parents. You can read their story and support the work of #Tatumstrong at their website. This video documents the candle lighting ceremony I created in Tatum's honor. I included my own #Tatumstrong rock which is another way Annette and her friends keep Tatum's spirit alive. There are Tatumrocks created and placed in neighborhoods at least in the Northwest, but other places. What helped us positively for our friend is to understand the state of grief. Annette posted a lot of articles about grief to help us. I had lost my adoptive mother in 2002 and lost both birth parents in 2014. My take away is that you just sit and listen. You trust the griever to grieve in the manner that they chose. You honor the way they grieve and not try to impose how you would. Sit with their pain. Sit with their loss. The kindest thing you can do for a person is to be okay with the discomfort of the rawness of someone's loss and be a companion through the loss that never has "closure". What you do is give them some measure of control in a situation beyond their control. They know how to grieve for their child or their loved one more than anyone. Give grieving people the ability to feel the widest spectrum of feelings about their loss.
I have been reading Henry Miller on Writing edited by Thomas H. Moore. I have always admired the acumen and artistry of Miller's writing. This morning, I read this passage and it spoke to me not only when it comes to writing, but to art in general. The point of writing or art in general is not to become this alien, novel rarity, but to tap into the human or natural stream of who we are. The goal is to get inspiration from the familiar, the lost souls in the maze of cubicles, the quietly lonely no one on the bus with a grocery cart, and all that is around us that is at our periphery that we know is there, but we are too busy to notice.
The ability to tap into this "blood of life" or the current that is every sentient thing on this rock hanging in sea of stars is the genius, I think. It is not "THEM" we write or paint about, but it is us. Join the current of life with me. |
AuthorD.K. Castellucci is an artist living in Marin County who works in acrylic, oil paint, oil and soft pastels, charcoal, gouache, watercolors, graphite and Archives
December 2023
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