In name only

Name Game

I have been very busy lately. My weeks seem to fly by -  filled with planning and teaching and taking art classes.

My Saturdays have been fabulously filled by a painting class, Dynamic Abstracts with Illa Guttman at PCC. This class is six hours of feeling like a fool followed by the elation of actually creating a painting. Some weeks are better than others - and it is wonderful to be part of a group, and especially, to have such a wonderful teacher.

I am also planning to teach an abstract painting class for kids next week, Spring Break. I am ready - bursting with ideas to share and things to do. I find myself poring over books of paintings in the library and visiting galleries - just looking at how abstract artists work, thinking about ways to express what I want my students to know. All of this causes me to think of about lines and color and shapes in different ways, and to experiment with varied projects to see what results.

I will be teaching my students to create abstract images with tempera, and I use acrylic in my PCC class, and frequently in my own studio, yet, I often find myself returning to these line drawings. They are fun to do, relaxing, more accessible than paint and far neater, and they are a different way for me to explore flow, color, overlap, shapes and ... some kind of grace - maybe the unexpectedness of finding shapes and forms I do not plan - which somehow feels to me like the very heart of abstract expression.

This image is based on a painting project I did earlier this year - the lines are my name, written in different sizes and directions, always crossing, forming new shapes. It is 9x12 on watercolor paper, done with fine tip pens.