For months now, I’ve been working on these illuminations.
Last summer, I came across this amazing hot press black watercolor paper. My first idea was to use it for pin-talism pieces but that was a complete fail. It’s a softer cotton paper and just can’t take the pressure of pin punching!
So I changed directions…
I decided to see how other media would appear on the dark surface. I’ve poured on ink, scratched endlessly with silvery graphite, blended in pastel and…still, I think they are only just beginning.
I have a sense “of the something” that is coming next.
It’s really just an inkling to create “illuminations” by blending these dark pages with photography.
The thing is it requires more advanced digital photography than I have the skills for…yet!
I’m not sure why but in the past I kind of resisted anything having to do with technology. I think it had something to do with not wanting to make things “machine made”
Somewhere along the way, I got attached to the idea of being a painter and only a painter. Maybe it was the idea of specializing. I don’t really know. Now, it just seems like a ridiculous limited idea.
Life is way too short…so I’m letting that $h!t go;)
Lately, I’ve learned more of what can be done in Lightroom. Also, watched lots of YouTube videos on how to use Photoshop. It’s a very robust editing tool! I’m not crazy about how complicated it is to use…but I’m very excited about the potential to make images that connect the energy worlds to the seen world.
Below is one of the mixed media photographs I’ve made using this “new to me” tech. It recently was included in an online exhibit Seeing Beyond: An Online Photography & Digital Art Exhibition at the Rhode Island Watercolor Society.
It feels like an illuminated earthscape to me.
…maybe seeing is believing :)
“
I played with an idea, and grew willful; tossed it into the air; transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy, and winged it with paradox.”
If you are curious…
Below are the two original images I layered.
The sunrise is a photo I took over the field on my husband’s family land. It’s really important to me that the photos I use connect to a personal experience. In this case it was April and the sun had just come up over the horizon. Behind me it had already started to rain, my feet were in the mud but all things were possible.
I can’t say much about the abstract image because that comes from a place where all things are possible but not with words…if you know, you know. wink:)
Thanks for following along with the art!
“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.”