Now to Making the Frames

Guarded Passage

28 x 18 Mixed Media on Canvas

This is the third time I have done a "goddess" sitting in for Corona Arch. Each time I take another look the painting gets more mystical or visionary. And this is the largest of the ones I have done. The first with Navajo women tending their angora goats. And each rendition seems to have more water.

Spider Rock

18 x 10 Mixed Media on Canvas

This is one of the "accidental" pair I featured in the previous blog. The photo was not great because it was flash in-the-studio shot just showing its relationship to the previously finished painting. Spider Rock is a new subject for me. The Navajo believe it is where Spider Woman, the mother of weaving, resides. It's split peak rises from the floor of Canyon de Chelle on the Navajo reservation in Arizona. No doubt I will revisit this subject.

I frequently approach a new subject on a small canvas. It allows me to explore colors more easily. These study works are very popular with my collectors as they are more reasonable to buy. But also there is a freshness in my approach that can get lost in the retelling. Spider rock warrants a bigger canvas. And I thought Monumental Path that I did earlier this fall also did, but I changed the proportions of height and width rather than just size.

Rainbow Journey

14 x 18 Mixed Media on Canvas

This is not an abject failure because there are parts of the treatment of the subject I like a lot. When I poured the sky it did some awesome things. If this was paper I would cut the bottom off just above the goats and have the subject be just the sky and the monuments. And I may do that in another painting. Or I have heard of artists that re-stretch the canvas onto a smaller frame. For now I will frame it. someone may love it. I have been wrong before. And sometimes the frame can make all the difference.

My plan for frames for the three above and the partner of the one in the middle is to do multi-colored rather than just black. I got some acrylic paints that pick up the dominant colors in my paintings. The floater frames will be painted inside with one color, outside with another and a third color on the raised edge. I have toyed with this concept and found it very successful because it enlarges the painting and also unifies it with its frame.

Framed paintings pictures later, of course.