Ghosts of the Past #5
Encaustic, Photographs, & Graphite on Cradled Birch
12" x 12" (30.48 cm x 30.48 cm)
January 2009

Not currently for sale, please inquire if interested.  (Photo credit: Gen. George Thomas and a group of officers at a council of war near Ringgold, Ga., May 5, 1864. 77-HMS-344-2P.)
(click inage to zoom, click title for details)

Finished this painting tonight!  I think this battle is over.  
So, as you can see in my previous post, I had glued down two images.  One was of these officers and the other was an image of clouds.  I wanted to cast a heavy storm above their heads and give these men an outward glow.  The General is given an iconic treatment.  

I don't normally like to talk too much about the symbolism and ideas behind my paintings, I like to just put them out there and see what people get from them.  I'm happy to discuss when prompted, though!

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I love when an idea works out better than expected!  I had this image which I pasted down yesterday (see last night's post) and had an idea of what I wanted to do with the officer's bodies but not sure about exactly how to incorporate the background.  The trees are what initially drew me to the image and I knew that I wanted to keep them in.  I wound up painting around them and then chasing after the lines with scraping/carving and drawing them in with charcoal.  

This painting, along with 1 or 2 more, will be submitted to a gallery show called "White, Black, & Shades of Gray."  I'm glad that I decided to do this and challenge myself by taking the "color" out.  Of course, I still mixed actual colors into the painting to give it depth.  Can't wait to get paint on the next board!  Hope this makes it into the show.  Wish me luck!

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Ghosts of the Past #4
Encaustic, Photograph, & Charcoal on Cradled Birch
12" x 12" (30.48 cm x 30.48 cm)
January 2009

Not currently for sale, please inquire if interested.
(click inage to zoom)
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Today I started working on 2 new paintings.  In a previous post I stated that I usually have a few pieces going on at the same time and that's no lie!  Currently. I have 3 encaustic paintings and 1 oil painting in progress.  The oil hasn't been touched in a while but it's still there staring at me jealously.  The encaustics include 1 that is waiting for the final step; still unsure how to proceed and finish my thoughts on him.  

The other two are these 12 x 12 pieces.  I was printing out these images for a much larger painting and had the weirdest error with the ink.  The black decided not to work so these B&W photos wound up being printed with color ink only.  The result was sort of solarized and I thought that I could explore this further and see what I could make of it.  After all, I hate wasting paper!  I found the it opened me up to the way that I 'm using the photographs.  I'm picking and choosing the pieces that I want much more carefully and I'm excited to get some paint on these soon!