as i add final coats of varnish and touch up paintings’ edges, i’ve been doing quite a bit of reflecting on my last series, “the treehouse club”. the first half of the series was painted in saint louis, the last in seattle. definitely a life change for me, though i feel it hardly affected the paintings. i feel a definite growth from the work, both in skill and in understanding my reasons for painting. from their skin tones to their wide-eyed, full-lipped facial features, my females are becoming ownable. the second half of the series made it clear, i’ve found a style that is both comfortable and exciting.
the first eight paintings were done without any conceptual aim or purpose. technically, i was going to push myself into new territory. the scale of the pieces was dramatically smaller than anything i had previously done, though not quite as small as the princess tinies, which were also beginning at the time of this series. i was forced into a discomfort zone i’ve known since my introduction to painting class; i was forced to paint in a scale that was nowhere near life-sized.
i began without the series in mind. i perused the pages of vogue, dog-earring images with models worthy of being painted. the first several paintings were far less traditional than usual, and instead bordered on illustrative. i took this a step further, destroying the illusion of space with pattern. in several of the early pieces, the pattern overwhelmed the figures, making them feel very much unlike the rest of my paintings.
then came the move to seattle. i let the paint dry, cleaned up the brushes, and discovered a trend amongst the paintings, so titled the series along with the individual pieces accordingly. “the treehouse club”, subtitled “less than admirable characters”, depicts villains and less-than-noble protagonists as females [though several, like “holofernes” and “the caterpillar”, are male in stories].
without necessarily planning to continue the series, i began painting on a new set of canvases. i still had no goal in mind, except to learn something about how and why i paint. so i painted, and the seattle females had quite a bit in common with the last of the saint louis females. so they joined the series, and found appropriate names - “baba yaga”, “goldilocks” and “rapunzel”.
the moral of this series is obvious as i wrap up: creating pretty things is not so much of a challenge when the conceptual is an afterthought. while it is important to just paint, to practice regardless of a specific goal, ultimately i don’t want the audience to view a piece or a series and leave thinking only “that’s pretty.” so as i move on towards my next set of paintings, “midnight in the garden”, i’m giving myself more time to research and gather source material, to work in my sketchbook, and even to sketch more on the canvases themselves. “the treehouse club” remains precious, but more for the process of learning than the product.
