Starting small and scaling up

I’m just starting a new abstract series with larger canvases and boards. Larger for me that is. Up until now my work has primarily been 12 x 12” or smaller. In this series I’ll be going up to 20 x 20” and 18 x 24” (and possibly even a bit bigger) on both canvas and wood panels.

I’m excited about seeing how my work transforms when larger, but decided to do some preparation before diving into working on larger substrates.

I started with small (5x5”) canvases, paper pieces, and sketchbook play to generate ideas. This also gave me the opportunity to get familiar with my color palette. I usually work in a limited palette of 5-6 colors and it can take time to discover all the subtle hues that are possible within that range. I’m continuing to work in acrylics with a variety of mixed media (collage, charcoal, graphite, water-soluble ink sticks, etc.)

For the inspiration for this collection, I used photos like this one taken on a hike we did on San Juan Island (north of Seattle) in June. It was a cool, gray day and such a beautiful setting, full of subdued browns, creams, and burnt sienna with those little pink bushy flowers and pops of bright yellow and lime green.

I was in a dreamy, contemplative, almost blissed-out state on that hike and really want to capture that feeling.

As part of my initial explorations, I also typically paint a lot of different collage papers in the color palette I’m working with. Old book pages are one of my favorite things to use for this. I just love the random words popping through the paint.

One of my favorite happy accidents from this exploratory phase is this small paper piece below. It somehow morphed from much more vibrant (in the underlayers) to something much quieter and subdued. I’ll never be able to recreate it exactly, but I’ve used it as a jumping-off point for the larger piece shown at the bottom. It’s still in progress am I’m excited to see where it ends up!

If you’d like to get more sneak peeks of this series as it progresses and the ability to purchase before the general public, sign up for my email list. You’ll only hear from me occasionally, I promise!

You can see the finished San Juan Island series here.