Watercolor Wonders and more
I am teaching watercolor at the West Hartford Senior Center and I love how much my students are enjoying watching the paint flow and are open to exploring using a major force in our world - gravity - to direct the paint. Yesterday, we did wet-on-wet washes, laid the paint down, and stood back to watch what happened. It’s amazing how the paper, the amount of water, and the amount of paint all make a huge difference and variations in each can cause different results. There is something very satisfying to watch watercolor expand across a piece of paper. It is a lesson in mindfulness and surrender to let the paint flow with gravity and witness what happens rather than trying to guide, control or force it. Watercolor is a great way to work on letting go, for sure!
I’ve enjoyed bringing library books to my classes. One book I found is Tom Lynch’s Watercolor Secrets. I like how he encourages people to make their paintings fresh and alive by using unexpected or unusual (not “realistic”) colors. As we discussed in class yesterday, so much of art, especially watercolor (not to mention life!) is about play.
In another vein, I have made a new discovery of a wonderful artist, Kaffe Fassett. I was so excited to bring his books to my Art Journey class, and guess what, my students already knew and loved him! I was literally talking to one of the students and she said something we were looking at reminded her of his work, and I pulled the book out of my bag! It was a moment of synchronicity. The colors is what really gets me about Kaffe Fasset. They are so rich and sumptuous. I could literally just sit for an hour and look at the cover of the book Kaffe Fasset: The Artist’s Eye by Dennis Nothdruft. I really enjoy bright colors, and this book, down to its lovely saffron colored end papers, does not disappoint. Great touch, and hats off to Yale University Press for that choice. As I mentioned in a previous post, my students had been working on quilt-inspired paintings, drawings, or collages, and Fasset does quilting, pattern design, and painting just to name a bit of what his talent encompasses. And speaking of color, I found another fabulous book called Tricia Guild Decorating with Color with photography by James Merrell. The beauty of this book is breathtaking. If you’re looking for inspiration for any type of art, I find it to be just what the doctor ordered. The author organizes it by color and again, it is just dazzling and sumptuous to be immersed in scenes of one color after another. From close ups of flowers to birds’ wings to images of fabric and nature photos, this book is a good place to turn to light your creative fire or at least give your senses a kick.
Our next project for Art Journey class is creating a map or map-based art piece. I haven’t started mine yet and am not sure where I’m going to take this, but I’m excited about it. I have been living in the fabric section at the library, where I discovered interesting books about textile art. One that stands out is Stitch Stories: Personal places, spaces, and traces in textile art by Cas Holmes. There is even a map featured in this book! Nice. And I must say, this book has a really cool cover, not only how it looks, but how it feels. Nice touch for a book about textiles. It feels kind of like really soft brushed cotton. It’s great when a book can provide this kind of sensory experience and become more than one type of object.
Finally, this week:
What I’m watching:
Plum Village: Let that Negative Habit Become Your Mindfulness Bell
What I’m listening: to Krishna Das
What I’m reading: Light on Life by BKS Iyengar
