This is not a red window.. or your mom.

30″x22″, 2010

And often I use masking tape to create clean borders around paintings on which I don’t use stretchers, like my stained glass paintings. So literally, I get anxious for the point when I’m able to almost-literally “unwrap” a piece, to take off the masking tape and see the crisp clean borders around the painting. They are simply borders, but I can’t describe the awesome difference they make as a final seal, an authentic stamp, at the end of a project.

Admittedly, I sometimes “cheat” towards the end of a piece, since I get so excited and impatient, and remove the masking tape when I might have a few small details left, just not at the borders.

On this NEW PAINTNG, previewed here, I’m not quite done- I have a few more small, absolute whites and last minute details to add when this coat dries. Sadly, I can’t add them sooner, because of how oil paints behave. However, I already removed the  masking tape, because those details won’t effect the borders. And the painting really is that close to being done..

Early this upcoming week, I’ll finish the piece and take a photo with my high quality camera, but until then enjoy this bit of a preview to this second stained glass painting (taken with my cel phone camera) along with the first one I already finished just to compare. You can also see the difference in picture quality.

Also, since starting my job at the design firm, I have been even more inspired to keep up with drawing and illustration, as well as to work on computer illustration skills and tools, like Photoshop and Illustrator. These are not finished or polished products, but through them I’ve really begun to get a handle on design tools.

In lieu of showing off some of my finished print design products (since it’s all political mail, I have to be sensitive to confidentiality), I’ll show some pieces from my general scrapbooks from the following categories: computer illustrations, sketchbook studies, and photo manipulation.

Enjoy!

Almost any work of art that’s been in a museum has had a title- even if it’s just the ironic title of “Untitled”. Even the mere fact of whether an artist considers titles important or unimportant can say a lot about a piece of work.

My absolute favorite title in art history is Damien Hirst’s literal giant shark in a tank of formaldehyde titled, “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”. In that work, the title is almost more art than the “art” of the collected bio-specimen.

As far as my own art, personally, I like to consider titles as something important, an added chance to give my work something to say.

My “process” in creating titles varies. Sometimes they are simply random words and numbers thought up in an artistic or joking spur of the moment, like Man at Gas Station #64.

Sometimes they are inside jokes or stories with friends that happened to match up with the mood of the painting I was working on at the time- and I later make up the reasoning if prompted- such as Hell is Blankets or The Black Ice Cream Cone.

Other seemingly random titles actually do connect directly to the painting. For example, Like a Rolling Stone seems like a random title for the painting of a girl with a laptop and iPod. However, many don’t know that Like a Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan was the song she was listening to at the exact moment I took the photo. I know because I directly asked her, “What are you listening to?” as I was taking the photo.

Later during the painting process, I kept hearing that song in my head, like a theme song. I began to feel like the song really connected with the girl in the painting- something transient, unstable yet grounded- ‘like a rolling stone’.

I also like titles with references to art history. This new painting is such an example. Another of my favorite titles in the world of art is Magritte’s Ceci n’est pas une pipe which means, “This is not a pipe”. I won’t go into all the philosophical implications of the title (in short, the painting is not a pipe.), but I just love how it says so much in so few French words. Without that title, the piece is only just a small 2D replica of a pipe image. In that case, the title is almost inseparable from the actual (high) artistic value of the piece.

Back to my new painting, in which I reference Magritte, Ceci n’est pas un Verre Coloré, which means “This is not Stained Glass”. It took me a bit to look up the French, but the English title came to me almost instantly upon finishing the painting.

As I was painting it, I kept thinking of it as my “stained glass painting”, that I was painting stained glass. I knew practically I was painting a floor with the reflection of stained glass on it. But in sentiment I felt like I was painting actual stained glass.And it wasn’t until I finished the piece that it suddenly dawned on me, “This is not stained glass!”

There are two levels to the title. First, the entire painting is about the beauty of color and light through stained glass, but it actually isn’t of stained glass- it’s a floor with a reflection. Second, the painting itself isn’t even stained glass or even a floor with a reflection, because it’s a painting. All it is is oil and pigment on canvas. Thus, it really, really is not stained glass.

That is how I titled that piece. I could say so much more about titling, and I could go off on the many stories behind all my other titles. But I’ll stop here for now. Maybe I can continue in a future entry. We’ll see.

- Kate

- for French speakers, my title font doesn’t support the accented e at the end of “Coloré”-that’s why it’s misspelled there.

30″x22″ 2010

Here’s a preview of what I’m currently painting- stained glass from the National Cathedral.

The moment I entered the National Cathedral, all the colors and light coming from the many stained glass windows stunned me. From floor to ceiling, the lighting effects were everywhere. I went crazy with my camera trying to capture all the vibrancy.

The main challenge with this painting, and possible series, will be to capture the transparency of the light. In other paintings, when the subject matter is primarily objects or figures it’s not especially difficult to illustrate a physical object with lighting as a secondary (yet still very important) effect over it.

However, a painting becomes more difficult when the main subject of a painting is the lighting effect itself, with no other object but a floor, which really becomes a stage for the light object. The artist really has to concentrate on both the abstract and realistic quality of the light. Light is loose and abstract in nature, but it also follows direction, perspective, and form (like in the photos here).

Unlike Dan Flavin, who created literal light art with fluorescent tubes, I’m crossing my fingers that I pull off something on canvas. It’s a fun experiment, and I  am hopeful for a series if this first painting comes out well.

- K

“In nature, light creates the color. In the picture, color creates the light.” - Hans Hofmann

“Painting is by nature a luminous language.” – Robert Delaunay

P.S. The exact image I’m painting is not in this post. I wouldn’t want to totally ruin the surprise.