Composition 107, 2013

Soft pastel on hardboard panel, 18" x 24"

Dyptich: Compositions 103 & 104, 2013

Soft pastel on hardboard panel, 18" x 24" each

Dyptich: Compositions 101 & 102, 2013

 Soft pastel on hardboard panel, 18" x 24" each

Brokers Show

Taking down the show at the Brokers Gallery tonight. Several paintings from the show are posted above.

WORKWORKWORK

I've been on a roll lately, spending 10-12 hours at a stretch in the studio. It's wonderful being in "The Zone." I'll exploit it as long as it lasts or until I run out of steam. Or recover my senses.

I recently ordered another batch of birch panels with a 2" box. I'm just about out of the 36x36 inch ones I picked up in December. The new ones will be 42x42, custom for roll stock BFK. I seal the bare wood with four coats of GAC-100, then use matte gel to affix the paper surface. Next, I under-paint with ink and/or watercolor, then two coats of a clear pastel ground for tooth. I end up with a superior and satisfying torture-proof painting substrate--one that really grabs the pigment. Now, if I could just find pastel sticks that never wear down . . . and don't cost money.

Dyptich: "Guadalupe 43 & 44," 2014

                                  Soft pastel on hardboard panel, 18" x 24" each

Dyptich: Quickening, Early Summer, 2014

Soft pastel on hardboard panel, 11" x 14" each
(currently in Dolphin and Hawk Gallery inventory)

Desert Bloom, 2012

                                                                                                                                                           photo by Jim Kapsalis

Soft pastel on original digital print, 12.5" x 12.5"

I like to print some of my more meditative digital paintings on watercolor paper, then hand color/alter them with soft pastels. This is a manipulated fractal composed with an old frac-generator a friend of mine wrote in the '80s as a senior project at UCLA. Don't know if anyone else has a copy of this little program--I call it Kathy-Frak. Anyway, I printed it on an Epson R-3000 using archival ink on Epson watercolor paper, (cold press, gsm 240). The original was a pale duo-chrome ochre-sepia print. Then I broke out a Unison pastel set of earth tones and went to town. I like the contrast of high- and low-tech rendering in this piece: the very deliberate mathematical fractal image and the loose-wristed fragile stick of pastel meeting on paper. I love this bashing of methods, these materials, this freedom. My life is good.

Exhibit Announcement: San Diego On the Edge, 3/7/15

A one-night show featuring artists in the Dolphin & Hawk stable. Billie will be showing pastel paintings on paper and wood panel.

Opening:
Saturday, March 7, 7-10 pm
Dolphin and Hawk Gallery
7742 Herschel Ave, La Jolla, CA 92037
858 401 5945

Billie Hamilton: Old-Fashioned Titty Bar, 2011
pastel and monotype on paper, 15" x 20"

On the Easel

Just started two new paintings this week, both  42" x 42" soft pastel on Rives BFK (100% cotton rag made by Arches). The one on the left is very close; the right-hand one needs more time, more thinking, more . . . something.
   My usual M.O. is to block-in and hold for a few (many?) months on the wall, living with these ur-paintings as I work in the studio. Sooner or later, the piece will click into place in my mind, and the next stages of execution begin. Final embellishments (layering, sgraffito, calligraphical ornamentation, etc.) may take months more to complete.
  Or . . . sometimes the piece just doesn't pan out and is recycled. Let's see how these two will grow.