Save the Date!

Bea Modisett @ Kingston Gallery

X: 2011 Associate Members' Exhibition

August 3 through 28, 2011

Opening Reception: First Friday, August 5, 6-8pm

I am nervous and excited to be a part of a First Friday Festivity!!! Oh won't you please, please be there? I will be exhibiting some new, never exhibited before paintings. (There are a lot of other cool shows opening that night too.)

I love you!

The Wall

Well hello there friend! Take a look see at the progression of my most recent "out of the studio" project. My first ever mural. Biggest lesson learned: there is no room for subtlety in an outdoor mural on a cement wall. 

Know what is weird? I can see the mural from my studio window - hopefully I can fight off feelings to want to constantly change things as I tend to do with my paintings. Or maybe it can be an evolving mural? Like I go out every night and just add one or two marks and see if anyone notices when it's completely different by this time next year? Maybe.

Let me know you what think ch'all and thanks for reading! 

Hey We're Just Fooling Around!

Today it is raining. Here is a photo of my recent painting but with a TWIST! 

When I work on a painting for a really long time I have a few practices that help to see it anew: 1) Flip it in all different directions, this helps me see areas that I've paid too much attention to, or not enough 2) Take a nap in a chair in front of the painting so it's the first thing I see when I wake up 3) Drink a beer 4) Look at it through a mirror and now...drum roll...5) Make it black and white in Photoshop. 

Rainy day fun comin' atcha! I'll be back soon with a color image once the painting is complete. 

You're the best! Thanks for reading.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! What?

My head is SCATTERED! Here is a painting that I stopped working on about one month ago - does that mean it's finished? That's the question of my life. It feels...crowded. It began as a painting of what I imagined the Pacific Coast Highway would look and feel like. Unfortunately (or not)  I didn't finish it until after I had seen the PCH. So it became a big mash up of imagined and remembered elements of that big, beautiful seaside highway. I'm still reeling with ideas from my road trip. I am painting on a lot of canvases at a time to get all the ideas out...hopefully some clarity will come soon. But probably not. 

 The Imagined Pacific Coast, oil on canvas. 30" x 40". 

 Detail

Detail 

Also, this letter was introduced to me as a senior in college and I still have it printed out and floating around my house for me to find and read when it is most needed. Read it, it will do a body good. 

Upcoming Exhibition

PLAY AT WORK

Curated by Adam Kalogy and Christopher Stepler

(Justin Durand)

17 Cox Art Space 17 Cox Court | Beverly MA | 01915 Opening Reception: Tuesday, April 5 · 5:30pm - 7:30pm Check out the Facebook page for a list of artists. (I'm in great company!)

Artists I Love

It's been a while since an update so I thought I'd let you all in on some of my biggest sources of inspirations. To me there is almost nothing better than coming across a new artist whose aesthetic, approach, ideas, or story jive with my own and inspire me to create something. I feel the same way about travel - something that never ceases to fill my head with ideas.  Here is just a sampling of images I keep in my "inspiration" folder. 

Japanese Landscape Painting

 Leslie Vance

Sigrid Sandström

 Jane Fox Hipple

David Brewster

Paul Gauguin

All of that absorbed into my head, milled around a bit and combined with ideas that come from I don't know where, and then put down in paint makes this:

Piles in the Hallway, 16" x 20". Oil on canvas. 2011

I'd love to know what inspires you! How do you find new artists to love?

That's Outrageous!

Actually, it's Artrageous! Artrageous!25 to be exact, Montserrat College of Art's annual art auction. And I'm pleased as punch to let you know that my drawing Rahda's Garden was juried into the live auction by jurors Destiny Barletta of  Pucker Gallery, Kristen Dodge of DODGE Gallery in New York City and Randi Hopkins of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.

 

Radha's Garden 30" x 40" Charcoal, pastel and collage. 2009

I will definitely be in attendance on April 30th to watch as people (hopefully) bid on my work. I'm also happy to say that my friends Bradford and Chelsea will have work in the live auction as well. 

Thanks for reading my friends. 

ALSO - I'm updating my link list. If you don't see your name over there and you'd like to, leave a comment with your blog/website URL.