Guadalupe Arenas VII

When A Painting Nears Completion

Guadalupe Arenas portrait, near completion

Filled with time consuming detail, this canvas has been on the easel for over two months.  Finally it nears completion, and for me that requires a little bit of distance and a lot of critical observation to decide what small corrections and tweaks are needed.  For distance, I am leaving the studio today to make visits to art museums, planning to stop first at The Galen which its the Palm Desert location of the Palm Springs Art Museum.  Next stop the Palm Springs Art Museum where I will take time to look at a few of the baskets created by Guadalupe Arenas that are in the museum's collection.

Final stop will be at University of California Riverside Palm Desert Campus to visit the exhibition 'Artistic Expressions of the Coachella Valley'.  

This exhibition contains approximately 200 works by artists living and working in the Coachella Valley.  This will be my second visit to see the art.  I encourage you to make a trip to see this exhibit if you are in the area, and while there you can see my painting, Madame Butterfly, in person.  The exhibition remains through April 22.

Madame Butterfly

Acrylic on Canvas

40 x 40

6000.

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Color.

Rose Quartz & Serenity

Madam Butterfly

Acrylic on Gallery Wrap Canvas

40x40

6000.

Have you already heard about this? Pantone selected two colors of the year for 2016...yes, Rose Quartz and Serenity. So who is Pantone?  Color Authority.  Owned by Washington, D.C.-based Danaher Corp., Pantone creates a system that helps manufacturers define color precisely. Every year the company polls decor and fashion designers, manufacturers and retailers about colors they plan to use and based on the information gathered, pick the color for the coming year.  This is the first year Pantone has selected two. Rose Quartz and Serenity.

Take a closer look....one might say baby pink and baby blue, however Pantone says more of a Rose Pink to convey a rosy warmth balanced with the blue to invoke tranquility. No baby stuff here.

Be watching for these colors....everywhere.  You will see it in home products, clothing, personal products.  Here are just a few.

Interestingly enough, when Pantone announced their decision to name these two colors for 2016 I could not stop connecting my most recent painting, Madame Butterfly, to the decision.  

Madame Butterly

Truly, I did not know of Pantone's color selection until just a few days ago.  No one did.  I firmly believe (and have written about this before) if the mind is open it can tap into thoughts that circulate through the universe. It's not a conscience thing; it happens with spontaneity and is absolutely unplanned. This goes along with my last blog post about using your creativity, allowing yourself to be open and flexible.  Do things a little differently.  

Madame Butterfly

When I approached this particular painting I let it grow and change in a spontaneous manner.  I had not planned on using this palette.  It just happened as the painting progressed based on what I thought looked best.  A lot of intuition.  I never use pink..oops...Rose Quartz.  I typically do not use pastel colors.  My palette is usually bold, fully saturated color. Being open allowed the universe to dictate a very different palette and one I now see is coming into use everywhere.  Rose Quartz and Serenity.  

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Mamie Gregory IV.

Madame Butterfly

Madame Butterfly

40 x40

Acrylic on stretched canvas

6000.00

An exceptional basket weaver, Mamie Gregory was a Panamint Shoshone who lived from 1867 to 1947.  Born at Indian Gardens near Darwin in Death Valley, CA (one of the hottest places on earth) she is known for her elegantly created storage vessels.  

Madame Butterfly

As a young adult Mamie married tribal member George Gregory, whose name was adopted from his employer, and moved to the old mining town of Coso Hot Springs.  Working for a dollar a day she cleaned houses and took care of the laundry for neighbors.  She walked 5 miles to work each morning, returning home at night to weave baskets and prepare the materials needed for this craft.  All this in a dry, arid, harsh environment.

Madame Butterfly

Utilizing a high stitch and coil count, Mamie's baskets went from utilitarian storage baskets to smaller gift baskets coinciding with the Curio Trade of the early 1900's.  Now highly valued, her remaining baskets are housed in private and museum collections.  And they are spectacular!

Madame Butterfly

Frequent use of a butterfly design on her baskets earned her the title, Madame Butterfly.  The grace and beauty of her designs (which included lizards, spirals, and other shapes as well as the butterfly), the careful craft and excellent weave earned her the distinction as one of the world's finest basket weavers.

Madame Butterfly

40 x40

Acrylic on canvas

6000.00

Joining the other paintings in my Indian Women Portrait series, this painting is designed to honor Mamie Gregory and her elegantly created baskets. 

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Mamie Gregory III.

Details

Get two artists together for conversation and you just don't know what might come up.  The other day over lunch I was asked, by a fellow artist, if I was using stencils on my current painting of Mamie Gregory.  She was looking at the lizards climbing up the canvas, the butterflies flitting around. Answer:  Yes.

Detail of lizards and butterflies.

I realized this might not occur to everyone, so I thought you might like to see the stencils I created.  Each was hand drawn, cut out of heavy paper, placed against the canvas, traced around with pencil.  After the outline was in place I painted around the image and then later filled in the image.

Paper cut outs used as stencils.

After painting around the outside of the stenciled image.

After the stenciled images of butterflies and lizards were painted in.

What the painting looks like today.

There is more work to be done to bring this painting to completion, but Mamie Gregory aka Madame Butterfly is almost ready to join the gallery of Indian Women Portraits on my web site.

To contact me click HERE

To visit my web site click HERE

Mamie Gregory.

Madame Butterfly

I encourage you to scroll down through the images below to see the development and progress on the painting of Mamie Gregory aka Madame Butterfly.  An image is worth a thousand words....

Under painting the face.

Mamie begins to look out from the canvas.

The dress she is wearing in her photograph becomes inspiration for design elements in the painting.

Mamie's lizard basket motifs inspire more design elements.

Stylized image of a basket is added to the canvas.

Butterflies flitter onto the canvas.

How the painting looks this morning as I approach the easel.

Mamie Gregory - Madame Butterfly.

The Results Of A Museum Visit.

Blank canvas just waiting for inspiration to hit.

Inspiration, inspiration, inspiration.  Just one word to describe what happens when you visit a museum. Remember my last post about getting yourself to a museum?  For an artist, there is overwhelming inspiration to be had.  And I am inspired.

Basket from the Nevada State Museum collection.

It was the visit to the Nevada Museum of Art which led to visiting the Nevada State Museum, a subsequent visit to the Palm Springs Art Museum and now another scheduled visit to the Agua Caliente Cultural Museum, all to research basket makers, that has me inspired.  So it's into the studio, new big canvas on the easel, and the resolution of how I want to present Guadalupe Arenas who was a member of the Agaua Caliente band of Cahuilla Indians and an extraordinary basket weaver.  I also have a friend who believes she owns two of her baskets and just talking about Arenas and her work has encouraged me to paint this woman.  HOWEVER, I cannot find images of her...arrrgggg. Next week I visit the archives of the Agua Caliente Cultural Museum where I am sure to find what I want, but in the mean time, all that inspiration is bubbling up and over leading me to work with Mamie Gregory.  

Mamie Gregory aka Madam Butterfly.

Also known as Madame Butterfly, Mamie Gregory was another extraordinary basket weaver, a Panamint Shoshone living from 1880's to 1951.  She fits right into the outline for : my Indian Women Portraits, the time period, basket weaver, lived in the area where I live....  and with an alias of Madame Butterfly she is just too delicious to ignore.  This moniker derives from her recurring designs of butterflies, butterflies, butterflies with a few lizards, squirrels and what is described as a whirlwind.  I stumbled across her when visiting the Agua Caliente Cultural Museum a couple years ago and she has floated in and out of my creative conscious since, so here we go.  Inspiration from museum visits moving me into the studio to work on a new creation.

Beginning of new portrait painting.

Check back to see how this painting progresses.

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To visit my web site click HERE