Neighbour Cats - 2023 07 29

 

This week I continued to build my art production infrastructure. There are now three 3' x 4' magnet boards installed on the walls of the basement suite, where I live with Mom. The magnet boards allow me to put work on the walls, move it around, take it down and put it up again. The work always communicates new information when I can step back from it and look at it in a different context.

The subject of these studies is a neighbour cat we encountered on one of our dog walks. 

The first group of layers was done in pencil crayon. It was interesting to observe the different signifiers activated by using a selection of 3 greens in the first cat and a selection of 3 reds for the second cat studies. Immediately ideas about green (growth, envy, life) and red (jealousy, rage, passion, blood) were evoked in my imagination. 

The second group of layers is being done with a translucent gray acrylic paint. This mix is a combination of iron oxide black, acrylic medium, and water. It is a very thin mix. The first pass was done with my set of 4 acrylic brushes. After I finished the first pass on both cats I realized my brushes are tired and old. They have lost their flex because I am terrible at thoroughly cleaning them after I finish a work session. For the second pass I used my paint knives and rubber tip brushes. These implements give a lot less control but also give a more dynamic line and fill texture.

What I noticed after this second pass was the energy and sense of life that is evoked by the dynamic lines and texture. 

I'm not sure what my next step is to build these images. I am tempted now to go back with a simple black line. So the image is a combination of black in, pencil crayon, and paint. 

This is why it is important to let the images live on the walls while they are in progress. They will tell me what is our next step. I am enjoying the emergence of character for each image - different facets of our cat personality.