Seeing Double

Well the snow's been useful - it means I can stay in and paint! I've been working on the second, proper painting, of "Living Flame". My spiritual healer friend thought it a big task, and asked me if I'd have problems painting it a second time, and I replied that I doubted it. If I've done it once, I can do it again! So, instead of showing you the painting, I'll show you the two together, so you can see what I'm talking about, and compare them. The "proper" version is as close as I can make it to the original "working painting". They are both in acrylics - used in the style of thin watercolours - but the original is on acrylic board whereas the proper version is on watercolour paper, as it was decided that to frame it, some of the image would be lost under the mount, and if I painted a larger border of background around it, then that could be "lost" under the mount without detracting from the image. Its a good idea to do that, anyway, as its a large image (20 x 16 inches) and since its on watercolour paper, the framer will want as much paper as possible to be able to hide behind the mount and stop the paper buckling.

Its not often I paint a picture twice - I usually get bored - but this painting has been a pleasure to paint a second time, to capture the light, the colour, the line, and tone. And I think she's beautiful, this living flame........

Unveiling of the Queyntes

Well now, where was I? Oh, yes I remember! Fannies!! (or for the Americans amongst you Pussies!!).

Just to give you the background before I do the grand unveiling, I wrote a year ago (and it is a year, all but one day, now that I've checked, Wow!) about wanting to do the paintings as a celebration of womanhood - as bright and colourful abstracts of their most innermost secret places. The thought was that when someone has their portrait painted, its of their face with their name as the title - but in this case I wanted the names to be anonymous - so unless the participants reveal it, I won't say who they are. I originally asked for volunteers and at the time ten women contacted me, but I only received good enough photos from seven of them - and these are the original seven here. I hope that more women will be interested in having their "Queynte" painted and I would love to see them all part of an exhibition somewhere for the world to see - because just seeing the seven of them together is a beautiful thing already! I hope to sell any to anyone who is interesting in purchasing them - but at this moment I have no idea what price to put on them because I have put so much of MYSELF in them, I don't know how to put a financial value on it as yet (I will in time, I just need to think a bit about it for a while!). I painted them intuitively - which is a new concept for me - and one I like very much. It was the right way of painting them, as they are so personal, and abstract. The point of the abstraction was so that they, although anatomically correct, are hidden enough in colouring and some of the external shapes to hide the image for what it is. I want them to be hung on a wall so that anyone other than the people who know, would not know what they are - except for something exotic flower shapes maybe, that may just resemble something subconsciously and vaguely erotic.....

They are painted in acylics on 20 x 16 inch boards. The reason I used the acrylics was because I needed the paint to be bright and to dry quickly and cleanly, leaving me time to work intuitively and quickly without the annoyance of waiting for paint to dry (and losing the impetuous of the intuitive way of painting) or of the paint annoyingly merging into other colours and muddying the effect. I liked using the board as it absorbed the paint very quickly, leaving no room for error or a change of colour. Once the colour was put on the board, it stayed there, and other than brightening a colour here or there for more depth, I haven't overworked it to ruin the effect (always a concern for artists!).

At the moment, all the participants are bloggers, but that doesn't exclude any other woman from participating, I won't restrict it to that degree.

All the paintings have a woman hidden within the folds to remind you what the image is about.

I'm delighted with them - I've put so much of myself IN them, and they are EXACTLY what I predicted last year that I wanted them to be - bright, beautiful and SHAMELESS.

So, now they're here - what do you think of them.......