Blog Archives - Robyn Sand Anderson Art

Painting-A-Day: September 30, 2013

9/30/2013

The Aftermath

Do you ever awake from sleep having just come out of a dream? Where the images touch lightly in your memory, but are elusive? You have a sense of them, and you lie quietly hoping they will solidify and make themselves clear to you. That is how I am feeling today, only sleep is not involved, (though I wouldn't be opposed to that.)

I am beginning the thinking and dreaming stage for a commissioned painting. A few concrete images, with soft edges are coming to me...a few colors, too. I have a sense of the overall theme and have learned to be patient about these first stages of a painting. But when I have a limited number of days to create something, it is hard to be patient. The best place for me to "see" a painting is in a horizontal position, with my eyes closed. I know, I know. Yes, it is hard to stay awake some days. But it is akin to daydreaming and it makes total sense if you think about it. Going to a quiet place and space, closing my eyes to all outside stimuli, gives me a chance to visualize. I keep it fairly loose and open, so that images might come to mind. Certain colors that make me feel what I am trying to say with the painting float to the surface. I see it in my mind, I make changes, I seek direction. I would say I have about 1/3 of the idea in mind when I get to the studio. The painting may turn out completely different from what I visualized, but I have a sense of direction. I have a sense of the color scheme. I know what I want to say.

Today's photo shares the state of my studio. Yikes, is right! I am going to clean and organize this mess, as I continue to dream of this commissioned work. Tomorrow the painting begins!

Painting-A-Day: September 27, 2013

9/27/2013

Acrylic on Archival Gessobord with 3/4" Birch Sides, 12x12", Ready to hang!

Try as I might, the only thing I accomplished today was to get my Artist Grant Application finished, though that was a very important task and it took me all day! Amazing how long it takes to put all of that together; answering the questions about the direction you'd like to take as an artist, making an argument for why you really need this right now, picking out the digital jpegs of your ten best paintings and adjusting their size, labeling them in a precise way...and then checking it all twelve times and still finding some wording to change.

So, today I am re-featuring a painting I did on April 25th. Ya know, I really like this one, because I really let go of my need to control and just went with whatever was happening, reacting to the thing that happened before it. It was seriously exciting! A nail biter if you didn't have paint all over your fingers. It can make your brain explode! Holy paintbuckets! I love the explosive movement of it, the color is whipping itself around, yet it has all the calming colors of nature. Nature is indeed, a powerful and exciting force!

If interested in purchasing, hit the Painting-A-Day Purchase tab and then hit the Etsy widget.
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$100 for this original painting, ready-to-hang, plus $15 shipping and handling.

Painting-A-Day: September 26, 2013

9/26/2013

Acrylic on Archival Gessobord with 3/4" Birch Sides, 12x12", Ready to hang!

Well, that was fun! Today I played with the use of Titan Buff, an opaque. This opaque, in combo with thick vibrant pigments, create warm subdued color versions of that same pigment, called tints. Wet paint into wet paint. I like playing with a source of light, layering color value changes around it, using contrasts to make it pop. This painting gives me the same feeling I have when driving up the hill near our house. There is a lone tree at the top of the hill. There is something enigmatic about it. It carries a dignity while every day the sky is different behind it. I love that tree.

This painting has SOLD!

If interested in purchasing, hit the Painting-A-Day Purchase tab and then hit the Etsy widget.
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$100 for this original painting, ready-to-hang, plus $15 shipping and handling.

Painting-A-Day: September 24, 2013

9/24/2013

Acrylic on Archival Gessobord with 3/4" Birch Sides, 12x12", Ready to hang!

Today I am experimenting with a new pigment I've learned about in my reading and videos. For those of you who have a hankering to dabble in some painting, there is a plethora (what a great word, just feels good as it rolls off your tongue...but I digress) of free instruction on YouTube. So great! By far the best way to learn is to study or do a workshop with a professional artist. It's a way to learn fast and get live feedback. I love that time of the day where everything looks golden. Life is enhanced at that beautiful hour or two, especially in the fall. Soak it up!

If interested in purchasing, hit the Painting-A-Day Purchase tab and then hit the Etsy widget.
It will take you right where you need to be to purchase the painting of your choice. Thanks!
$100 for this original painting, ready-to-hang, plus $15 shipping and handling.

Painting-A-Day: September 23, 2013

9/23/2013

Acrylic on Archival Gessobord with 2" Stained Birch Sides, 12x12", Ready to hang!

All I can say is, I find painting in the abstract endlessly fascinating, challenging, and exciting! So those of you who have been following me for a while have seen this painting go through changes. It was first posted on April 30 and changed on August 6. Well, this morning I remembered that I forgot to varnish the birch sides of the next batch of gessobords, which need to dry overnight. So I wondered if I had a previous painting that was screaming for some additional attention. While I liked the changes I made to the first rendition, adding the tissue paper in light blues and greens, it still didn't seem finished to me. I felt adventurous today so I took it to my worktable and loaded my brush with a rich red cadmium and it was the beginning of a whole new painting, as you can see. It has evolved and speaks to me of a solitary flame. What is it about a candle's flame that is so mesmerizing and soothing?

This painting has SOLD!

If interested in purchasing, hit the Painting-A-Day Purchase tab and then hit the Etsy widget.
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$100 for this original painting, ready-to-hang, plus $15 shipping and handling.

Painting-A-Day: September 20, 2013

9/20/2013

Acrylic on Fabriano Artistico #140 Hot Press Paper, 9 x 10", unframed.

Yesterday I talked about some tough news. The beauty of art is that is uses symbols to speak, symbols that are a universal language for all to interpret. A particular piece of art, or dance or music can say one thing to a person in despair and another thing to a person coming out of despair. Its breadth of "voice" is endless. It gives a person space to think, to touch on those things that we hide from. If we truly open ourselves fully to this thing inside us that is sad, that knows there is a void we want to run from....if we allow ourselves to look at it in the face, walk through it, feel it...I believe it loses its power over us. We can then turn our face to the light, soak up goodness, notice simple beauty, take a stance of gratefulness.

I'm just reading through what I just wrote and I'm thinking...yah, I should do that!

This painting is on paper and will need to be matted and framed. It will need to go to the company I did it for for a period of several weeks, but then can be sent to you, if you are interested in purchasing it.

If interested in purchasing, hit the Painting-A-Day Purchase tab and then hit the Etsy widget.
It will take you right where you need to be to purchase the painting of your choice. Thanks!
$100 for this original painting, ready-to-hang, plus $15 shipping and handling.

Painting-A-Day: September 19, 2013

9/19/2013

In progress...acrylic on paper. Steps 1 and 2. Tomorrow the finished painting!

Struggling today. Feeling low. Someone dear to me has had tough health news. I have to say that after a diagnosis of a chronic illness myself, it became clear how precious good health is. I took it for granted. I'd always had relatively good health. So what do you do with this kind of news? Today I am scheduled to work on a commissioned painting of Easter Lilies....a sign of hope and life to many, whether you are religious or not. Flowers in themselves are simply miraculous to me. The intricate designs, color, shapes. Amazing. Hope is an amazing thing, too. It seems to be in our DNA. We gather together when things are tough, and love lifts us, hope lifts us out of the mire, the doubt, the darkness. Here's to love...and hope!

Painting-A-Day: September 17, 2013

9/17/2013

Acrylic on Archival Gessobord with 3/4" Birch Sides, 12x12", Ready to hang!

One of my favorite things to do while making a solo drive through Midwest landscapes is to look for potential paintings and then try to memorize what I am seeing...the colors, the shapes, the textures. On a recent trip to NE Iowa to visit my family, I saw summer slipping away with evidence of autumn. The colors turning to golds with greens fading and dark soil showing its face again. Late afternoon, early evening...the golden hour. There is something about a lone tree out in the middle of vast fields that is intriguing. Makes me start to think of a possible children's story. Something about being the only one of your kind in the middle of thousands of other plants...how that feels. Yup. That's what I am doing out there on the road.

This painting has SOLD!

If interested in purchasing, hit the Painting-A-Day Purchase tab and then hit the Etsy widget.
It will take you right where you need to be to purchase the painting of your choice. Thanks!
$100 for this original painting, ready-to-hang, plus $15 shipping and handling.

Painting-A-Day: September 16, 2013

9/16/2013

Acrylic on Gessobord with 3/4" Birch Sides, 12x12", Ready to hang!

In the spring of 2014, I will be having an exhibit built around the question of war as an answer to conflict. The news of the last few weeks regarding Syria brings this reality into our daily thoughts. I am particularly interested in the suffering this violence causes...to the innocent, the vulnerable, to the defenders and the perpetrators. My husband and I watched a movie recently about the famine in China during WWII, and the Japanese takeover. It was tough to watch, tough to fathom. Yet we repeat, over and over. This will be a weighty subject to wrestle with. As I look for new ways to speak visually, I experimented today with working the pigments together on the gessobord, wet thick paint. I leave some pure color in some areas and mix other neighboring colors together, creating some beautiful areas of blending. I often paint in transparent layers, drying each layer before applying another color. This is a practice I learned painting in watercolor for so many years. I am learning more about painting with opaques, through videos, books and hopefully, a workshop with an experienced artist. I am working on applying for a grant to study with an abstract acrylic artist. I can say, definitively, that I learn the most when I take workshops with professional artists. Mini-apprenticeships. I am very grateful for each and every experience.

If interested in purchasing, hit the Painting-A-Day Purchase tab and then hit the Etsy widget.
It will take you right where you need to be to purchase the painting of your choice. Thanks!
$100 for this original painting, ready-to-hang, plus $15 shipping and handling.

Painting-A-Day: September 10, 2013

9/10/2013

Acrylic on Archival Gessobord with 3/4" Birch Sides, 12x12", Ready to hang!

Part of making an income as an artist involves chasing down potential commissions. Today I am working on sending samples of my work, artist bio and resume, etc. to a Children's Hospital that put out an artists call. It is difficult to decide which images of my work to send. I have to adjust each image's dimensions, some with a high number of pixels for printing and others with a low number to put on a cd for web use. It ends up being quite a bit of work, more than I anticipated, actually. So, while I had dreams of painting today, after a week off, I am not going to be able to pull it off.

Part of my life with a chronic illness is that I have had to learn to let go. I have to make adjustments without berating myself. Stress makes things worse. I visited my 86-year-old mother this weekend. She has always been a good model of letting go of things that you cannot control. "Put in on the shelf," she would say, "let God take care of it." Putting it on the shelf today, Mom. I read a verse in Mark one time where Jesus said something like "she did what she could..." regarding the woman who poured expensive perfume on his feet, much to the chagrin of the disciples. I think he was trying to help the disciples to relax a little on the righteousness stuff. I think I will put that on my gravestone, "She did what she could..." I find some grace in that.

Today I am featuring a previous painting from August 23 that is still available...in case you missed it along the way.

If interested in purchasing, hit the Painting-A-Day Purchase tab and then hit the Etsy widget.
It will take you right where you need to be to purchase the painting of your choice. Thanks!
$100 for this original painting, ready-to-hang, plus $15 shipping and handling.

Painting-A-Day: September 5, 2013

9/5/2013

Acrylic on Archival Gessobord with 3/4" Birch Sides, 12x12", Ready to hang!

Today I am featuring a painting that I love. This painting from May 24th suggests prairie grasses, distant fields, and tumultuous skies. Last weekend we were driving up to northern Minnesota and at a certain point you are surrounded by trees, mostly pine, on both sides of the road. You can only see any distance straight ahead. Enveloped. Closed in. I didn't like it. It felt claustrophobic to me. I am used to wide open spaces where you see the distant horizon, where you see the whole sky full of a storm's fury or sunsets of exquisite color. I think we all feel "right" in the vista we grew up seeing. Those enveloping pines probably feel comforting to those who grew up in it. Cocoonish. It's always good to try to understand that people come from different places with different ways of viewing the world. We are all colored by our experiences. It's good to get inside another experience and open yourself to a new way of looking at something. It can solidify your own view but can also open your mind to looking at something from another perspective. So, I embraced the pines, took deep breaths of their piney goodness and discovered... I like it when I am standing in their heady midst, but I still love the open prairie skies best.

From time to time I re-feature some of my Painting-A-Day creations. I do this for those who have just joined this art blog and may have missed a few and because I sometimes have other obligations...either commissions, art biz work or when life happens.

If interested in purchasing, hit the Painting-A-Day Purchase tab and then hit the Etsy widget.
It will take you right where you need to be to purchase the painting of your choice. Thanks!
$100 for this original painting, ready-to-hang, plus $15 shipping and handling.

Painting-A-Day: September 4, 2013

9/4/2013

Acrylic on Archival Fabriano Artistico #140 Hot Press Paper, 22x30"
Collection April and Judd Larson

Today I am sharing a painting from my exhibit, "Contrasts: Suffering & Hope". It is named "Sanctuary" meaning safe place, shelter, a place of refuge, a holy place. I would love to hear what you feel, what you see, what it brings to your mind....but sometimes it is hard to put that into words, isn't it? I guess that is why I rely on color and movement, shape and value to wrestle it out on the paper. It's that feeling of having something on the tip of your tongue, but that you can't quite grab. Abstracts or non-objective paintings kind of grow on you (at least that is my hope.) We tend to want to have things defined, recognizable, so we can easily grasp what is going on in a painting. That's normal. Don't we all just want to know the answers? Plain and simple. The thing I've grown to love about this kind of painting is that there is some mystery to it, which really, is what we live in. Ultimately we only get a glimpse into the Knowing. So I usually tell people who are looking at my abstracts in discomfort...it's okay...you don't need to know the answers. Just let the color wash over you, drink in the movement as your eyes move around the painting. You can just rest in the Beauty. You can float in the Grace.

Painting-A-Day: September 3, 2013

9/3/2013

Acrylic on Archival Gessobord with 3/4" Birch Sides, 12x12", Ready to hang!

Well...I couldn't help myself. You are getting used to this perhaps? This painting originally had to do with nature, an abstract using nature's colors suggesting trees, water, sky. I've added to this painting about 3 times now. Today I added movement. As I think about our neighbors out west who are battling raging fires, I think about all of the forests that are burning to the ground...how out of those ashes, new life will come. And so, I find myself adding the wind, the movement of new life that will surely come to those places. So this painting suggests life and hope out of the ashes; for me, it is about the continuous movement of creation to re-create itself.

This painting has SOLD!

If interested in purchasing, hit the Painting-A-Day Purchase tab and then hit the Etsy widget.
It will take you right where you need to be to purchase the painting of your choice. Thanks!
$100 for this original painting, ready-to-hang, plus $15 shipping and handling.