25 plus mph winds and a cold ruined my plans to cross country ski down my as-yet-unplowed street today, so I stayed in and tackled a new project. I'm doing a series of antique tile designs from Barcelona, and here is the first one that I completed:
I'm calling it the Carmenere Series, after the bottle of wine I've been slowly but surely making a dent in while painting. The reason is simple. I love old tiles, and have fond memories of picking up shattered pieces of glazed tiles on a beach in Spain. I picked up a book that categorized antique tile designs from Barcelona, and thought, "I can bring these back to life, put them together on a wall, and make art!"
I've started with four. Contrary to what you might expect, I am not recreating the full tiled design, but rather am painting one tile out of several different tiles series, and hanging them together as if the whole original design were up-ended. I'm almost done with two more, and stay tuned for the first four. Ideally I'd like to do 12 (3x4), but of course that's expensive and a lot of work. Let me know what you think about this design as it unfolds so that I have inspiration to continue (or know when to stop).
Tomorrow, if the city is again shut down, I will have another new painting - an abstract painting based on the play of shadow and light in the snow.
Continue drinking.
ReplyDeleteI'm tempted to buy this series. Is it for sale or is this your personal project?
ReplyDeleteWhy not? It's a personal project now but I have a list of about 30 designs and these types of installations are definitely available for sale. Just give me a number of tiles and I'll send you a price quote :) Also, don't forget to send me those photos from our DC video shoot!
ReplyDeletePS For those of you living in countries like India where dust/grime accumulate on stuff, I believe varnishing naked artwork like this would be a good idea. However, you cannot varnish until it has dried for one year. Therefore, enjoy your art in dusty grimy places, then varnish later. Oil is tough stuff.