New Small Paintings : Riled, Whist and Somatic

Hello lovely people, 

You might remember that I had the pleasure of participating in a group show with Gallery Nucleus last year, in which I entered 2 5x7 paintings, Entwined and Star Crossed.

Well, the gallery hosts an open call for their yearly iteration of the show every year, and I realised last week that the last day to enter was this passed Saturday. 

Since I also need to paint a few pieces for your 8x10 prints, I figured I might as well try to make the deadline and see if I could create 3 small pieces for the show (each artist was welcome to submit a max of 3 pieces). 

The premise of the show is that all pieces are 5x7, and all go for the same price of $100 USD. 

I worked through last Thursday, Friday and Saturday to get the pieces ready and I managed to get them submitted before the deadline closed on Saturday evening, so while we wait to hear if I got in, here they are :

The first one, Riled, is a slightly different take on my storm eye from last year :

I really enjoy this small concept and wanted to explore it again.

For such a tight deadline, coming up with entirely new concepts is not the best tactic, so I opted to explore ideas or images I was familiar with and excited by instead.

The second piece, Whist (meaning to be silent) is another take on a concept I tried to do for the same show last year, but wasn't happy with :

Same base idea, different execution and vibes.

The final piece, Somatic, was mostly motivated by wanting to paint a clear skull. I was exhausted by that point, and wanted to have fun more than I wanted to come up with a new idea or even just a twist on an existing one.

I wanted to see if I could paint a clear skull with something embedded in it, and rather than focusing on the imagery, I mostly focused on the effect and the challenge of executing it efficiently.

I miss doing studies, and this felt like a midway point between a study and the beginning of an idea.

I've had the idea for a clear skeleton with an embedded nervous or venous system floating about in the dusty corners of my brain for ages, so this felt like a fun opportunity to try the look out.

This is probably the piece I am least satisfied with, and I might tweak it further later, but given the tight deadline, I am happy I managed to fit in 3 pieces to submit.

The first 2 paintings will become the 8x10 prints for April and May, and all of them might become stickers at some point. The skull will probably be the small print for July.

I still have some work to do to catch up with rewards but I am getting there. Things aren't easy right now but it'll get there I think. 

Thank you all for sticking with me and being wonderful as ever.

All my love, 

M