Just playing

Once in a while, I paint something on a scrap piece of paper and come back and fall in love with it.  This echinacea will probably be framed and stay in my studio.   Love this one!

This peony was another one.   My sister fell in love with it and it's living with her now.

Four Dancing Echinacea

©Robin Edmundson, 'Four Dancing Echinacea', watercolor, 10 x 8 inches.  

[Available framed, $280]

I was practicing echinacea on scrap paper and tossed this one aside for several weeks.  When I found it again, I loved the motion in it.

This is a wildflower in Indiana, but not around here.  I have planted dozens in the garden and they self sow pretty easily.  They're slowly starting to pop up in the edges of the scrub trees.   Shades of pink and white.  I love them.

A Record of the Artist Playing

©Robin Edmundson, 'Echinacea Bouquet #4', watercolor, 14 x 10 inches.
Framed to 20 x 16 inches.  $375

"An artist is trying to puzzle something out - to solve a complex problem of perception. A piece of art is the record of the artist playing."  

Jordan Peterson, podcast

Eric texted me that quote the other day as I was on my 4th version of this composition.  I love that quote because it describes my relationship with my artwork exactly.  

I wrestle a lot with my work - working out color, playing with light, coming up with a strategy for composition.  I experiment with this and that.  The relationships between color, light, line, shape and mood are complicated and a small adjustment here or there can have a large effect on the final piece.  I ruin one and then start again. Try something new.  Or not - and realize after the third version with the same yuck results just exactly where I should try something new and break out of a pattern that just isn't working.   

Yes.  Sometimes it takes me more than three versions to get that through my head.

The middle stages are the worst.   I've ruined a lot of paintings and then, with some, felt the urge to keep going through the miserable middle until I realized that it wasn't really ruined - it just hadn't been quite finished.   There's an art to recognizing when something needs more work and when something needs to be let go of.  I'm still figuring that out.  

As an artist, I play with many solutions to the problem of communicating a scene in a way that you can decipher the message I'm sending.   I perceive something in the three dimensional world and then encode it into a two dimensional space in a way that allows you to look at it and decode it to understand what I'm seeing and saying.  

It sounds crazy, right?   Artists often walk the line between brilliance and insanity.  In the meantime, an artist plays and each piece of art is a record of that play.

Butterflies

K2 is very patient with the camera and she waited a while for these butterflies to settle so she could snap the pics.

This is a Great Spangled Frittilary on one of our naturalized echinaceas.   Pretty.

This looks like a dark version of a tiger swallowtail knee deep in one of our hosta flowers.   I rescued a few of these hostas from a property where they were being mowed down and over the years they have multiplied.  And multiplied.   The flower stalks are about three feet high and the butterflies, hummingbirds and bees cannot get enough of them.   The nectar must be really terrific.