Announcements

When Heaven and Nature Sing

Join me!  When Heaven and Nature Sing, a show of thirty-six paintings from One-Hundred Flowers is showing at Palette Contemporary Art and Craft in Albuquerque, New Mexico this December.

palette_postcard

“Sun Pop” is one of thirty-six paintings in “When Heaven and Nature Sing” at Palette in Albuquerque this month.

 

While not much of a churchgoer, I do attend a service at my neighborhood church on Christmas Eve to sing the old songs by candlelight.  Joy to the World, is a regular on the roster.  The refrain, “and heaven and nature sing,” always gets me wondering . . . What is the relationship between heaven and nature in the song?  Can you explain it using color?

100_flowers_wall2

“Saber,” “Rethinking the Fossil Record,” ” Kewpie,” and “Juicy,” each is encaustic and ink on panel, 5″ x 4″

 

One Hundred Flowers is a series of paintings based on botanical subjects where I aim to balance abandon with order by putting loose, gesture drawings of organic, botanical forms through a series of refining steps.

kewpie-maple-shelf_blog

“Kewpie,” encaustic and ink on panel, 5″ x 4″

 

Within each individual piece, I tend to go for analogous or tonal colors.  My goal is to arrive at a finished piece where the original subject is distilled to an essence, clarified, and transformed.

bean-maple-shelf_blog

“Bean,” encaustic, ink and gold leaf on panel, 5″ x 4″

 

But the series as a whole contains a mix of analogous and complementary hues. The thirty-six pieces below are available at Palette starting today through the end of the month.  Call or email gallery director Kurt Nelson for more information.

Superkitty

Barbie

Drink Me

Pickle

Animal

Orbit

Juicy

It's Hard To Say

Sweater

Simple Tree

Sun Pop

Utile

Mentor

Bean

In the Middle of

A Stream of Charged Particles

Mineral

Old Fashioned Rocketry

Saber

The Conformist

Fluffy

Trans

Penny

Droplet

Good Morning

A Good Sign

Lick

Rabbit

Kewpie

The Way We Stand

Grain

Spitting Image

White Flag of Courage

Seaside Alley

Clean Clean

Soothsayer

in Announcements / Art (mine) / Encaustic 4 comments

Earthbound

Here it is, Earthbound, my contribution to the Boulder Barrel Project that I wrote about here: Boulder Barrel Project, and here: Color Notes.  Community projects like this always take more work than you think they will, but they are also a whole lot of fun.  For me, it was fun to work in acrylic, a medium I haven’t touched in years.  I also liked seeing the range of ideas people came up with, and, of course, supporting rainwater collection in my community.

Earthbound1

Earthbound, on display at Savory Spice Shop, 2041 Broadway, Boulder, Colorado starting today through mid-September, 2016.

 

See all the barrels and bid here.

in Announcements 0 comments

Boulder Barrel Project

On August 10th of this year it will become legal for people to collect rainwater on their property in Colorado.  To celebrate and raise awareness I will paint a rain barrel as part of the Boulder Barrel Project, a community art project in Boulder, Colorado.  I don’t often do community art projects.  But something about this one sparked my curiosity so I answered yes right away without knowing what sort of barrel I’d be working on.  Organizers have sent two photos.  The classy looking barrel on the left is apparently a no-go.  (OK by me, attempts to stay classy deaden creativity.)  The clunky-bumpy barrel on the right, or something similar to it, is the one I expect to receive and will be working on this July.

Barrel1Barrel2

 

My challenge is to make something on this utilitarian substrate that I am happy to show, something that connects to my art but that isn’t exactly art (this is more of a design project, really) that will also make sense in the lawn or garden setting where it will eventually go.

in Announcements 0 comments

Complementary gig

Like many artists, I make ends meet doing a variety of things.  The goal for me (and it’s an elusive one) is to balance income with studio time.  Since I prefer setting my own hours as opposed to logging time at an away-from-home, away-from-studio workplace each day, freelance work that I can do at my own pace works for me.  It doesn’t work for everyone.  Some people prefer a more regular gig outside the home with set hours.  Or something more social.  The key is to know yourself enough to know what works best for you.

 

Anyway, I’m happy to announce I’ve added a new freelance gig to my mix, writing about bees for the bimonthly mag, Countryside & Small Stock Journal.  My first piece about honey and veganism, July/August 2016, is out now.  So far I’m enjoying the writing and believe it’s added something, a different energy and style of thinking, to what I do in the studio.  I see it as a complementary as opposed to a draggy gig.

Spring beehive in a grassy field, Boulder, Colorado

Spring beehive in a grassy field, Boulder, Colorado

 

in Announcements / Sustenance 0 comments

Welcome to my new website!

Yay! A project I thought would take a month (but that actually took over two) is finally done. Welcome to my new website and online shop.

"You," encaustic painting by Laura Tyler

“You,” encaustic and ink on panel, 5″ x 4″, SOLD

The most exciting development on the web since I last updated my site in 2011 is the arrival of e-commerce tools like WooCommerce and Shopify that allow you to set up your own shop. This gives you more control over your collectors’ experience. It also has the potential to reduce artists’ dependence on third party sites like Etsy for online sales. My old site worked mostly as a static gallery. Clean and cool, it served to a degree. But I never loved it as a mode of expression and struggled to keep it updated. Adding a shop to the new site has warmed things up by broadening how I think about photography. Taking inspiration from foodie sites (like the gorgeous QUITOKEETO) I am excited about allowing atmosphere to creep into my portfolio photography.  It is no longer solely a drudge activity. (To see more of QUITOKEETO proprietor Heidi Swanson’s food photography, check out her blog, 101 Cookbooks. Also worth a gander, the lush and sensitively photographed cannelle et vanilla.)

 

Resources

  • Big thanks to Andy Schwarz at amstec for his work (and patience!) on the design and technical end.
  • Need help visualizing a new version of your own site?  Check out this Web Design Sketchbook.  I used the free version and found it clarifying.
  • E-commerce powered by Woo.

 

in Announcements 0 comments