Monday, May 20, 2013

Art Walk

Acrylic on watercolor paper, adhered to 8x8 wood panel.
Thursday was my second "Art Walk" since joining Gallery Eleven.  This is a monthly event in downtown Charleston WV where galleries, stores, and offices with art exhibits have "open house" all evening. It is a great social event with music, food and beverages that I have enjoyed in the past as a walker and gawker.  Now that I have work on display at our co-op gallery, I have stayed in that location and talked to visitors.

It is somewhat frightening to have my art on display, as I am still insecure about the quality of my work.  Since it is abstract, the most frequent question that I get is "what does this represent?"

The piece at right got the most second looks and positive comments, and I rather like it myself.  It was part of a class assignment in the Jane Davies "Extreme Composition" class, and was intended to be a color field painting.  I started enhancing the color of the lower section, using a palette knife, and got a texture that became more like a landscape design than was intended for that exercise.  When I hung it at the gallery, I named it "Abstract 4/2013" just to see what folks would say.  Yep!  They asked the same old question. I usually reply, "What does it mean to you?" but would love to have a good "stop 'em cold" answer, which I'm sure many abstract artists have up their sleeves to use on certain occasions.

1 comment:

  1. Glad you are putting your work out there!!!! Good luck in coming up with that answer Joyce....It's what calls to me? That's my response and it's what it means to you. Each of us is different. xox

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