guest blogger today!

 My friend Eva is having trouble posting to her blog, Colourful Research.   Blogger is eating her posts, so she's a guest blogger on mine today!  Here is her post, which I am honored to have here.  Be sure to check back with her blog to see when she is able to post.

Although I love quilting and embroidery, there are phases in which I rather use paints to express my ideas. I prefer English gouache for the brilliance of its colors.

The idea of an extreme contrast, reached by the use of gouache paint, has been haunting me for years. The intention is to enhance contrast and reach a neon-like effect without using neon paint. These are experiments about the effect of complementary colors -- how do they interact with the contrast of dark and light? How do subdued colors influence brilliant hues?

The theme is: Strata. Layers of earth and other material. "Bohemian Green Earth" is about earth as a source of color, of a green that used to be very popular among painters before synthetic colors were invented. There is Bohemian and Veronese green earth, the first one more olive, the second one slightly blueish.

My intention to use more subdued colors is regularly thwarted by my instinct that keeps driving me to the unbroken tones. "Tectonic Destruction" also deals with layers; the title refers to the light-minded attitude we have towards these layers. In old Tibet, people never dared to dig in the earth, fearing that they would disturb evil spirits that might come to the surface. Thinking of the fracking problem, we might need a bit more of this attitude.

"Moon over Craigleith" -- Half of Edinburgh, Scotland, was built of the sandstone from the Craigleith quarry which later was filled with debris, and a supermarket stands on the site now. The neon lights of today's city flicker over it.

These small paintings are approximately letter format, some are painted on black paper, some on white paper, then cut out and mounted on black cardboard.

Creating and enjoying combinations of colors goes slow when painting. It is faster when I use kinetic arts like mobilÈs. I'm working on a type of abstract mobiles, like I started building them a few months ago. The number of variations is limited by the space to hang them in our flat.
 

So I'm just keeping the perfect sample and demolish the older versions. The constant motion of the painted mini sculptures allows millions of combinations, making the object a composition machine.

If you leave a comment on my blog she'll be able to read them till her own blog gets sorted out.  See 'ya.