29 August 2011

"Inventing questions is easy. Inventing answers is easy too... but to ask important questions and finding the appropriate answers - well that's an art in itself."

raymond robert

20 August 2011

sweet


Surprise surprise, the commission has been accepted as is!! Haha, people are always telling me I'm too hard on myself and here is proof: ready to give up on the whole thing, I get this good news. Soaring heart, from one extreme to another.

comes together

The project that I initiated last January is coming to fruition!

Just to reiterate: I asked 12 different artists to paint landscapes on canvases into which I had stitched city-inspired lines and textures. Everyone's response was very enthusiastic and so the project was born.

We will exhibit our works at the UAS satellite gallery from September 16th to October 7th, 2011. This week I have been collecting the images of everyone's works, and it looks like it will be a really great show!

Invite and blurb designed last night:



E C O S Y S T E M S


This group exhibition combines the work of 13 contemporary visual artists who live and work in Alberta. Together we explore ideas of natural landscape and urban environment.

Cities first grow upon a foundation of natural landscape. Over time they evolve and eventually deteriorate, becoming in their turn foundations for newly evolving natural landscapes. More time passes, another city is built over that landscape, and another landscape eventually grows over that city. One day our present cities will be just another layer in this cycle of environments built and grown - consciously constructed and naturally evolved - a cycle that moves backward and forward through time.


Verna Vogel, 2011



18 August 2011

where

getting this



to here

...so close, and yet so far!

I have never before tried to copy one of my own paintings. Copying is much more difficult than making originals.

A few years ago some friends of ours wanted me to make them a painting - I knew their home, they knew my painting style. I made three original paintings and they chose one and bought it. They would have bought two if space allowed. That was fairly easy.

Why? Why so difficult to copy a painting?
Because:
Everything Has A Life Of Its Own

That's the title of this painting, made in 2009.

Attempting to infuse the life of one thing into another does not work. It's about so much more than the surface isn't it. I had momentarily forgotten.

So the challenge is how to give this current commissioned piece a life of its own while still fulfilling the wishes of the client. I have some ideas...

17 August 2011

more portraits

Daylight Zen
charcoal, conte, acrylic on paper
30w x 22h



Strings
o/c
20x20"


crop looks better...
if I were a very enterprising artist I would remove and re-stretch onto a smaller frame.

13 August 2011