UNITY to balance out the Composition of my life!

"Flag from Under" Challenge #1 (read on to understand this!)

After several conversations with artists I admire and respect and with more self discovery and conversation with myself I am continuing to experiment and discover just WHAT I need to do to find more unity within my body of work.

For those of you who know me through this blog you will know the angst that I have gone through to find a way to satisfy both my need to have variety within my scope of creative expression and at the same time find some unity; some recognizable style so that I can appeal to potential collectors and be recognized by what I create. WHEW...long sentence for such a little girl! (I stand 5' tall at this time as I haven't started to shrink yet...thank goodness!!)

At this writing I am STILL conflicted, but moving in a direction that I hope will satisfy both ME (most important) and the world. It occurred to me that; due to the comments and e-mails I get; there are others of you out there that may be feeling similar things, so I want to continue to share my journey and discoveries with you all. This helps me on my own journey, but I hope will help others to find the path they wish to travel on as well.

The teacher in me has learned to IDENTIFY THE PROBLEM or ISSUE, and then discover questions to ask in order to come to conclusions that will lead my students and myself to an answer.

THE PROBLEM/ISSUE: Not enough unity in my body of work to show a strong recognizable style. This does not say to me that I am not a good artist, it merely says that the variety that I LOVE is not well enough balanced with UNITY. We artists all know that variety is a good thing in a painting or piece of art, but it must have a balance, a bit of unity in order to make it a quality composition. All the elements and principles are good...they just need a good balance.

After much thought and continual self discovery I have come to a very big question. FIRST QUESTION: Of all that I do what is the one thing I most definitely could NOT give up! Finding the answer to this question will bring me closer to finding that way to create that holds more unity within the whole scope (hopefully). This answer will be different and personal to each one of us. FOR ME I know that I could not give up the collage element to my work. I absolutely adore the different materials I can use to create with, so that is ONE answer! COLLAGE for me can incorporate many different materials, which will satisfy the need I have for variety. NOW, I'm going to stop there; just as I would in a class; and work that part in some way to illustrate both to myself and any students I would have just what that would look like. Demonstration for a teacher is imperative to appeal to those who are more visual and kinesthetic. The touchy part comes when the student gets to try it themselves. For me, it is immediate, as I am going to illustrate my theory(right now the answer I gave is merely a theory as I need to try it enough to see if it works for me).

THE CHALLENGE! If I am going to explore my answer to this first question I must consider the collage in a variety of pieces. I took several little clayboards to school with me the other day. The first one was just painting the little duck. Collage would be hard to do as many more materials would have to be packed up. I also started a little 5x7 piece from a picture I took of an American flag from underneath. Now, I COULD just paint it. Fun...I COULD just use heavy strokes OR I can explore my answer to my first question to find out if I could use collage to create this piece. SO, here is the photo I took. I will be working in collage. Now, acrylic paint is the medium I will use to bring this piece together like I have my other collage pieces. By staying consistent with the collage pieces I've done before will give me some familiarity. If this works then I won't be starting from scratch to build a body of work. Plus, I just plain like to add paint as well! That part of self discovery I've already attained!

"Sunflower Quad"

My SECOND experiment is to take a painting I did using only acrylic paint and do another piece like it using collage as an approach. I have chosen a painting I especially like to use as the jumping off point. "Sunflower Quad" is my second experiment to see if the answer to my first question will work to make me happy using collage instead of just painting. When I finish these two pieces I may know if my intellectual answer applies to my emotional side. IMPORTANT thing to discover!!

Hopefully my very public discovery will help any of you out there struggling with the same thing. And, hopefully, after this first question I will discover another question to ask to bring me closer to my goal; which IS: To find unity within my body of work that makes me more recognizable WITHOUT taking away the JOY I feel in being an artist!

Wish me luck!