Paintings' Metamorphoses

Painting soothes me, so I have been doing a lot of it, whether there's an image I wish to express or not. I end up painting "abstracts," though a better name might be "doodles." Cleaning out old art and art supplies can use up a lot of time, too, and naturally everything must be recycled. What's been a lot of fun is cutting up old paintings that I don't like very much and making new paintings on top of the pieces. Cutting up the old painting without regard to what's already there versus cutting out my favorite parts of an old painting result in different challenges when making a new painting out of them. Here are a few examples.

With the one below, I cut out the part of the painting I liked and painted on it some more, resulting in 

"The Mountain Rests":

Below is an old painting I didn't like, and I simply cut it into quarters.

The lower left quadrant became "Life Suspended":

Creativity in the Time of Covid-19

 All types of creativity seem to help cope with the pandemic and quarantine, from creating artwork to playing a musical instrument or even cooking a new dish. Not only does the ACT of creating help, but expressing one's feelings through art also helps. Here are a few paintings I created February - August 2020, although some things have happened that seem to be beyond the help that art can provide.

Pandemic Dance 2

The Goddesses of Distancing

Life Gives You Lemons

A Strange Year

Dismay

Grandma Love in the Time of Corona

The Young Guitarist 4

Love in the Time of Coronavirus

I have already written about how I miss my grandchildren during the quarantine due to the pandemic. (You can read that here: judytoddnarrative.blogspot.com) They are going a little stir-crazy, too. So I have hit upon art projects to try to connect with them and keep them entertained. People like getting snail mail, especially kids, who don't expect it all to be bills. Previously I have sent them my ink drawings to color.

This week is collage. I cut up a bunch of old magazines into pieces that will fit into a business envelope, and I'm sending each grandchild a set of random pieces to make into a collage. I also wrote out some helpful hints for making collage, so I thought I'd put them here.