Talk to your paintings

 

Detail Untitled (Work in progress)

This is one face in a work I'm painting now.

Acrylic on canvas

Barbara Muir © 2013

(I am not finished this face.  We have had several

real life conversations lately.  And soon (probably

tomorrow) I'll be talking to the painting too.

I am lucky to work painting people I get to know and
care about.  Perhaps my background as a journalist,
and as a psychology teacher, helps me get to
know my subjects quickly.  But sometimes all
I have is a photograph, and I haven't met the people
at all.

Then what I go on is the stories their friends or family
who've commissioned the painting tell me.  But here's
a quirky fact you may not know about portrait painters,
or at least about this portrait painter.  That image
in the painting is real to us.  Painting you, or your
family is a thrill because you come to life on the
canvas, not matter how creatively or abstractly
we paint you.  And for me I know I am getting there
with a portrait when I start talking to it, saying
goodbye to it when I leave the room.  I even start
telling the painting how I should fix this or that,
and don't worry I'll do it.

Yes.  I should get out more.  But I'm a painter,
we need to stay in more.

Have a talking-to-your-work day.

The last girl in the mix, and the awesome moon

Portrait detail (Title to be announced)

Acrylic on canvas

Barbara Muir © 2013

Tomorrow is the big reveal.  The full picture. Photographing
it tonight is tense.  For one thing, I can't seem to get the
colour to behave and come out properly. Plus I know
the painting wants to go home, but I like these girls so much,
I feel like a parent having trouble letting go.

So here's the girl at the right of the picture, when you're
looking at it head on.  She is a beauty and talented like
the other two girls.  What a trio. I admire their parents.
They've given these girls all the love they could ever
ask for, and a joyous life as a family.

Tonight on our evening walk the moon as we went by
the park was a deep pink coming through a haze of
mauve. Hot night air slowed our pace, and the sound
of cicadas livened up the mood like a massive band playing
thousands of the same instruments.  I love that sound -- it
percolates through everything and means it's really
summer.  On the way back a giant, glowing, peach
moon sat just above the tree line and we frantically
tried to photograph it with my phone. Useless.

I better try and capture this entire painting again.

Have a finishing-up-your-work-day.

Across the portrait line. And summer's last fling.

 Portrait detail (Title to be announced)

Acrylic on canvas

Barbara Muir © 2013

Here's the second face in the commission I finished
yesterday.  This girl is a power house.  Clearly
great teachers have inspired her.  Here's to being
that kind of quality teacher. 

Steven and I are taking wonderful walks with the
dog every evening.  There is always something to
see and you forget that when you don't walk outside.
Yesterday we watched a kite in the park soar so high,
we thought it might interfere with low flying planes.
It was amazing.  It was so high I could hardly see it,
like a very, very high flying bird.

Tonight under a beautiful moon in a clear blue sky,
we saw a rabbit sitting on someone's front
lawn.  It was there when we turned to cross
the bridge over the park, and had moved
one lawn over when we headed home.
Seeing wildlife in the city makes me happy.
We saw a fox in our local park last week.

I start a new and very exciting series for a show this
fall today.  I am beyond thrilled about it.  Complicated
and evolving in my mind by the minute.  It is the best

when I feel like I love painting.  A young man who works
in Gwartzman's Art Store where I buy my canvasses, said
he likes to paint every day, "it's like breathing."  A good
sentiment.  Let's keep doing both.

Have a -seeing-the-magic-under-the-blue-moon day.