Oxbow Painting Retreat

This summer I had the opportunity to work alongside some incredible artists at Oxbow school. The Oxbow summer adult program allows artists to work on independent projects with experienced and encouraging facilitators. For three years I participated in printmaking, but this year I tried painting for the first time.

I had painted before in oil on canvas and watercolor, but I wanted to do something different.  Normally I do a lot of preparatory drawings for my prints, and the drawings themselves are interesting.  I was hoping to somehow combine qualities of drawing, painting and printmaking all together. I wound up using ink, pencil and paint on wood with gesso and also, sometimes, carving directly into the wood. I found that creating white gesso shapes based on my drawings did have a printmakerly feel. I also learned that I could work with ink directly on wood, over a clear-gesso, or over white gesso and get very different effects. Pencil also worked on the wood, but it dulled very quickly so I had to sharpen it a lot.

Both the subject matter and the media of my work appears to be shifting from what it was before. Changes like this are at once challenging, because I can't rely on what I knew from before, and exciting, because I can approach things with more of a beginner's mind. Having such a supportive group and helpful teachers was the perfect environment in which to explore this new material.