Fallen Debutantes.....October 2010

Stage One the gesture and foundation of the painting. Painted with charcoal powder and gesso.

I love to paint the figure, and more often than not the gestural under painting is the stage that excites me the most. It is the core of the emotion that moves the piece forward and in a way it is the foundation on which the other stages, layers, and marks will rest.  I am working on this particular painting as a triptych, 3 panels of gallery wrapped canvas each being 48 inches by 24 inches in size.  The figures will be slightly smaller than life size, so I don't intend to include the entire body on any of the panels.  The thought process behind these paintings is that I want to create three distinct figures that are unique in character but are not defined by detail.  It is in the painting of the details that often we lose the thrust of a painting. I feel that if I give too much detail or information that I will limit the amount of room I leave for a viewer to inhabit the painting.  In simple words I want the painting to be relative or to resonate with the viewer and not be a specific person or place or time for that matter.  I want the figures to relate to one another as well, not only in form but in some lyrical way that will unite them and give them a presence that sets them apart from other pieces in Medusa Complexities Exhibition.  

Stage Two below gives the first layers of paint on top of the gestures in stage one. Adding acrylic paint to the mixtures of charcoal powder and gesso at this point.

      

 

Stage three the design and palette are being established. Redefining the shapes as well as working on the design of the environment or backgrounds of each piece.

I began to add some different hues to the paintings, I have been quite enamored with the using hues of orange  and have found it cropping up in my work recently.    I like to sully my orange with other pigments to give it a character all it's own, I almost never use tube colors by themselves.  I choose my palette for each piece of work, but often I use the same palette for years adding and subtracting only one or two hues at a time.  I think many artist do this and it gives their work uniformity to some degree, it also just feels very comfortable and forces you to create new and interesting colors by mixing instead of buying every tube color that comes on the market. I used gesso as my white paint at this point, but in the later stages will switch to white acrylic paint.  I am trying to think of ways to relate the three figure shapes and make them work as one painting, yet still retain enough strength to stand alone as three separate paintings as well.  It is at this point they are looking like figures at a dance to me and I am thinking that could be the relationship for them.  They appear solitary in each panel giving them  a formality,so I think I will put gloves on the hands, no wait; I will put long gloves on them as this feels unusual and even more distinctive.  I am thinking this will be a commonality that will serve to link them together. I then begin to think about gloves and their significance or relativity to my life, now the story is beginning to gel and surface behind these figures.

The Deep South is where tradition runs deep in the arteries and veins of many women and is taken very seriously, and it is only as I have gotten older  that I look back on many of these traditions and wonder how they ever got taken so seriously.  I remember back to a time when many of my friends made their debuts and had their coming out festivities and Debutante Dances. I was not in that particular segment of society that was expected to  perform this act, but I knew how important it was to the girls that were in it; and how much fun it was for them to don their white gowns and white gloves and partake of the societal games in which their predecessors had before them.  This piece will be a bit of a play on societal games and social mores.  I feel like at this point in my life, I see with much more clarity that we often perform acts just to conform to what is deemed as proper.  There must be some point at which we have to recollect and wonder, how much of this is truly important in the scheme of our short lives .
  I have my thoughts firmly stated so I am now ready to proceed further with this piece.  I choose to make the gloves black, instead of white to give this a more intense feeling, it adds a bit of mystique to the whole debutante concept and the dark mystery of history and the relevance  of this performance.  The position of the hands is important to me as they are quite literally dancing across the canvas each in its own expressive cotillion of  movement of shape.  I like the feeling the piece is getting at this point but I have to sleep so I will let the paintings rest for the night and approach them tomorrow with new eyes.  I awake to see the girls still lurking in my studio black gloved and featureless but familiar and hauntingly interesting to me.

Stage 4 and the shapes of the figures are being refined and finessed as the piece progresses.

 

In my latest series; The Medusa Complexities, I have taken many liberties with  shaded eyes and the anonymity factors I employ in my figures.  This triptych that  I am working on now is yet another in the series and will be included in my solo show in November 18, 2010 at Jackson Street Gallery in Ridgeland, Ms.  In this piece I am working on painting the figure  with more anonymity than the earlier paintings, all the while keeping them solid in  form and giving them the movement that I am trying to portray in them.There is much more work to do to get to the final stage of the painting.  The  later stages of my work  are ones of adding layers and taking layers off  paint in places and more or less refining the paintings to a point that gives them the strength and intrigue that I believe are my goal in my art.  In the last stages of each piece there is a slow pace, consisting of much less painting and much more analytical looking and thoughtful decisive moves based on design, format, and the intentions of the painting, it is at this point that to any observer I am dragging my feet but in reality I am overclocking my brain with decisions and revisions.  I don't take many photos at this point as I am in another mode of operation and the camera is not involved at this stage, it would only prove to be a distraction.

Debutantes in the final stage ready for varnish.

 The painting has reached a point where I feel anything more will diminish my original feeling for the painting.  I am deeming it finished (for now).  A few points to note:I added the white bar as a nod or reference to the white dresses and gloves of a traditional debutante and to lend the figures a stability shape which serves to link them as well.  I changed the shapes up in subtle ways, mostly in the head shapes and torso shapes, yet I retained a uniformity to the figures as well as their environments.  I used a varied palette of hues, but I was careful to use hues in all three of the paintings giving them a harmonious relationship to each other.

I hope this blog will be of some interest and will give you some insight into my process and the upcoming exhibition of my work.



Cathy Hegman AWS,NWS,MSWS,MOWS, SAA,SW, ISAP
www.cathyhegman.com

*All artwork and text included in this blog is copyright protected by Cathy Hegman and should not be reproduced in any form or fashion or used without the written permission of Cathy Hegman. All text and artwork included in this blog are solely the thoughts and original art of the artist, Cathy Hegman, unless otherwise noted, and are meant only to be guidelines and thoughts for others to read.my blog.

*All photography is copyright protected by Thomas Hegman and should not be rep

Studio Work....eyes shadows....

Three Graces
by
Cathy Hegman
cold wax oil painting on board
24x36

Here is one of the latest in a series of Medusa or eye shadowed paintings. I believe this series is a reflection of how I see the world after the age of 50. I feel like the figures I am painting lately, with eyes shaded and incognito is an attempt to be in this world and not of it with the sole desire being to avoid being crushed by societal changes and pressures of the world. I am not sure but maybe living in the middle of nowhere makes this a much easier task these days and the fact that after a certain age I am quite sure that people become very translucent and unnoticed in the world by those of a younger age. I think one of our greatest fears is being irrelevant and useless.

The depth of this painting is in its complexity. The development of layers and subsequent excavation of parts of the painting have given this a feeling of movement even though the figures are quite stagnant, and the overall feel is one of stability,unity,and strength. There are many of the symbols that occur in most if not all of my work, they work in design and in thought for my work. The repetition of many elements gives this piece its intrigue, which I think is key in paintings. The more I paint the more that I think I dig into my psyche and dredge thoughts that are suppressed by the fear of what others might think but somehow the cloak of pigment and medium make it benign enough to share with the world. I began this piece with ampersand board and I generously coated it with gesso, 3 layers to be exact. I then designed my painting, at first thinking I would keep it very simple and plain much like the others in this series but somehow things took a u-turn and I got really into texture and pattern. I painted this with oil paint, cold wax and liquin. I also created the lettering by cutting out letters printed on regular bond paper in a generic font. I arranged them on the area that I wanted the print and then painted many layers over them, I had not planned on lifting the letters. I woke up on the fifth day after probably 5 layers and felt the letters were too strong ( I had printed them in black but had several layers of paint and medium over them)so I decided to try to lift the bond paper letters off revealing the under layers of collage and paint. I felt like if this failed ,well then,I would just try to leave the letters off and work more with just texture in that area.The oil paint with the wax was dry to the touch but not cured; so I lifted them with no problem, and it made the piece so much more cohesive and related having these previous layers revealed. All of this to say go with the flow, don't stick to a plan just to say you did, you might miss a wonderful opportunity to teach yourself something new.
Hope you will find something new and share it with someone...
Till I blog again, thank you for reading my thoughts and processes...

Cathy Hegman AWS,NWS,MSWS,MOWS, SAA,SW, ISAP
www.cathyhegman.com


*All artwork and text included in this blog is copyright protected by Cathy Hegman and should not be reproduced in any form or fashion or used without the written permission of Cathy Hegman. All text and artwork included in this blog are solely the thoughts and original art of the artist, Cathy Hegman, unless otherwise noted, and are meant only to be guidelines and thoughts for others to read.my blog.
*All photography is copyright protected by Thomas Hegman and should not be reproduced in any form or fashion or used without the written permission of Thomas Hegman.