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.

Oils of summer and September Cometh

Rocko at the studio door on his rug...
patiently waiting on that call from the Louvre...
good dog...

Hot days and warm nights, harvest machinery whirring in the distance, dreams of Fall loom close by, but not here yet. Fall is a magical time it brings the year to a close and is the last chance to dance with nature before the cold winter chases us indoors for shelter. Studio business as usual this month but next month life will be filled with the camaraderie of fellow artists. First on the agenda is a workshop with Judi Coffey( www.judiart.com) , the artist that will juror the Mississippi Watercolor Society Grand National Exhibition at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson, Mississippi ( www.msmuseumart.org). I don't take workshops very often any more, but this is one I wanted to take because I have admired this lady's work for years. She paints the most phenomenal abstract collage pieces, and since I do not work in collage much, it will be a welcome diversion for me to be amongst those that work in layers of paper and paint. Next on the agenda, at the end of the month, is Mississippi Art Colony (www.msartcolony.org) and the guest artist will be Dennis Masback (www.dennismasback.com), and the whole gang of 40 or so artists that congregate and paint together for a week. It is always a refreshing and mentally invigorating to get together and see what everyone is creating in their minds and on canvas. This is not a workshop but a convention of artists that work in various medias, that very simply put, come and work for a week. The bonus is that at all times you can break and have coffee, tea, or whatever you choose with a fellow artist and just talk art, no distractions or diversions, just an art immersion of sorts. I am working still in the Medusa Series and it is really stretching the boundaries of the mind. I am incorporating symbolism in the pieces and for most it is in the form of animals and shapes. Color is symbolic as well but I am not dwelling on that at this point, I may divert to that later as well. I am working on integrating the figure shape and the animal shape as one shape to emphasize their connection in the physical sense as well as the mental. I feel we all have a power animal that we relate to or feel a kindred bond to and in this series I am touching on some of my own. This is a refraction of the earlier but continuing Guardian Series. The Medusa series is turning out to be a large body of my inner fears and dreams. I am feeling the desire to move from the reality to the deeper more abstracted workings of the mind, so the work later on will most likely reflect the corner I am turning, and I may not end up on Main Street but possibly a fun and interesting side avenue, but for now the series is still flowing in the same direction. Who knows where this will go from here since I have until November to produce it.

Peace Talks
acrylic on canvas
by
Cathy Hegman
36 x36

My thoughts go back often to paintings that seemed important to me and one is called Peace Talks II(click on the photo to enlarge it and see the details of the painting), it sold a month or so ago, and with mixed emotions. I loved this painting and had a hard time putting it in the gallery but I often feel this way and I knew I just needed to put it out in the world. It was a painting of despair over all the bad in the world, the economy, war, immigration, hate crimes, and just the general unrest and how caught up in it I found myself. I often wonder if the world tilted this far out of control when I was growing up, maybe I could not feel it then or maybe it felt right as a child to be tilting and whirling out of control, I don't know but for me right now, it feels odd and strangely like a trap that has ensnared me. The most odd part is that I find snippets of peace and joy daily and when I do I for the most part feel rather childlike but often the heaviness creeps in and I feel the suffocating weight of it's presence. I am working on some interesting experiments in the studio. Drawing for me is pure joy, especially when no one is looking. I have searched for most of my art life to find ways to interject my drawing into my work more purely and still making it feel as if it were an integrated part of a painting and not an unfinished work with the drawing exposed. I think somehow along the way in art, drawing has become something of an under dressed lady at the art dance. It seems it never garners the rapt attention that the painted surface seems to enjoy. I have tried to amalgamate it in my process in various ways. I have found just recently that I am able to do it with powdered charcoal and india ink in most medias. You can mix powdered charcoal with almost any binder and render it effective. I am working with adding it to varying mixtures of liquin, cold wax and in acrylic with gels, liquid mediums etc. When I am working in encaustic art, I begin by working on raw wood in charcoal and then layering encaustic medium and then the colors of wax on top and finding ways to scrape back down to the original drawing and marks and it seems to give me a close proximity to what I am after but the rabbit is till running and I am still chasing it!

Medusa Complexities: Bird in Hand
oil on canvas
by
Cathy Hegman
30 x 30

I find I like to experiment on paintings that are lurking in my studio, crying out for my attention, there are times I feel like a plastic surgeon, as I am constantly looking at imperfection and trying to bring out the beauty in the surface. This is the hook in art, the little hope of the masterpiece that keeps us all tethered to our art. We know it is here somewhere but we have to find it ourselves. Above in the painting, Medusa Complexities: Bird in Hand, the drawing was done on canvas with vine charcoal and redrawn with a mixture of powdered charcoal, india ink and a small amount of cold wax with enough liquin added to make it the consistency of a very thick ink. I allow this time to dry and then work back into the drawing with layers of oil paint, cold wax and liquin. The layering gives me the edges I love and the luminosity that I get with watercolor. Uh oh.. I think I am really falling in love with oil all over again.... I will post on the workshop and Art Colony next month so get ready!

*I always hate to sound like I am boasting; for I am not, if you knew the times of work,rejection, pain and sacrifices along the way you would know how astonished and proud I am that I finally made a couple of goals in my art career. I had good news this year, I was awarded signature membership status in the American Watercolor Society and the International Society of Acrylic Painters. I am honored to be included in the ranks with the other signature members of these two distinguished art societies.
Thank you for allowing me to share with you.

Till then take care!






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.

July 2010 Medusa complexities continues

Photo by Thomas Hegman

Photo by Thomas Hegman

Photo by Thomas Hegman

Photo by Thomas Hegman

Photo by Thomas Hegman

The days are hot and long in the Delta during the summer months and this one is no exception. The air is so thick with humidity it is hard to breathe and we have a tropical storm named Bonnie swirling in the Gulf, but luckily she is a lady and will not be much trouble other than the intrepid humidity and heat. Life in the studio marches on, every day the anticipation of fall hangs heavy. Fall is my favorite time of year and I endure the summer just to get to the clear crisp days of Autumn, the regent of carnivals, county fairs, and my favorite holidays. The river is still and almost motionless on the surface, probably trying to keep the heat at bay by not moving very much. The underworld of life aquatic is teeming as if there is no heat, but only the everyday life as usual for them. My son, Thomas Hegman (www.flickr.com/coolhand3011) was home one weekend and we took him on the river for a brief ride and he as always took some amazing shots(shown above). He somehow can take pictures of what I feel about a time and place and forever lock them onto photographic paper as a moment of treasured time to be shared. He is a window into our world with the ability to capture and hold it for a time.

Detail of Medusa Complexities:Seekers

by

Cathy Hegman

watercolor on paper

The parched rain deprived land was given a nice cool drink of liquidity last night. I stood for moments looking at my cat through the glass door, neither of us moved our gazes locked on in shock, it has been so long since we have seen rain neither I nor the cat could move. He finally got soaked and ran under the house to wait it out, I stood at the door for what seemed like an eternity silently praying a prayer of thanks. It was one of the moments that will most likely flash back in my last moments on earth , there was that much emotion radiating from our eyes to each other. The cat and I are connected on many levels, but today it was on a level of understanding the need for moisture and the wonder of nature. We are connected to animals in ways sometimes that seem eerily familiar.

Tidbit my 15 year old kitty cat

The studio is my refuge, I literally spend hours some days in there with no more sound than a brush grazing a canvas. I listen to music on some days but often I find the rooms in my head need the silence to seem alive. The thoughts that happen in that room are mine and mine alone until I carefully or frantically place them on the canvas. I have been in the oil painting mood lately but I thought I might just shake it up a bit and paint a watercolor. I have so enjoyed the time involved in oil painting and the waiting and thinking that truly predominates the use of that medium that I thought I would use the same process for a watercolor painting. In short I would not paint it in one day, I made myself go through stages and really stop and think about my next stage etc. I think this is good to slow the pace down and really relish the moments, in the end I feel I have truly given my all for the piece. The painting is one in the same series as the last post, the Medusa Complexities Series, and in this one I employed two figures with head coverings and you guessed it a cat.

The Medusa Complexities: Seekers
by
Cathy Hegman
watercolor on paper

Thank you for reading my blog and I hope that it helps you in your art journey and that you in turn will share your work with others.

Cathy Hegman
AWS,NWS,MSWS,MOWS,SAA,SW,ISAP
www.cathyhegman.com
www.youtube.com/hegman1

*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.

August 2010.....Summer Sizzles Medusa Continues

In the studio I am continuing on the Medusa Complexity Series, I find each painting moves me to the next painting with an urgency that is captivating and fulfilling all at once. The Medusa for me is a powerful metaphor of life , as there are endless adjectives to describe her plight as well as life, both are beautiful, scary, frightening, interesting, captivating, cunning, wild, trapped, alone, threatened, threatening and the list goes on and on. I am captivated with the idea of shaded eyes, perhaps it is a way to remove some of the fear of a medusa, if you cannot see the eyes , then perhaps you will not be turned to stone. I am delving into the domain of head coverings and the fact that they much like Medusa's Snake encrusted hair, all simply shade the eyes. It is written that the eyes are the windows into the soul and perhaps this shading is hiding more than we know. Mystique is created somewhere in the darkness of the shaded portals of the soul. The darkness gives way to mysteries of both life and emotion when we cannot fathom the depths. I feel a strong involvement in this series that goes beyond the superficial surface of the paintings. I want to capture something that is intriguing and beguiling enough to appeal to many viewers on many levels, I want to make these paintings something that will be strangely familiar . This series will have some complete figures but mostly it is the face that I am focused on in this group. The face is more personal and intimate with the viewer in these paintings than in some of my previous paintings and this intimacy and mystery is exactly what I want to convey to the viewer. We can all relate to the figure in our own and very unique and personal ways, this enables the familiar, the odd head coverings and shaded eyes gives me the strange in this series.

Medusa Complexities : Fashionistas I, II, III
by Cathy Hegman
beeswax, oil, and damar resin on wood

I am working in many mediums in this series as an attempt to prove to myself that my subject can transcend the medium and find just as much meaning in wax as in watercolor. I am working in many sizes for the same reason. This series is teaching me about myself even more than ever, I am aware in my art of the need to put the meaning ahead of the methodology and technique. I am finding more and more now I am working seamlessly from one medium to another, while keeping my mind on the gist of the painting and not some technique or trick I might have learned along the way to produce a satisfactory painting result. I am foremost telling myself on a minute by minute basis that these are related by the soul and subject and not by the pigment and surface of each painting. This series has opened the doors of experimentation in my work and has made the transitions from one medium to the next much smoother in transition than in my previous series of paintings. I keep my mind totally open to new possibilities within the subject and its ability to conjure up related but new themes for each painting. I strongly advocate painting in a series as a good way to experiment with your mind and your mediums, and find more of yourself in your work. Art is part what you know but mostly what you feel and long for...

This series will be shown in November at an Exhibition at Jackson Street Gallery in Ridgeland, Mississippi.

Thank you for reading my blog and I hope that it helps you in your art journey and that you in turn will share your work with others.

Cathy Hegman
AWS,NWS,MSWS,MOWS,SAA,SW,ISAP
www.cathyhegman.com
www.youtube.com/hegman1

*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.

Remembering Peace in Stages Part 2

There are stages in painting where the road just seems to branch off in many directions, all with possibly successful conclusions. This can also be a point where the initial motivation can be overcome and lost. This is when it is good to ask yourself, do I stay the course or do I change the painting completely? This is key to painting in a series for me, at this juncture I see the glimmer of the next painting forming in my mind. I almost always stay the course with this current painting and then the next painting will be formed from the glimpses that are born in the stages of this painting. Are you seeing the unending possibilities of painting in a series? And the lure of working this way....

Stage 5 of Remembering Peace
by Cathy Hegman

I am looking at this stage and feeling that there are too many symbols and that they do not actually connect. I will now revisit the motivation for this painting, it is about peace in a way that refers loosely to the symbolism of Medusa and the mystery of head coverings, and most importantly how to tie all of this into a nice design that will resonate my thoughts. I am hoping for success but ready for failure at any point, as it would be naive to feel otherwise. I know the mistakes are part of the process and at this juncture there are many appearing. There are too many parts that are not connecting, but I can see my next move.

Stage 6 Remembering Peace
by
Cathy Hegman

My thoughts here are I need to get some dark values in this painting. I am thinking that the values will give it a punch that has been missing in the earlier stages. I added the hand again...but almost immediately I feel it is wrong, I will leave it and see if I can work with it in the future stages. The darker values almost give it a sinister feel, not the feeling I am looking for, but I do feel it needed higher contrasts in value in the painting. The figure seems a bit too large and looming to me as well, this must be corrected in the next stages as well. I have changed the background hue and leaned it too much to the red side so I will have to keep experimenting with the background in layers until I find the exact hue and texture that will speak to me.

Detail of Remembering Peace
by
Cathy Hegman

Stage 7 Finishing the thoughts and tweaking the design....
This stage shows the tweaking that has happened in the design of the figure, softening of the facial features, and elongating the neck area giving me a softer and cohesive feel for the painting. I also changed the hand and the figure shape itself, I feel this looks more complacent and thoughtful than the earlier stage. This is the detail jpeg of the face and dove; there are changes in both although some are so minor it is almost undetectable. You can compare the stages if you want to do so. These small details are so important and cannot be underestimated in their importance. I hope I am describing the thoughts in this process enough to make it clear and not to appear as if I am just droning on and on.





Final Finish Stage...



I divided the background and covered over the barbed wire found in the earlier stages, this gave me more of the look and feel that I had been seeking. I cleaned up the edges on some of the elements and at this point it is beginning to come together. I changed the hand to a more provocative position and have attached a string that connects the bird and the figure together in yet another way. The string is the metaphor for the line of thought that can help us find and remember the peace in our lives. This is in my mind is the gist of the whole painting and in one line I feel it is finished!
I hope you have stayed with me and are not totally bug eyed and bored with the process. I think it is nice to share the love, deep sorrow, longing ,dissatisfaction and the perseverance and working it out that helps me in my art.



I made a YouTube video of the stages in this painting with background music by J.Hegman, you might enjoy seeing it as well. The link is at the top right section of my blog, or here is the URL for you http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPtp-1jXfho



Thank you for reading my blog and I hope that it helps you in your art journey and that you in turn will share your work with others.

Cathy Hegman
AWS,NWS,MSWS,MOWS,SAA,SW
www.cathyhegman.com
www.youtube.com/hegman1

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.