Workshops re-energize in winter - Rebecca Croft

Workshops! Workshops! Workshops!

Every Winter we're stuck inside.  I get so restless so I look for inspiration in my painting.  I have found that by taking a workshop I not only learn new painting tips but get re-inspired.  Workshops always make you think outside the box and work outside your comfort zone.  Each artist has their own way of doing things and their own style.  By taking a workshop I learn to incorporate some of those new applications into my paintings.  I just took a workshop by Trisha Adams on color and it was amazing!  One of the improvements that I want to make in my work is color.  How to make it work for me.  I want my paintings to pop.  Here is the painting that I painted in the workshop.  I was thrilled with how it turned out.  The hard part is taking what I've learned and applying it to my paintings in my studio.  

 

"Bathing in the Light" 

                                                             Oil

                                                         10 x 14

                                           © 2014 by Rebecca Croft

It can be purchased through : my Etsy store

The future is where potential lives. - Bryan Jernigan

We asked the artists: February is for Valentine's Day & Loves.  Do you have a favorite 

subject

color

style 

 in which to create? Is this consistent throughout the year or is you work different in the winter?

Do tell! 

This is Bryan Jernigan's answer:

What Conversation? by Bryan Jernigan

 I had an epiphany of sorts a few weeks ago and recently posted it on my Facebook page:  Potential confronts us every day. Who do we want to be? Where do we want to go? And how do we get there? Potential stares us in the face always. On rare occasions we are keen enough to see it, but most of the time it’s fuzzy or lost to us completely. Potential can be scary. The future is an unknown and dark place, but it’s also where potential lives. I see potential in myself and in others, but I don’t have superpowers, so it’s just as unclear to me as it is to anyone else. So many times, it’s grainy, undeveloped, obfuscated. I can see the forms, but I can’t see them in sharp focus – they are often stark and intimidating – unrealized potential always is. But I’m convinced the more effort I give to it, the more I work on bringing clarity to it, the more likely potential will be realized.

Internal Dialogue by Bryan Jernigan

I have connected this understanding to my figurative abstracts and am loving the way they are going. I was fortunate enough to have one of my pieces – “What Conversation?” – chosen by a juror for a show called “Passages: An Exhibition of Figurative Abstraction” that will hang from February 10-March 6 at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

I am in the process of creating four more of these types of abstracts for the upcoming “Series” show at the Gallery Underground. I’ve been having a great time with it and find they require no reference photos because they come strictly from my mind and the potential I see in others.

So in answer to your question, my work has tended to be different from season to season, but I think it’s less dependent on the temperature outside and more dependent on the stages I go through as an artist and what type of artistic expression I believe will hold my interest. I recently saw a line that read: “I want to make beautiful things even if nobody cares.” As an artist, I think we all feel the same way.

Thanks for letting me respond. Bryan

Together Forward by Bryan Jernigan