Art, Writing, Design
Happy Vernal Equinox Day! I thought I’d celebrate the season with a selection of some new and older works on the seasonal theme. No explanations. Not in any particular order. Comments and questions are welcome.
Enjoy!
Hi, all. Hope you’re doing well. Spring is literally just around the corner, with the Vernal Equinox next Tuesday, March 19. I’m very excited about it because it’s been a windy late winter here in lovely Massachusetts, and I live and work in a creaky, old, 1870s triple-decker. Locals will know what that means. I am tired of being cold. Granted, we could have a freeze as late as May because New England, but I cling to the straws I find.
I have two new paintings to share. Behold!
These are both views from my studio window, originally sketched on the same day, at about 11:00 AM. They will be added to the Artrepreneur shop shortly.
They’re also both experiments in mounting watercolors on canvas. Painting watercolor on canvas is tricky. You have to treat the canvas with a specially mixed primer, called watercolor ground, but honestly, I don’t love it. I like my work to look and even feel a certain way, and watercolor ground is just not the surface texture I want. Plus, watercolor on ground is fragile. For me personally, it’s a lot of prep work for a substrate that’s not very stable, for a medium meant for a different surface. Many artists do amazing things with it, but it’s not my resonance.
But then I had one of my “Hey, wait a minute, Jen” thoughts. Don’t I build collages on canvas all the time?, I said to myself. Why yes, I do, now that you mention it, I said back to myself. So why don’t I mount some paper on some canvas and then paint on it? Duh!
So I’ve been experimenting.
Wind and Clouds with Gull is watercolor, gansai, pastel, pencils, and collage on rice paper on canvas.
Dogwood Buds with Junco is watercolor, gansai, pastel and ink on drawing paper on canvas.
More experiments are upcoming with other papers and media. I think this is going to be a regular thing. I really like it. The wheat paste I make for collage shrinks in drying, tightening up the canvas like a drum. Maybe I’ll make a video of it, so you can hear it. It results in a gorgeously flat surface with no buckling or cockling, and a finished work that’s ready to frame and hang. I can’t think why I never thought to use this for painting and drawing before. Silly me.
Anyway, that was the first big breakthrough of 2024.
I suppose the fact that they are paintings is kind of also a breakthrough. Collage is and always will be the most direct glimpse into how my brain works, but there’s actually a practical problem-solving reason why I am doing more mark-making work. I’ll write about that in future.
Other practical problems that need solving are being addressed this year as well. Watch this space for adjustments to the Newsletter and the Patreon, both of which will continue to be free, so you should totally sign up for them. There will also be new ways to acquire original, bespoke, Jen Fries artworks of your very own, so brace for joy on that front.
An Alchemy of Dragons will be undergoing some renovations, too. It turns out that writing a serialized novel is kind of like producing a reality series about a fictional series in which the characters build a suspension bridge, for which you actually build a suspension bridge. I’m bringing in co-protagonist Iarius Venzo as well as at least one subplot, and I’ve been quite literally at the engineering drawing board, because, you know, you can’t just do the thing. You can’t just sploop it out onto the internet. You have to build, design, construct – like a collage. Or a Werner Herzog movie.
I’ll write about that process in the near future, too.
Anyway… Spring!
-Jen
Another post in this year’s Summer Series postings of seasonal-themed works from my portfolio.
XIX The Sun is a new piece, currently being exhibited in the show “Carnival” at the Brickbottom Gallery.
Happy Year of the Water Rabbit, on the Chinese lunar calendar!
This morning, I finished my first art of the year, “Rabbit and Moon” (working title; I may change it).
It’s about 9 x 12 inches, on paper, mixed media – watercolor, graphite, and ink. The asemic writing in the upper right corner is actually my real, gloriously illegible handwriting, turned on its end. This time I’m quoting Robert Frost, a line from “Mending Wall” (1914):
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding
to please the yelping dogs
In the verse containing that line, Frost talks about going out in spring with his neighbor to repair the damage that happens to their boundary wall over the winter, including the vandalism of hunters who knock down the stones to flush out their prey, because “they would have the rabbit out of hiding.” (Click here for the full text, off-site.)
That poem also gives us the famous line, “Good fences make good neighbors.” Frost’s neighbor repeats that saying, and the poet Frost wonders why good neighbors need fences at all. Shouldn’t they be able to rely on their mutual understanding?
Myself, I’m a little on the fence about that (har-har), but I do appreciate that, even though Frost might not like the barrier between people, by mending the wall, he’s evening the odds for the rabbits.
Jumping back from West to East, Chinese astrology says that the Water Rabbit brings in peaceful, patient, and creative energies and encourages us to rely on our inner wisdom and trust our instincts. We should approach this year’s challenges calmly and rationally, and be kind and considerate to each other and to ourselves.
Water Rabbit Year 2023 could turn out to be all about good neighbors – having them and being them. Just remember that the barriers that delineate our personal boundaries are best when everyone finds safety in them – us and the rabbits.
And this time, I’m only a little late! Like many other people, I am just winging it wildly this holiday season, and it turns out I am a terrible business person. I should have had all this Yuletide stuff done months ago, so I could share it with you all before actual and literal Christmas Day.
But Christmas, Yule, and all the other winter holidays are really not about business, so rather than leading into the season with various “calls to action” and whatnot, I’m just offering you a gift from me to you.
From today until December 31st, please feel free to download printable copies of the original line drawings for the four winter cards I painted yesterday. New art! Fresh out of the artist’s brain! All four images are in a single-page pdf file, accessible at the link below. Use them as-is or color them as you like. They are just rough drawings, suitable for tags, bookmarks, or cards. Personal use only, naturally.
Download the winter cards here.
By the way, do you realize we have four new year events running relatively close together this winter? The Winter Solstice on December 21st was the solar new year. January 1st is the calendar new year. The next Perihelion (Earth’s closest orbit point to the Sun) comes on January 4th and may be considered the astronomical new year (I decree). Finally, January 22nd is the lunar new year on the Chinese calendar – Year of the Water Rabbit.
I’m taking this as a sign that this mid-winter is an optimal time for fresh starts and attitude shifts. So maybe next year, I’ll have winter cards ready in time for you to use them. 😉
Meanwhile, please enjoy your holidays and multiple new years. Below are the final paintings of the cards, which should be available as prints and cards next winter. See? I’m not late, I’m early.
And the start of another next-winter project – a Partridge in a Pear Tree. I plan to do the whole Twelve Days, and will offer them next year as prints and perhaps even a book.
All of these small paintings are done in watercolor, pastel, and ink.
Wishing you all happy, merry, and joyous holidays.
Three new abstracts I made this fall. Let’s take a walk through them.
Watercolor and ink, half painting, half monotype print, 5 x 7 inches. I printed Prussian blue over a dilute Prussian wash, then incised color with a palette knife. It’s one of my more purely abstracted things, but you know me – I can’t really do abstracts. To me, this small painting suggests city lights reflected in water.
Watercolor and ink. 9 x 12 inches. Definitely a seascape, to my eye, winter, the surf viewed through dried grasses. What do you think?
Mixed media – watercolor, pastel, and collage, 12 x 9 inches. In this one, I altered the original abstract watercolor to pick out the image I saw in it – a pine forest, full of mist pierced by light.
My series of abstract landscapes get at the heart of my creative practice. They’re about following and exploring, not directing the process. They’re about finding the images that resonate most naturally with me, like a kind of Rorschach test to reveal how I see the world.
These three works will be in my shop in a couple of days.
Also coming up, Chapter 4 of An Alchemy of Dragons, and a gift for all of you, connected to a Yuletide painting in progress.
Busy, busy, busy in the studio.
June is one of those times, isn’t it? It’s a quarter month, when the year takes another turn. The summer solstice is – checks calendar – Tuesday. Already! Omg. Things are happening. The garden is blooming, bees all over the place, beans shooting up. The baby birds are flying. I can’t help but keep moving, too.
Three new small paintings are in the Shop now. Two abstract landscapes and one representative image of the moon over my street at 2:00 in the morning. I’ve been working late a lot. See below, and Shop here.
My second ever poem to be released in public is up. Titled “Spilled Ink,” it tells the story of the painting of Abstract Landscape 6, and I think something more as well. Read it here.
An Alchemy of Dragons continues in progress. The beginning is the most daunting part of an adventure, don’t you think? It’s the first and potentially most fatal test of one’s competence. I have to start a key set of wheels turning in these first chapters, and I admit, it’s taking longer to get it right than I’d hoped. But I think it will be worth it. Aiming for July on that one. Be sure to sign up for the Newsletter for alerts when chapters are posted.
Finally, I’ve taken on a new project, a commission, which will stay a secret for now. It’s pretty big. I have no idea how long it will take to finish. I will post hints and progress reports as I go.
It’s actually a bit intimidating when I list it all out like this. It’s all been happening in just the past few weeks. Sometimes, I don’t even feel the pace of work, like the dizzying speed of the Earth’s rotation, and I have no idea where I am in my To-Do list, just as I have no innate sense of where I am on the planet. I’m just here, now, doing whatever I’m doing – painting, drawing, writing, business, gardening, house stuff, people stuff, world stuff, giving a freaking interview for crying out loud, making good on commitments, oy-geez.
Maybe I just need to put my nose back down on its comfy grindstone and avoid that big-picture perspective thing for a while.
Jen Fries Arts 