kristenjfagan

Today, I want to share a poem with you. At the end of last year I created an art calendar featuring a colorful collection of my favorite paintings. My friend Dave who has a wonderful way with words graciously purchased a few calendars as gifts. After receiving them, he was inspired to write a poem using the titles of my artworks.

With Dave’s permission here is his poem:

Sometimes we get caught up in life and it feels hard to Breathe. Our shoulders drop like a weeping Acacia tree, our emotions Swirl. We long to run in the tall grass, amongst the Dragonflies. We long to wish upon the Dandelion’s and wonder. We relish the Sunflower’s of daylight and the Fireflies warm signal of nightfall. We accept that we are Connected in Love, in Truth and in Spirit. We cling tight the Autumn Vines and accept change, we Breathe.

by Dave Pagano

How awesome is that? Isn’t that is the sweetest poem any artist could ask for? This brought tears to my eyes when I read it.  Honestly, it was so unexpected that he was moved to write these words. They made my heart sing with happiness. Thank you so very much Dave, you have an amazing talent, my friend. xoxo

I think I needed the words of encouragement before my first art show to remind myself that I can do this, I am meant to do this, I just need to trust in my abilities and try not compare my work with others. I am call it my “cheerleader piece”.

I love the addition of words on artwork but, they can be tricky to get right. I went over and over the words many times until I was finally happy with them. I didn’t intend for the text baseline to be in the final work but, I wasn’t able to remove them easily. So, I went with it and made the lines part of the design and I think they worked into the painting nicely, a happy accident.  

I created the above abstract piece of art recently and have been thinking about a name for it. 

I thought about Untitled because every one I asked saw something different in the piece. But, I then thought about how confusing and uninspired it felt to me to have lots of works named Untitled. Kandinsky uses a generic name (Conception No. 11 etc) on many of his works. This fits in with his theories of art coming from the subconscious and without a specific definition in the real world. Which is a nice theory. If I was working on a series of studies I think naming it that way wold be great. But since this is a one off piece, I like the idea of a name, it helps me as a viewer to see the meaning behind the art and look at it in a new way. Naming a work I have created indicates that the work means something to me, the artist.

So, in my quest for a name, I remembered there was a cool online abstract art title generator I came across awhile back. I flipped through some titles and then one stopped me. It was Meditation and Energy. It struck me. The meditation being the the very still, focused feather and the energy being all that is going on around it. That also summed up the last few weeks. I have been putting myself to bed with nightly meditation to help calm me down from my action packed and inspiring days of energy. Using that as a jumping off point, I have played with words that are similar to “meditation” to see if something else says it better. Stillness and Serenity keep popping in mind for the feather but maybe Muse and Focus fit too. I settled on the title Energy and Stillness last week but, now that I have some space to think on it am contemplating the name again. Stillness explains the calm but, it doesn’t necessarily say  “focus” as much and the focus feels important to me. The title Zen Feather appeared to me this weekend and the more I say Zen Feather the more it feels right. I’m going to sit with that title for a little bit longer.

My dear friend and long time coworker, Sara, is marrying to her love Josh later this year and I am working on their wedding invitations (yay!).  They are planning a beautiful wedding in their garden so, I thought a good place to start would be with, well, their garden! Lucky for me Sara has shared loads of flower pictures from their yard on their blog so, that’s where I went for inspiration. 

Above are Sara’s pictures and below are my first round of digital illustrations.

These flowers were truly a joy to draw! I have a few favorites for sure. It has been so nice to have a reason to illustrate. They have lots of orange trees and rose bushes which should be in bloom for the wedding so, we have decided to focus on those two plants in particular. Stay tuned for round two of sketches. I love weddings and flowers so this project is a win-win as Sara would say!

Here is my last illustration study for Sara & Josh’s wedding invitation, this session I focused on the orange tree, oranges and orange blossoms.   

The young girl stood beside me.
I Saw not what her young eyes could see:
– A light, she said, not of the sky
Lives somewhere in the Orange Tree. 

~ from The Orange Tree by John Shaw Neilson

More illustration studies for Sara & Josh’s wedding invitation, this session I focused on roses.  

Don’t believe the florist when he tells you that the roses are free ~ Ween

Above is the completed painting and my work in progress pictures.  The canvas is all wrapped up and ready to be shipped to New York.

Here is a picture of the happy client, Mr. Scooby!