Art

I enjoy having a creative challenge float around in the back of my mind to keep me motivated to create, connected to a community and push me to create something I may not on my own.  Currently, I’m being inspired by Make Art Monday hosted by Jo Kilma of Maps to Herself.  I am sharing my practice on my instagram feed @kristenfagan and my Facebook art page, Creative Stash each week. So far we have had the word, Trust and Play and this week’s word is Light. I enjoy how vague the words are and it’s really fun to see what other people create and how different the art can be! Use #makeartmonday on instagram, twitter or facebook to see what others are creating.

Make Art Monday – TRUST

Make Art Monday – PLAY

Make Art Monday is a creative weekly practice for anyone who would like to take a little time out of their week to tap into their artistic and intuitive self.  For more info and to join the Make Art Monday creative practice, click here.

I participated in a community outdoor painting “mural” last month during the Phoenix Festival of the Arts. Hugo Medina, a local muralist, posted a call to artists for live mural painting during the festival on his Facebook page and I jumped at the chance to be involved. Painting outside is awesome and something I do not get a chance to do often and painting in front of others has always intimidated me so, before I could think too much about it I signed up.  I have found the things that freak me out a bit but, feel right are best to say yes and think it through later.

Each artist was given a 3ftx6ft canvas and the theme “Downtown Phoenix” to inspire their work. I choose to create a desert landscape with vivid southwest colors and geometric art deco influences to celebrate art deco architecture seen around Downtown Phoenix. This piece took me about 10 hours over two days to complete. It was a wonderful experience to be outdoors painting alongside so many artists. I made some wonderful friends and was super inspired all weekend!

The festival featured live music and performers, art vendors, food trucks and over 100 artists participating in the mural project. It was amazing, we spent a few days painting our sections outdoors all around the festival with lots of people stopping to chat and enjoy the works in progress.

In addition to painting, I also worked the front gate on Sunday during the event and went to a canvas stretching workshop in November to assist in getting the 100 canvases made. The whole experience was really cool. It was my first community painting experience and I would like to allow myself the time and space to participate in similar events this year. There was something really restorative about the project.

The artwork created during the festival is for sale through the Phoenix Center of the Arts. A portion of the sales go to the center and a generous portions goes to the artist!

Phoenix Festival of the Arts: http://phoenixfestivalofthearts.org/

Welcome to my brand new website! I’m excited for a new year and a fresh start in my little corner of the internet. I have been keeping an online creative journal on blogger since 2009 and am ready for a new chapter in my writing, sharing, connecting and creating with wordpress. In keeping with the season of celebrating the past year, I wanted to take a look back at the artwork I created in 2013. It’s been a beautifully colorful journey in painting and discovery!

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.

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!