February 12, 2012

I was so excited to participate in this collaborative effort to be able to work together with other artist and cannot wait to see how this painting evolves and how we “resolve” it.

As I came back to the Stone Tower where I was the Artist-in Residence twice in the past two years, the task was different… I had in front of me 2 panels others started to work on, and I had to react to it. 

My plan for today was to work with color rather than on the graphite painting. The dialogue begun when the first challenge was to get into the mood of the painting. The geometrical shapes had movement, but were too “hard edge” for my style of painting. The panel was still with lots of unpainted areas. I realized that I needed to paint in order to eliminate the “white spaces” in order to understand more of what is in front of me. With a big brush at hand, and intermittently using a long palette knife, I felt that I added some vibration to the painting and my own style.

I felt comfortable with the size of the panel since I also work on large scale paintings. I can’t wait to continue the work using oil paint as well.

This has been a challenging and a wonderful new experience for me.    

- Edith Sievers