interference paint

Over Underworld Vacations in Graton

| Suzanne Edminster at Saltworkstudio
Over Underworld, acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48, Suzanne Edminster

Over Underworld is going on a vacation in Graton.

This painting is part of a meditative abstract series on the links between worlds. I’ve always found it fascinating how much of our lives are lived in fantasy, dream, reading, and contemplation.  These are whole worlds that float beneath us. I wanted to paint the notion of a thin “skin” of organized thought, houses, civilization, geometry, over a beautiful chaos of creative form.  Ladders link the worlds, so, that with focus, we can climb up and down from one world to another… ladders without the chutes!

Painting process:   I established a horizon line for the three paintings, then started a gold and orange spatter process underneath, working on all three paintings simultaneously.  I tried various stages for the top.  You can see some of these in October Underworlds.  I opted to paint the whole thing rather than adding on the black and white paint compostions I had considered mounting.  Then I used areas of intereference paint mixed in with other paints over large areas of the painting, so that they would shift with the shifting light.

The Underwood, 5 x 7 watercolor collage sketch, Suzanne Edminster

I’ve spent little time in Graton, but the painting is currently on loan to Catherine Devriese and Isabelle Proust.  That’s mighty fine company, I would say.  And I did have a drink at the Underwood with Susan Cornelis last night, resulting in this immortal masterwork of a sketch.  Overworld, underworld, Underwood–  after my martini and some fun with Susan, watercolors, and ripping up the Underwood menu to collage, the horizons between them seemed to become , delightfully, more permeable.

Tell me, what lies Under your Overworld?

Mythic News:  I’m going to Rome this Christmas, and had forgotton that in one version of the Trojan myth,  the last of the remaining Trojans fled to found Rome.  I don’t know how this fits in with Romulus, Remus, and the Wolf Mom, though.  I’ve been feeding my soul with the classical warrior heroes, and only periodically get patriarchal indigestion.

Studio News: my new weekend workshop is called Spontaneous Construction and will be offered in the spring.  More soon.

October Underworlds

| Suzanne Edminster at Saltworkstudio

October is the month where the borders and boundaries between the worlds become a little thinner.  I love the lengthening days and cooler weather.  Growing up in the Central Valley, October provided the first respite from stifling heat. It’s been a long year… my father passed away in August .

 I painted these for my June show, wanting to evoke the flow between the thin crust of overworld and the bulk of the underworld, how we are a skin on a much larger being.  I started with spatters and the determination to use interference paints over large areas.  In the end, I kept them near the top horizon, where the “city” is.  I liked the look of my studies mounted at the top, but wanted these pieces to be all paint and no collage elements.

I’m reading Greek mythology now, realizing that there are many entrances to the world that is not our waking world:  a dark lake, a crack in the earth, a dream, or a painting.