So last week I headed out to the Huntington Library and Gardens for this portrait paper I needed to write and found these really neet little miniature portraits.  I need to go back to spend more time ambulating around the gardens (it was astonishingly cold when I went and I wasn’t dressed for it), but I was more than satisfied by the exhibits.

Most of these are watercolor on vellum and they have a really transparent, ethereal glow to them.  I realize they were probably painted from life, and are striving for a certain verisimilitude, however, certain characteristics, such as downward sloping, underdeveloped shoulders, seem to have been in vogue.

The weekend was a busy one, split between the Open Studios, both Opening Receptions, and my bday!  Here are some photos:

Nathan made this neato map of our studios so people don’t get lost.  Our graduate studios are in an old motel so you never know what’s creeping around the corner…  Hopefully see you Saturday!

I’m tidying up at the studio in anticipation of the Open Studios event we are having at UCR this Saturday from 2 – 6 p.m.  There will also be a performance by Nathan Bockelman around 4:30 p.m.  I know Riverside is a drive, so we will all have refreshments in our studios for visitors and then there are the two openings in downtown Riverside afterwards.  It’ll be a fun weekend!

All 7 of us grads are finished installing at the Riverside Art Museum for our MFA Show!  It’s up and the show looks great if I do say so myself.  I will have some pics of the entire exhibition soon.  But alas I have some new paintings up.  Here is a snippet of one:

I am pretty excited about these works as I feel they are amalgamations of what I like most about portraiture, the landscape and abstraction.  I was noticing while painting that I was painting the face as if it were a landscape and the landscape as if it were thin layers of skin, and the abstraction as if it were a garment that someone would wear.  These paintings are all connected to the landscape, the body and to the fluidity of thought, in a way that subtly explores the interconnectedness of these forms through the democratizing element of paint, paintings, and scale.

Keeping your eyes open for things that inspire paintings is definitely half the fun.  Here is a flower I caught up with midday, whose lovely thin, transparent petals acted like thin layers of paint wrapped around a shadowy, enveloping center that slowly unfolds, revealing that which lies “toward the within”. (Ha!  That’s a great Dead Can Dance CD!)

And can’t leave out Lil…This one is so regal and Renaissancey with that white sheet.  She is part still life, part commissioned portrait, and all kitty love.

Between getting ready for our MFA Show at the Riverside Art Museum and the upcoming Graduate Open Studios, I managed to go to the Orange County Music Awards where my boyfriend’s band Ignite was nominated Best Punk band! (even though they’re not technically punk….there’s so many technicalities).  And I also went to UCR’s Botanical Garden sale with Christine that was quite lovely.

Also, sooooon I will post photos of what I’m working on in the stooood, as there is a lot going on, and soon enough I will be able to share it, unlike the photo of the nail polish that splattered all over my bathroom when I dropped the bottle and forgot to document it.  That doesn’t make much sense now, but ispillstuff.com can’t function without documented spills!