New Day

 

My newest canvas - 16x20 - a big deal for me, normally I don't work on anything this big, but I'm trying to step out of my comfort zone and stretch a bit.  This is a do over, actually it's done over the canvas I painted last year (2010) shortly after February.  When my heart was broken and wounded at the loss of my best friend.  I took the piece down from the wall in the stairway several months ago, realizing that time has healed, the memories I keep are good ones, but time goes on and my heart has healed and reopened to a new love and new possibilities months ago.  I realized I could let go of the mourning piece and covered it with several coats of gesso and then glued an oversize piece of muslin over the top and started gluing on papers, tissue paper, etc, even a few dried Japanese Maple leaves.  I gave it an ink wash and then trimmed down the edges of the muslin and burned and scorched the edges.  I've done this in the past with atc's but never on a canvas and never anything this large.  But I was careful, took the work outside so not to set off the smoke alarms in the house (lol).  Only had one accident, one skinny strip of cloth I was burning flamed up and burned my left index finger and thumb a bit on the ends but not bad, didn't blister up thankfully.  Actually I was sitting on the front porch when I finished the burn and was gazing at my red Japanese Maple and it occurred to me that some of the dried leaves from that tree would look good on the piece and so I brought it in and dug out the leaves and the gel medium and went to work.  Then I attached the copper - I don't know why I have such an attraction to this metal but I love it.  I love the richness of the color and I'm hoping in time it will develop a beautiful patina.  The copper wire is from the piece that helped hold my second bundle together outside during the winter.