This Used to Be a Landscape

I missed the lunar eclipse this morning, but I think it was cloudy, so even if I had actually woken up at 4:45am, I couldn't have seen it anyway... Instead, I slept through it. ;-)


As part of a New Year's-ish resolution a few years ago, I decided to focus on finishing projects. I have an inordinate number of half-finished sewing projects and fabric, yarn, paintings and general crafty supplies sitting around. Having to pack it all up and move it across town this summer, I not only realized just how much I have, but how easy it is to have it "out of sight, out of mind." Now that I have everything stored in my studio, I am facing some of the piles and boxes. Over the last several years I've developed my purging muscles to the point that I can be somewhat ruthless: I don't like storing unnecessary things, even if they have sentimental value (really, do I need to save a lump of clay my two-year old squeezed? Absolutely not). Art has been more difficult to toss, however.


Several weeks ago, I had a small burst of inspiration. I have a couple of stretched canvases sitting around with unfinished paintings on them– a couple are at least a decade old (what!?!!? Why has a 12 year old canvas with an unfinished painting on it taken up storage space in my life??). I know I'll never get back to finishing the paintings on these canvases, but the canvas is too stiff to make into Artist's Buckets. They need to be repainted!

It just so happened, I was making more canvas for more Artist's Buckets, so I had splashy paint and the desire to fling it around. In the case of the old painted canvas above, I actually poured and spread the paint instead of dripping and flinging, which was also quite satisfying. I wasn't sure where I was going to begin with, but decided to not entirely obliterate the base painting so that in the end it could show a certain evolution of the art on it. After the paint was dry, I hit on the idea of juxtaposing the traditions of landscape and portraiture on one canvas and thus: This Used to Be a Landscape.


But here's the thing about storing all those bits and pieces as they devolve past their prime: they are no longer pristine. Whether it's the fabric that is stained or the plastic that becomes brittle, the stored things degrade. As did this canvas situation. We haven't owned cats in years, yet this canvas had been marked at some point in our cat-ownership. As I worked on the canvas, there was the unmistakeable odor of cat urine– one that cannot be scrubbed out of anything once it's there, in my opinion.

So,  we have a new piece of yard art! It's the first fence art we've had, and now that it's there, I might add more in the years to come. It brightens up a somewhat dreary fence and adds color, especially on this cloudy morning. It's a talking piece, too– the dishwasher repair guy asked about it, though he wondered if we'd had a fight and I'd splashed paint on a portrait of my husband in retaliation...

Well, the piles aren't diminishing as I type, so I'm off to do more project finishing!