Stephanie's Studio

I started this mandala last week and finished it yesterday. It is one foot square so my scanner was unable to pick up the entire image but this is a decent representation of its essence.  I’ve been feeling under the weather again, this time with a bad chest cold. Working on this painting brightened things a bit.  I was thinking about plants, more specifically herbs, and the healing powers they possess.  It’s very interesting and most likely intuitive that I gravitated towards this type of healing subject matter just before I got sick. Our subject matter choices are so broad and widely varied that what we settle on working with has the potential to deliver important messages, if we are open to listening. I worked with a compass, ruler and was heavily dependent on the French curve.  I have a large one and a smaller curve. I’ve been curious about them but haven’t used them a great deal in the past.  It was interesting to form an entire composition around the cu...

Something’s afoot in the studio and outside.  It’s still cold outside, snowy even but I can feel the quickening of conception, growth and the birth of new ideas and new life germinating beneath the frozen surface of the earth.  For many months I have worked hard on a few different series of ATCs.  Now it is time to trade those and put aside the making of the cards.  The cards have stirred many ideas for other media and formats.  I may even be teaching it in an afterschool enrichment program for children.  ATCs are a way of working I hold dear and I know I will soon return to them.  I have blogged about how they remind me of working with metals and how that similarity makes me yearn to return to cloisonné. That is one of the new mediums it has spurned—something I am eager to explore in 2012.  I also want to return to one foot square patterned mandalas. This time though I am going to use some of the ideas I learned about in a workshop on aqueous...

I started to seriously work the Mandala into my art in late August of 2011.  This painting is one foot square and it explores Wind Energy.  This is my Artistic Statement for this series: My paintings explore natural forms of energy and they employ Islamic patterns and Native American basketry designs which are digitally manipulated and layered starting with a foundation of acrylic skins.   Islamic patterns have many universal themes, while also embodying sacred geometry.   They offer the opportunity to engage with pure abstraction and are open-ended, lending themselves to various interpretations, yielding to the vision of the artist.   Native American basketry designs are powerful circular forms that also utilize patterns that speak to the human condition, life cycles, ceremony and ritual.   Bringing the two diverse iconic cultural expressions together imbues my work with transformative power.   I use the Mandala forma...

Typically, I like to rise with the sun.   Today I wasn’t so lucky...ugh, it’s Monday!   Still, I generally work with sun magick and my daily activities revolve around the movements of the sun.   I love doing sun salutations in the morning and then painting in the studio using natural sun light.   In this Mandala called “Sun Energy” I utilized a lot of color theory to try to make a very vibrant painting--I wanted it to vibrate.   I see each of the background Islamic pattern flowers as little suns that give off tremendous healing energy.   I think of the early Egyptians because a large part of their ancient spirituality revolved around sun worship. Today is a day for them—the sun is shining this morning in an eye-piercingly bright manner.   While it is not warming up this cold Illinois weather (it is 29 degrees right now), its majestic presence is very warming to the soul.   I am practicing ways of bringing the sun’s warmth into the home.   ...