Hearts

Some of my favorite things to add to my work are hearts. Especially anatomical hearts. I find that they present a sentimentality and "humanness" to my work.

About a year or so ago, I started creating anatomical hearts to be displayed in shadow boxes. I paint them to look like rusty pieces of machinery with sheets of metal and rivets, smokestacks and pipes. I'm a literal painter, I paint what my mind sees, and let's face it, hearts are machines, right? They're pumps, keeping the blood flowing to our organs, our skin, throughout our bodies. What's a good way to represent them than a hard working, industrial machine?!

I was able to find a great high resolution of a chest x-ray that I created as the background, and I tweak the colors to fit with the colors in each heart. Since each are hand made, I like to customize the background to the image.

I also have a great vintage anatomical chest illustration from an old corset ad that I've used before.

Valentines Day 2011 I was faced with a situation. I wanted to get my partner something for Valentines Day, although we don't "officially" celebrate it. I wanted to try something new, so I decided to look for a book that had a romance theme and hollow it out so that I could put some art in it. 

And this is what came out of it:

Luckily, I was able to find a book called "Sweetheart". I've found a new obsession.... repurposing books for my work. Especially if I can find one that thematically matches what I'm trying to do.

On to creating!

Fathers Day Fishing

My dad loves fishing, and camping and hunting. Bless his heart, even though he goes hunting, he never brings anything home. I think the fun of it for him is reclaiming his youth, and the fun that he has actually getting out of the house. Not so much the hunt.

I love going fishing with my parents because it's like having a family reunion with just the three of us. We sit and have lunch, throw our lines in the water and just enjoy each others' company. Now that I have a permanent partner, he likes to come too. And we're a family... like we were when my brother was alive and we were young.

I've been experimenting with hollowing out books and putting my art inside. Like a thematic frame. I figured I'd make a cute one for my dad for Father's Day because I'm usually making something for mom, why not let dad have some art this year?!

I was able to find a book at the local Goodwill called "Down River" (this Goodwill has been a great place to find thematically appropriate books for my work). I got lucky, took it home and started to gruel over the slicing of the pages. It's tough work. But this is what I came up with:

Progress shots of my Rainbow Trout

Rainbow Trout

 More books to come!