Untitled 51

Untitled 51, Oil on canvas, approx. 12" x 16".  

For purchase information, please email me: jala{at}jalapfaff{.com}.

This is another of my slightly older oil paintings.

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Update on motorcycle-accident friend: He's doing well! I think at this point it's a lot of broken bones, but no more internal problems. He's out of the ICU.

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A tiny, malevolent slit of blue eye.

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More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Untitled 50

Untitled 50, Oil on canvas, approx. 10" x 20".  

For purchase information, please email me: jala{at}jalapfaff{.com}.

This is another of my slightly older oil paintings.

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They MUST be together...even if it means one is falling off.

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It amuses me to imagine the first (and very brave!) human to try to eat a thistle bloom, and how that experiment must have gone...

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Untitled 49

Untitled 49, Oil on canvas, 20" x 20".  

For purchase information, please email me: jala{at}jalapfaff{.com}.

This is another of my slightly older oil paintings.

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I got a flu shot a couple of days ago and it really knocked me for a loop for two days. I got every listed side effect and felt awful. Maybe I won't get one next year!

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Update on my friend who was in the motorcycle accident: great progress so far. He will hopefully even be out of the ICU in a couple more days!
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I was running late and had already left my apartment and locked my door, when I noticed the beauty under my feet and had to go back in and get the camera. This was just before the snow hit, a few days ago.

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Untitled 48

Untitled 48, Oil on canvas, 16" x 16".  

For purchase information, please email me: jala{at}jalapfaff{.com}.

This is another of my slightly older oil paintings.

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 My friend Tom is hanging in there. Still no visitors allowed at the hospital though. Thinking good thoughts for him.
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During the second weekend of Open Studios, Fennec was guarding the framed pastels.

And Rumi slept on the heater vent while visitors discussed the paintings, e.g., "...the one to the left of the kitty."

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Untitled 47

Untitled 47, Oil on canvas, 11" x 14".  Framed in black wood floating frame.

Sold.

This is another of my slightly older oil paintings.

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I found out that on Monday, a friend was hit by a car while riding his motorcycle, and is in very serious condition at the hospital. He is one of the kindest, most generous, happiest, biggest personalities I know. Please send some good vibes out into the world for Tom. Thank you.

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Gadjo is just such a stunning, elegant creature. 

He's also sometimes a neurotic, obnoxious creature. But still, so beautiful.

And he knows it.

The best buddies.

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Diptych (oil)

This is actually an oil diptych from quite a while ago, but I realized I've never posted it. Each is 10" x 10".

Over my shoulder, being the camera ham that he is.

The side of the ferry, in Lakshadweep.

$425.00 - Diptych (oil) (no need to frame)

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Tierra de Quixote part 3

The final part of the triptych.


Triptych is sold.

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BOULDER, COLORADO

Tierra de Quixote part 2

Part 2 of the triptych.


Triptych is sold.

What kills me here is not just Rumi's expression, but also his curled-up back feet.

I think he's dreaming of Kayle--everyone, please take a sec to send good healing vibes out to California for our friend Kayle Martin, who just had a mastectomy today due to breast cancer. She is only in her early thirties.

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Tierra de Quixote part 1

Introducing part 1 of an oil triptych I recently completed, and which I'm very excited about. Tierra de Quixote in Spanish is "Land of Quixote." The colors remind me of La Mancha.

Each canvas is 20" x 20". For those of you who were following when I discussed how I paint in layers, this was three or four layers.

Triptych is sold.

Little sun worshipers. (Note third cat in pic, black Cleo, top left, getting her tail played with.) They lie on the dog beds (intimidating the dogs, who are afraid to bother them), and then later they stink.

Rumi is in quite an obnoxious phase. At least I hope it's a phase, and not a permanent thing... He gets up on top of any surface (table, counter, etc.), and systematically and deliberately knocks every item off onto the floor, one at a time, with a pause of about two seconds between each item. I've of course had cats do this before, but not to this extent. He is seriously out of control.

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Forgotten oldie but goodie

Whoops! I'd forgotten about this one! This one was the last one I did in art school. I promise. :)

Little dude has become really naughty lately...

$265.00 - Squash and chilies (Framed)

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Oldie but goodie #3, and thoughts about frustration

This was the third and final still life from art school. Also the biggest. Also the first time I painted glass. I definitely got tired of working on it by the end!


Sold.


I've really been enjoying all your comments about the loose vs. tight painting discussion. I remember feeling dissatisfied from the very beginning about learning the traditional technique that results in paintings like you see in this post and the two previous ones. I didn't know enough or the right language to be able to put that sense of dissatisfaction into words for my instructor (who was a staunch traditionalist). When I said I simply didn't like it, my instructor asked for an explanation, and all I could come up with was, "All these paintings just look like anyone could have painted them." I wasn't referring to skill level but rather to the fact that the personality of the artist was not present. "If you put all our [students'] paintings together, you'd have no way of knowing who did what."


I seem to be back yet again in that place where nothing I paint turns out well. Though I know it's all "part of the process," the sense of frustration can be overwhelming. I know you all know that feeling: you begin to feel you have the opposite of the Midas touch: merde is the result, instead of gold. I'm also having a hard time putting into words what it is I'm not liking about the results I'm getting lately. Why don't I like it? I don't know! I only know that I don't like it. It needs to be more this and less that, or more that and less this... I also am constantly and rapidly swinging back and forth on the loose vs. tight pendulum (I'm not saying I believe either style of painting is inferior). Aaaghhh, such frustration!


This current wave of dissatisfaction has forced me to reflect on, read about, and spend a lot of time mentally pondering not only my own art, but art in general, and looking (online mostly) at a lot of other people's art. I pulled out my old and mostly unused copy of Betty Edwards' Drawing on the Artist Within, and was very struck by a quote I found in the second chapter, by Ralph Waldo Emerson (ignore the sexism):


"A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within... Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. ...In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility...when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another."

I relate to this quote tremendously as regards creative works (in my case, writing and painting). Have you also had that experience, where you thought to do a certain thing in your art and rejected the idea as silly, or stupid, or worthless, or not worth the time, or some other reason, and then seen that someone else has executed the same idea, and then mentally kicked yourself for not having tried it after all? I also get the same feeling, in a "reverse deja vu" sort of way, when I see work that already exists, but which, when I first discover it, I feel defeated because it's exactly what I would have wanted to do! I feel this way about Rothko, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Richard Diebenkorn, and many other artists whom I discover as I go. A prime example is this contemporary artist whose work I just stumbled upon and I get that all-too-familiar sinking, yet amazed feeling that what I want to do has already been done. Here's the artist: Video of Rebecca Crowell working and speaking about her art.


I don't know what to do with this feeling.


Who will lick my artistic wounds?

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Oldie but goodie #2

What do you do on your daily blog if you haven't painted? Yes, you post an older painting. This was the second still life I ever painted, also in art school (see previous post for description of traditional-style technique).

I enjoyed people's comments about the loose vs. tight painting approach.

$285.00 - Autumn (Ready to Frame)

The Husband took this little video:

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Oldie but goodie

People, I tried to paint some figs last night and was ignominiously defeated. Here instead is a curiosity: the first still life I ever painted. It was at art school two years ago and used the traditional method of (laborious) sight-size drawing, then drawing transfer to canvas, then several layers of oil paint (waiting a week between each layer for it to touch-dry), then a final glaze layer for detail.

Before I ever tried painting, I thought this sort of finish/look/style in an oil painting must be the hardest to do. In fact, in my opinion, this type of "tight" painting is much easier than loose painting. I remember looking at loose, juicy, painterly alla prima stuff and liking it but thinking, Well, that must be quite easy, you just slosh the paint around and have fun with it... Ha! Little did I know how much more difficult a loose style is, where every brushstroke must be thoughtful and expressive and placed in just the right way, with just the right value and color on the first go and the painting manage to somehow work together as a whole even with differing thicknesses of paint.

Yes, I am adorable, whatcha gonna do about it?

$435.00 - Lycastes/Time to repot (Ready to Frame)

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Untitled 7

The rain has finally stopped, surely due to the combined efforts of all your well-wishing. Thanks!

$235.00 - Untitled 7 (oil) (Ready to Frame)

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Untitled 6

Still raining...

$235.00 - Untitled 6 (oil) (Ready to Frame)

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Untitled 5

Okay, I'm off to walk the dogs now while we're having a break between downpours.

$335.00 - Untitled 5 (oil) (Ready to Frame)

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Untitled 3

Last night in the studio, I was a wild woman, grabbing old, smaller canvases right and left and throwing a new paint layer on top. I hadn't done much painting in the last few days and it felt like it was all saved up as potential energy, ready to be unleashed kinetically in the studio. I'm happy with all three of them I did, and will post the next two soon. Here's the first.

$335.00 - Untitled 3 (Ready to Frame)

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Circles diptych

The latest diptych...had a lot of fun painting this one. One of the more rare times (for me) when I had an image in mind first for an abstract and the end product didn't deviate much from the original idea. This was approximately four layers, painting knife, no brushes. 

$295.00 - Circles diptych (no need to frame)

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Abstract in white

When I get frustrated with painting, I usually take a break from realism for a day or two and work on some abstract stuff.

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Purple potatoes

I have a cold today and didn't paint, so here's one from this summer. It was so much fun observing (and pushing) the color of these.

$145.00 - Purple potatoes (Ready to Frame)

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com