Moochie in the kitchen

Home alone in the post-Thanksgiving day peace and quiet. Ah.

Here's what I painted today. Moochie in the kitchen.

Cavalier - Blenheim

It's pretty much done. There's actually some gradation in the background that aren't showing on this photo.

I was back to work on South of Eden today. I mostly mixed paint, as everything leftover from Hambidge had turned to rubber. I did a tiny bit of painting on the green apple and the sunflower seed packet. Not enough to register on a photo. I mixed the paint for the brick and the moss beneath it. The moss is going to be a learning experience. I have a new yellow, a transparent oxide, that is just fabulous mixed with some sap.

Cavaliers

I spent today drawing and painting a Blenheim Cavalier, but it just didn't do right. At the end of the day I washed all the paint off with turp, which has left me a nice toned background. I finally put my finger on the problem, which is scale.

I was going to do a few drawings to test my theory and start again tomorrow. butended up doing a detailed redrawing on paper, and saw that it worked. I turned the canvas (already dry from its bath) upside down, drew the grid in white chalk and did the new drawing. Then I painted in the negative space with Paynes gray thinned with Liquin.

Two reasons: a Blenheim is mostly white and I wanted the value contrast, and I needed to cover up the traces of the earlier drawing. That blue gray color will do well with the orange gold of the ears, and orange red of the back. The official name of that color in the Cavalier standard is 'liver'.' Not the right word if you ask me.

It's a companion painting to this one, of my Black and Tan Cavalier

Tomatoes x 5

Here are the new tomatoes. One is still wet with varnish. Two are still drying enough to varnish - probably a week from now. All of them need wiring. I am so impatient to show them off - I'm like a kid who wants to wear new shoes home from the store.

There are all 10x10", oil on canvas, and $425 at HHFA. The Tomato & Chrysanthemum Knife is spoken for. I am still working on my photography - I see glare from the varnish on parts of some of the photos that's not visible in person.


Tomato & Chrysanthemum Knife


Tomato & Civil War Knife


Tomato & Japanese Knife


Tomato & Pocketknife


Tomato & Camping Knife

Solo show opens tonight

WHO: Virginia Parker
WHAT: Metamorphosis; Solo Art Exhibition
WHERE: Galerie Gigi, 627 Saint Peter Street (Between Royal and Chartres)
WHEN: Opening Reception Fri. November 6th, Exhibition runs from 11/6/09-11/28/09

Many write about painting, but at Galerie Gigi’s solo exhibition Metamorphosis, artist Virginia Parker paints about writing. More accurately, the painter and former journalist holds a mirror up to publishing's storied past and journalism's troubled present with her series of complex and hyper-realistic still lifes.

Parker’s series Metamorphosis couldn’t be more relevant right here – right now. As journalism and print media outlets vanish locally and nationally, profound cultural changes are taking place. Newspapers and magazines are shrinking, and independent booksellers and publishing houses are going out of business. “Last January, after the worldwide financial Armageddon hit, the acceleration of job losses and the collapse of magazines and newspapers was phenomenal,” Parker says.

At first journalism seemed endangered, a casualty of the shift in information delivery from actual to virtual, paper to Internet, but as Parker pulled the elements together, what began as the depiction of a calamity became one of evolution. Several of the canvases present the obsolete tools of writers – from movable type and printing plates, to quill pens and typewriters.

“Metamorphosis involves the porous border between extinction and evolution,” says the decidedly glass-half-full artist. "Inherent in these discarded relics is the implication that although the way we publish the stories changes, the stories will continue to be told,"

As the medium and the method for communication shifts, the shape of publishing’s future is still tantalizingly undefined. Parker's contemporary Nature Morte series with its elements of Vanitas paintings, uses visual metaphors and social commentary to present both the catastrophe, and her belief that journalism will survive.

Please join us on Friday November 6th, 6-8pm at Galerie Gigi for an opening reception with the artist. The exhibition runs at Galerie Gigi from November 6th– the 28th, Thursday through Sat 11am to 5pm. For more information visit www.galeriegigineworleans.com or contact Galerie Gigi director, Lindsay Viner at (713) 385-7890 or lindsay.viner@gmail.com.