It was a stroke of brilliance.  Fumbling around in the studio playing with dozens of postcard size paintings.  I paint these 4″ x 6″ throwaways when I have extra paint or am testing colors.  Critical to have ways to explore your practice in curiosity and play.  It’s idle work that keeps the eye active.

I pulled 2 of the tinys out from my stack and set them aside.  They captivated me because they were different than my typical paintings. Colorful shapes filled the space on one card.

The other card was quite the opposite.  Two soft whispering colors floated in space.

When my eyes keep looking, I know I can dig deep on the idea.

This is where the brilliance enters.

I’ve been wanting to begin a series of about 20 paintings this Fall yet I couldn’t find a “theme” or common thread that kept me up at night imagining.  As I mentioned, I have tons of these cards.  I bet I can find 20 little ones that interest me enough to play around with scale and surface.

Work backwards.

When designing booths for Art Fairs, it’s common to do a mock up of your booth.  The paintings are done so it’s a simple matter of scale and positioning paintings until you find a nice flow and presentation.  Below is a sample of work to scale that I used to create my mock up booth for Superfine Art Fair.  

Well, let’s take this idea and play it backwards.  I have the scaled paintings.  They’re my postcards!  I’ll pull 30 and start arranging my mock up series.  I’ll decide size and whether they’ll be on paper or panel.  I love this idea and I’m smiling!  A good sign.  Part problem solving as if the paintings were already done and part imagining what they could be.

My little postcards are the junk drawer of my studio.

As Balanchine said, “What are you saving it for?”

The drawer has opened!

XOXO,

Francesca