Playful Artwork

"Sun and Shadows in the Garden"
acrylic on Wallis paper
9" x 12"

Sometimes you just gotta play -- grab that sense of when we were kids and mucked around in the dirt making mudpies or climbed trees and caught lightening bugs in jars (only to let them go at bedtime, of course)!

I did this piece a few weeks ago working on Wallis archival sanded paper, which is used mostly for pastels. But it's a powerful piece of paper coming in at 200 lbs. and can take watermedia and oils. This was a warm-up piece to flex the muscles and loosen up. Having worked with silks dyeing for many years, I also used coarse salt with the watery acrylics and got these marvelous "blooms" scattered around the surface. I left quite a bit of white, too. It just seemed to lighten the whole piece.

I made it a point to step away before I began to "fiddle" too much and let it dry, moving on to other paintings. At the end of the day when I returned to this, it brought a smile to my face. Why? I guess because it reminded me of those summer gardens of childhood with the dappled sunlight and shadows flowing about the shrubbery.

Happy summer and enjoy the weekend! We finally have sun here and about 80 degrees -- thank goodness! This past June here in CT averaged 27 days of rain. Ugh.