Sometimes, I think about reincarnation and fantasize about what I’d like to be in my next life, if I have one. I’m perfectly happy becoming soil, dust, a ghost, a distant memory, or whatever it is you become when you’re released from this strange, beautiful life. As I worked on my latest painting, I indulged in the idea that I would enjoy being a tree — a rooted being with it’s limbs reaching toward the sky. It’s not a new fantasy, but one I’ve had in my heart even before I knew there were ideas about reincarnation. And while I don’t really know much more than the basic ideas of reincarnation, it’s fun to dream of such things.
I like painting trees from my imagination, from a spontaneous place inside me, where I can play with the form and color. Just following brushstrokes, building on what starts as a vague image with whatever comes to mind.
In my last post, I showed the beginning of this painting. I had such a good time working on it, that I almost didn’t want to stop, but the painting finally told me it was finished.
She Came Back as a Tree by Joy Murray, 20×24″, acylic on stretched canvas
She Came Back as a Tree detail
She Came back as a tree, detail
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I’ve been experimenting with little canvases and fauvism, a style of art I love. I love the work of Portland, OR, artist Trina Hesson, who, among other things, does faces on small canvases and boards.
I like not being limited to the local color. But I’ve felt many of my attempts at using unrealistic color always made the painting look like a big old mess.
With these little canvases, 5×7″, I’ve started out without any real goals, except to play with color. The size is non-threatening. I like the idea of being free of skin tones. When I was making fabric sculptures, I hardly ever used skin tones. They could be any race, they could be just figures anyone could identify with.
Dream Guide
With these little paintings, I’ve used mostly dark colors:
Let Your Dreams Guide You
Peer Pressure
Is there a color that would make me safe?
I decided this week to work with lighter colors. It was a terrible week — shootings, ICE arrests, and a deepening feeling of division around me. So much unnecessary sorrow. I’m shocked almost daily by how well the “divide and conquer” political strategy still works. I also had a discussion with a person I know who has a very rigid attitude about who is to blame and why. That all crept into my latest 5×7″:
If you just admitted I was right, we wouldn’t have these problems!
I use art as a window or a door into the imagination and out of this fragmented world. I don’t often do directly political pieces, but it’s hard not to. I hope this one is political and humorous. Her frustration that people don’t see she’s right. The imperious stare over the glasses — a look many of us of a certain age look out at the world with. It makes me laugh.
So that’s what I’ve been up to lately. What do you think?
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This blog is brought to you by the generosity of people who support me on Patreon , buy my art, and who support me in so many different ways.
Cards and prints on some of my art is available on Redbubble.
If you find a typo, let me know, and I’ll send you a postcard.
You can get prints and cards of some of my work on Redbubble. They also print my work on lots of other items, including phone skins, tote bags, shirts and journals:
If you’d like to support my art and writing, please consider becoming a donor on Patreon. If I get enough supporters, I can make this blog ad-free! Here’s a link to my Patreon page:
How to make realistic skin tones is one of the challenges of painting people. It took me awhile to realize that there is no real formula. You can mix every tone or color from the primaries red, yellow, and blue in watercolor. With acrylic paint, a bit of black and white helps. However, if you’re too realistic, you lose something. A painting that’s like a photograph, or in my case, more like a doll. Monotones and no personality. I’ve learned to paint using lots of colors and layers and collage. I’ve learned a lot from Gwenn Seemel on how to look and react to skin color and the dynamism of the human face. I’m trying to learn how to paint the light that shines forth from every being, and the prism of their personality.
I also like using no color at all, keeping color and race out of the picture:
St Foster Keeper of Stolen Wisdom
But I like to use a mixture of every color, too. It’s amazing to me how many tones and shades can be made by mixing and layering color.
One of the things I liked about working with fabric sculptures years ago is that I didn’t have to use skin tones at all. The figures could be any race, any body.
Dream Guide
I’ve experimented lately with some fauvism in my journal:
I think the hardest thing to learn is that there is no “right” way to mix skin tones, you have to develop your vision, and the way you interpret life is your own — a blend of your skills, your materials, and your vision.
My mistakes teach me so much, if I look at them as teaching tools, instead of mistakes.
When I work in acrylic, I use a parchment paper palette and I store it on moist paper towels in a sealed plastic box, my own stay wet palette. I got this system from this video by art teacher Ron Leger:
When the paper and paint start to show signs of age, I use up all the paint by just doing intuitive painting for back grounds and other projects.
I dripped leftover paint on this long canvas, then mixed a purple gray with the rest for another background. It helps to have a few “beginnings” around the studio. They speak to me, eventually and a painting gets started.
My last palette had all the colors I’ve used mixing skin tones on it. As I was thinking about skin tones, I had to think about race and all the tension that continues to plague the world over skin color.
I have enjoyed looking through the Humanae Project by Anjelica Dass who is photographing all the skin tones she can find in a very eye opening project that speaks to our uniqueness and the wide range of colors that can’t be contained by simple reductive terms of race.
Still we fight and we have difficulties understanding the world. Skin color is an easy way to draw lines between people. It makes it easy for those who would manipulate us for their own gain to turn us against each other. Skin color, race, identity are all volatile and vibrant ideas that swirl around our communities and countries.
So I took all these ideas, and all the colors on my palette and made this piece:
How do you mix skin tones? by Joy Murray, 8×10″, Acrylic and collage on canvas
What do you think?
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Thanks for reading my post. If you like it share it. If you find a typo, please let me know and I’ll send you a thank-you postcard.
You can get prints and cards of some of my work on Redbubble. They also print my work on lots of other items, including phone skins, tote bags, shirts and journals:
If you’d like to support my art and writing, please consider becoming a donor on Patreon. If I get enough supporters, I can make this blog ad-free! Here’s a link to my Patreon page:
joy murray art~stories~life 