exercise

paint a memoryLike most of you, I bet, I am an avid taker of photos. I like to capture snippets of time through the window of the car as I drive through a new town or city. Some-times I have to do it furtively like the time I spied an old man who looked exactly like Santa Claus on summer vacation, and I proceeded to embarrass Sienna by hiding amongst the foliage in Old Town San Diego until I was happy with my snaps! Or the time I took a beautiful photo of a woman deep in prayer outside the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City. The scene was so moving and evocative I just couldn’t resist!

Back in my studio I rotate those photos that inspire me on my studio wall, looking at them from time to time as I work. Sometimes seemingly of its own voli-tion, a memory makes its way off the wall, scrambles itself across the paint-speckled floor and drops with gusto onto my canvas.

Like many of the techniques and processes I employ, there are no hard-and-fast rules to painting a memory, so I invite you to sit back and come along with me as I paint some of my own. This is more of a glimpse into the unfolding of my own work and pro-cess, and I hope you can use it as a spark to bring your own images and memories into your art!

Remembering the lazy, meandering walks we took during our two months in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, in 2008, I selected several photos from my wall of inspi-ration (OK, they didn’t really jump onto my canvas by themselves!) and laid out some paints, pastels and gel pens and a sturdy piece of watercolor paper.

What You Needacrylic paints

black acrylic ink

memorable moment photos

paintbrush

watercolor paper

scratch foam board

variety of mark-making tools

white gel pen

3 Continue looking at your photos and see what speaks to you. I am drawn to load my brush with

intense red, and intuitively I select a few more ele-ments to add to my work in progress: a hotel sign, part of a red-tiled roof, some strong vertical blocks of red from the doors at the bottom of one of the pics with a touch of the turquoise that nudges the red.

Add these additional elements without thinking hard about it.

1 Looking at your own photos, begin to think about the types of things you love that made you take

these pics in the first place. Here, I saw how much I love small glimpses into win-

dows and doorways, imagining the lives of those who live there, the things we might have in common and the ways in which our lives might be very different. Jot down some of the feelings that come up in words right there on your paper.

2 Choose a palette of colors based on those that are strongest in your photos and brush them across the

paper quickly in thick, lavish strokes, varying directions and overlapping some colors.

Here, I used a bamboo skewer to scratch through some of the layers of paint, using elements of the photos and the memories that flow on as my inspira-tion: a design underneath a window, the memory of the waves crashing, the texture of the thatched roofs on the houses and palapas.

4 Consider adding in some darker areas to add contrast to the work. Maybe add a border to an

element with the shape of an arched window, or etch a design from one of the photos into foam to create a stamp. I added stamps to the work in several places, and the colors continue to build visual interest. The scraffitied area above the roof evokes the memory of tropical downpours.

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5 Continue to play with paint, making various marks to unify areas. Here, I added some details with black

ink and a bamboo skewer—some palm trees, a boat, another archway—as more memories of our adven-tures in Puerto Escondido drifted through my mind. I grounded some of these images by loosely scumbling the ink over the colors beneath.

6 You can fine-tune some of your details using a white gel pen. I added more details as I thought about

the sunsets we watched over the ocean each night, the kitties who nuzzled around our feet at our favorite restaurant, waiting for scraps of fish and prawns, the fishing boats lined up on the beach, and everywhere lush green tropical foliage.

PossibilitiesAfter I finished this painting I played around with a viewfinder and realized that it spoke to me more as two separate works—rich, evocative representations of a very special time in our lives.

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