The Chairwoman

Old Blue
Acrylic on Canvasboard

I've been participating in a couple of online painting-a-day challenges. Finished 30-in-30 Challenge for January 2017 with Leslie Saeta www.saetastudio.com --she's posted that she'll be hosting another such challenge in September 2017--and I'm now in the midst of another challenge of a painting each day for March--see public group page Today-Start Art on Facebook.

One would think I would simply paint something every day. Why the reliance upon a challenge to motivate me to show up in front of the easel?

I'm thankful that for whatever the reason I have, because I can see my painting taking on a recognizable style. This has been a revelation to me, as I've always been rather loose with my painterly approach. I know I wouldn't have gained this insight or self-realization if I hadn't daily been applying paint or sketching. My results are changing. I hope it's for the good.

In line with this most recent challenge, I'm finding I'm drawn to those objects that occupy home interiors, such as accessories, beds and most noticeably, chairs. Heretofore I've painted flowers, landscapes, seascapes. But with this most recent stint of painting chairs are making their way into my painting world.

Chairs. Is there a metaphor for chairs? I came across "empty chairing," which because of recent political connotation refers to leaving a chair empty during the course of a debate to indicate and embarrass the chair's occupant/candidate who chose not to participate. But I don't feel that's germane in my instance.

There's also the reference to ritual of leaving a chair empty during Jewish circumcision ceremonies, set aside for the prophet Elijah. Well, I'm not Jewish and I don't participate in such ceremony.

All references, though, seem to highlight the missing person. Am I acknowledging a person missing in my life? Am I the missing person that I need to find and take my chair?

Maybe there is NO rhyme or reason for the chairs. In any case, I think I'll continue painting chairs until something else shows up demanding to be painted.

Works for me!

Little White Chair in the Bath
Acrylic on Canvasboard 8"x 10"

Alfred's Red Chair
Acrylic on Gallery-wrap Canvas 3"x 3"

Preliminary Sketch
on 9"x 12" Gallery Wrap Canvas

Inquiring Minds Want to Know?

Well, you'll notice there's a gap of about a year since my last post. Hmmm where, oh where has Kay West been?

Mid-March of 2016 an opportunity inexplicably presented itself, and I leaped on it! I opened LITTLE DOG Art Gallery, a brick and mortar fine art sales gallery in Spokane, WA, along with my silent partner sister, Mel.

Everything moved very swiftly and before I knew it I was scheduling upcoming art exhibits, hanging shows, arranging for in-gallery activities and artist receptions, lots of bookkeeping and paying out of commissions, meeting people, talking with gallery visitors, up to my eyebrows in art biz, et cetera.

It has been an awesome, invigorating, growth experience! I've met so many cool people and talented artists here in Spokane! Initially I was only showing other artists' work, but in the last couple of months I've started exhibiting some of my own paintings. You can check out Little Dog Art Gallery on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, plus our website at www.littledogartgallery.com.

Yes, I've continued painting and taking photographs. I had a dozen of my Bondo Series photographs in a summer exhibit at Liberty Building Art Gallery in Spokane. I was invited to exhibit work in a December group show at Marmot Art Space in Kendall Yards, Spokane.

"Red Lamp" in Liberty Bldg Art Gallery, Summer 2016

"Golden Nut" in Liberty Bldg Art Gallery, Summer 2016

"Frontal, Bondo Series" Marmot Art Space, December 2016

"Golden Curve, Bondo Series" Marmot Art Space, December 2016

Yup, Here I am posing in front of my displayed work at
 Marmot Art Space, Kendall Yards, Spokane, WA

I've pushed forward with my painting, so my work is becoming more loose, playing more with movement and pattern rather than realistic rendering a specific object.

It's been a fun year, with more growth and exploration to come!

Verbatim 2015: An art + text collaboration

It was a first for me, back in October of 2015; a collaboration of my photography with the poetry of Spokane's Christopher Cook. I was excited to be invited to participate in Verbatim 2015, an annual fundraiser for INK Artspace and Spark Center.

I first met Chris at the organizational meeting and found him to be open and receptive to working with me--my being a bit under the Spokane art scene radar--and to combining our respective talents. Chris is a long-time Spokanite, whereas I've only been here for about four years, and a rather reclusive four years at that.

He provided me with a lot of his published chapbooks and poems so I could get a feel for how he wrote, and he came on this blog site to see my photography. And so it began.

Chris is not only well-respected in poetry circles, but he also teaches at Gonzaga University and plays trumpet in the Spokane Symphony Orchestra. With his extensive background, he provided me with a list of visual resources from which to choose. He itemized places, which I then wandered around and photographed. Chris also pulled some strings, taking me through the Bing Crosby Theater and the Martin Woldson Theater at the Fox, where I sought to find some interesting behind the scenes shots.

This turned out not only to be great fun, but also an excellent means of learning how to get around downtown Spokane. Even though I've lived here for a time, I really had not explored much of the downtown area. Why not? Traffic is off-putting, so many one-way streets, abysmal parking, you name it. But, this experience forced me out of my shell, for which I'm most grateful!

It was quite exciting to work in this way. I am rather unstructured in what and where I photograph. This collaboration was awesome in forcing me to focus on the end product for a specific purpose.

I shared the photographs with Chris and he selected one grouping, a diptych of shots from The Baby Bar. This, as I understand it, is Spokane's smallest bar, located behind Neato Burrito on First Avenue.

Thus, the images were selected and the poet sharpened his pencil and went off to do his thing. I could hardly wait to read what Christopher wrote.

The evening of the gallery exhibit/auction and the corresponding performance of the written word came and went with great fanfare. Chris performed his farcical after hours essay, complete with musical accompaniment, and both of the photographs went to appreciative new homes!

Success!

Photographing While Waiting in Spokane Traffic

I had attended an event in downtown Spokane and was heading home. While out and about I normally snap a couple of photographs with my iPhone for my IG. I hadn't encountered anything to that point, so I decided since there were a number of stoplights between where I was and home, I would photograph something whenever I was stopped, waiting for the light to change to green.

I just pointed my camera out the window and  *click* There wasn't time to decide what best to shoot. Simply stop for the traffic ahead of me and spontaneously shoot ... whatever.

It was simple. It was fun. I won't make a habit of it, BUT it was freeing to do something totally unstructured, impulsive. Well, not totally unstructured ... I did crop them after I got home.

Here are five of the "Waiting for the Stoplight to Change to Green" photographs:

Gluten Free Art, Please

At the request of Jeanine, the owner of Cole's Fine Foods, I showed up with four of my acrylic paintings for display to sell. She was delighted with what I brought and we quickly had all four paintings up on the walls where she wanted them.

However, Jeanine kept going back to one of the paintings, a landscape. She said she liked the painting, but there was just something about it that was off-putting. She couldn't identify why. After discussing, it hit both of us that it was a painting of fields, very probably wheat fields this being Spokane.

That was it! Jeanine has Celiac disease and her bakery is totally gluten free! She was subliminally reacting to the "wheat" in the painting! We had a good laugh about it, and of course I removed that painting.

Next day I brought back a replacement painting. Jeanine's happy. I'm happy.

First time I've ever had a painting rejected because it wasn't gluten free!

"Fields" 16x20 acrylic painting $125

Jeanine happy with "Sunflower"

Cole's Fine Foods, 521 Holland Ave, Spokane WA 99218 ... Family Owned.Great Food.Gluten Free!

A Featured Artist at Wild Wild West Show in Spokane WA

I'm excited to have been invited to be one of the featured artists at the Wild Wild West Show at Manic Moon & More Gallery in Spokane, WA. I'm SUPER excited that Ric Gendron will be one of the other artists featured. I've been a fan of his work since I first encountered it about four years ago.

As some of you are aware, I've been posting a lot of images of Rust and Decay to Instagram. This has been an offshoot of my Bondo Series of photographs started when I lived in Redlands, California during the 1990s.  My Instagram photos, however, are solely iPhone photography in a square format.

I thought it would be interesting to present these Instagram photographs as tangible prints. I wanted to do something a little out of my comfort zone, so I've had the rust and decay images selected for the Wild Wild West Show printed on stretched canvas. I'm delighted with how well they've turned out and am curious to see how they'll be received.

The show opens Friday, May 15, 2015 at Manic Moon & More Gallery on Augusta (just off Monroe) in Spokane. Besides Ric Gendron's paintings and my photographs, there will be many works of art by other talented Manic Moon & More artists. It's going to be a terrific show! Gallery hours: Tues-Sat 11:00-5:00.

I'm going to include several of my images that will be in this show. If you want to see the rest of my iPhone images in this show, just let me know. All works are for purchase! Please feel free to contact me at kweststudio8@yahoo.com with any questions about the Wild Wild West Show, or about the images themselves.

You can view my entire Instagram gallery of iPhone images @kweststudio8. Let me know what you think; I'd love to hear from you!

Memory Wheel 14"x 14" Stretched Canvas $100

Orange Peel 14"x14" Stretched Canvas $100

Chain Link Corrugation 14"x14"Stretched Canvas $100

Elk Skull 14"x14"Stretched Canvas $100

Frenchy's Corset 14"x14"Stretched Canvas $100

Paint Shreds in Pink 14"x14"Stretched Canvas $100

Last Day of the September 2013 Painting Challenge

Hooray! Today is the final day of my personal challenge to create a painting a day for my birth month of September.

I've wanted to do more three dimensional work, so why not start today? I've white washed a weathered old piece of wood 12" x 12" x 2". I randomly struck black nails at the bottom, although they're all within a pre-determined space ... doesn't look like it, though, does it? I didn't want them to be uniformly spaced. With a broad brush, I painted three vertical white acrylic strokes, added 4 black nails at the corners and wired across the top and the bottom with a thin black wire. I wanted to achieve an off-balanced balance. Hmmm.

In any case, I had fun. The old wood kept sucking up the white paint, but I liked the resulting weathered look. Fun! Done!

Today JKay Borland and I hung a dozen of my paintings, along with her ten paintings at Reflections Kaffee Haus and Eatery on Wall and Riverside in Spokane, Washington.  These paintings in the photograph are on the entry wall. We also displayed on two other walls in the eatery. Our styles seemed to complement the other, and we got it to work in spite of having to use pre-existing nails in the wall--appreciated the opportunity to display even if spacing of the work was a little cattywampus.

These puppies will remain on display for the month of October. My first showing in Spokane!

My small mixed media "Red" in the center
and acrylic "Seaweed" at the upper right.

Reflections Kaffee Haus & Eatery
618 W Riverside Ave, Spokane WA
Open 7:30 a.. to 4:00 p.m.

www.reflectionskaffeehaus.com

Du Jour 5

Oops! Almost forgot to upload today's painting. Source of light is florescent so color's a tad icky, but at least you get the gist of the geraniums.

Another day, another painting ...

Du Jour 3

I had fun trying something a little different today. I started out using the same medium as yesterday, Shiva Artist's Paintstik, but I also wiped some of it off, and then went back in with a black colored pencil and a silver colored pencil and drew some connected circles or ovals shapes. I liked the change in the surface when I wiped off some of the paint. It seemed to open up the little format.

I didn't have any reference for this painting, just followed an inner prompt and then stopped. However, once I started I remembered seeing some mobiles in a gallery down in Southern California and was intrigued with their balance and symmetry. So I just played with that idea.

Another day, another painting "finished."

The World Through Filters ...

Today I thought about how we see things. I've been playing a lot with effect filters and it is amazing to me how I am affected differently by the same image filtered, resulting in different effects.

It got me to mulling over how differently I see things if I'm sad or depressed, or if I'm ebullient and on top of the world. The same darn thing looks one way if I'm stressed about something my children are going through, and totally different when their issues have been optimistically resolved. Our emotions color what we see, don't they.

How many times are we told things like, "Just go out and take a walk around the block. Things will look better if you simply get out of the house and breathe in some fresh air." (It works, by the way.)

There are painters who create photorealism with their brushes and paint, but the reality of photography is changing, evolving ... anything goes! It is what it is, until it's something else.

Perhaps this is one reason I have such a blast experimenting with these various filters.

Today's photographs were shot back at Hansen's Orchard, and, yes, I have altered my images. This is the reality of how I see them at the moment.


This crate of apples was edited
with a Paint Fresco effect



Oh my! I love zinnias. They're such an
old-fashioned flower that touch me for some
unfathomable reason.
These have been edited with a Poster Edges effect.



Autumn rain on the way ...

Forecast is for rain before morning; can already feel the temperature dropping and there's a certain feel to the air. I love waking up to the sound of falling rain. I can hardly wait.

However, before the rain cometh, we were able to drive up to Hansen's orchards in Green Bluff, just north of Spokane. Pleasant place a-bustle with people picking their own apples, perusing the wonderful crafts and preserves in Hansen's gift store, and wishing they had gotten there earlier before the apple cider sold out.

I wandered a bit on my own and caught a couple of shots of sunflowers, et cetera.

Reflections, Watery and Not ...

A couple of days ago a good friend of mine was expressing the irony that she, who loves the woods and forests, ended up living by the Pacific Ocean, whereas I, who loves the water, ended up by the woods and forests. Life has a droll sense of humor.

There's something about water that mesmerizes me. I know this is common, nothing extraordinary. I just love the movement, the play of light, the distortion of reflections in the ripples. Did I mention the movement? Oh, yes. This particular photograph of a pond along Mirabeau Parkway in Spokane, reminds me of a plume agate or sagenite, parts of which are transparent showing feathery or plant-like inclusions within the stone. This layering of images below the water, the rippled surface of the water, and the reflections of things above the water delight me no end.

Another thought came to me. Ruth Bavetta, a wonderful poet, sent a link to Pamela Northcutt's blog wherein the blogger paired her photographs with Ruth's poem. It was lovely. Pam's photographs, entitled Muir Woods, were tranquil and restful and the "big" picture. My photographs, on the other hand tend to be close-up, details seen at the end of my nose. Vive la difference!

Never a dull moment!

I had two more photos included in Etsy Treasuries:

http://www.etsy.com/treasury/MTYyOTgwNjh8ODAzMDkxNDcx/boy-oh-bouy

Treasury: Boy Oh Bouy

Curator: MonkeyFrouFrou

My photo: Fishing Nets n Bouys

 

http://www.etsy.com/treasury/ODEwMTEzNHw3NzU3MjkzODg/natural-dream-state-autumn

Treasury: Natural Dream State: Autumn

Curator: Maclh.etsy.com

Photo: Frosty Maples

There's Graffiti, and Then There's Graffiti ...

Up along north Division in Spokane, set back from the main road is a very large building that appeared to be deserted. However, those large expanses of wall are obviously a tagger's dream!

Evidence of graffiti is all around the building, from ground level to about 10 feet up the walls. Some graffiti is quite sophisticated and attractive, but others are just ugly black marks. Someone is trying to discourage taggers from marking the walls, because all have been painted over, or plywood and paint rolled on to cover the graffiti.

Now, this, appeals to me, because the marks painted to obliterate the tagging offer some interesting compositions and colors. I think it appeals to me because the cover paint is meant to cover, but instead it is essentially another kind of graffiti.

I could add a whole slew of photographs; here are but a few examples:

September 29, 2011

A Bounty of Bondo Images

Mel knows about my predilection for dilapidated vehicles, so while we were out doing the monthly shopping, she took me by an old vintage truck she had previously noticed out by Airway Heights on the way to the Base.  Thank goodness it was still there. I've had so many instances where I thought I would come back to photograph something, but by the time I did so, the treasure trove was no longer there.

I was in luck! It was there, but since I didn't know I would be doing anything except shopping, I hadn't brought along my camera. What kind of serious photographer am I, anyway? Ah ha! The iPhone comes to the rescue once again!

I'll have to go back and take some better quality images ... hope it will still be there. But in the meantime, here are just a few of the shots I took. I was shooting into a strong, afternoon sun with no way to compensate.

There will never be an end to my Bondo Series of photographs. Hooray!

September 21, 2011

Playing Around ... Again

I took a photograph of some pine cones that had fallen onto a boulder someone had painted pink. Go figure. Anyway, I liked the grouping of the pine cones and the pine needles as they fell across the boulder. I even liked the peculiarity of the pink boulder.

However, all I had with me was my iPhone camera. Of course I shot the subject matter, but in the woods I was hiking and I had Suki with me, so the shot was taken on the fly.

I got back to my computer and uploaded the iPhoto, cropped it to eliminate some distracting light spots. Alas, in cropping the image I had to deal with pixelation.  We're not talking masterpiece here, folks. We're talking lets have some fun with this image. I still liked the composition and subject. So, I threw on a Crisscross Simple effect, which maintained the repetition detail of the pine cones but altered the pixelation.

No masterpiece, but a heck of a lot of fun was had today!

September 20, 2011 (Oh, did I mention today is my birthday? Woo Hoo!)



Pine Cones Pink Boulder
Crisscross Simple Effect Filter




Pine Cones Pink Boulder
iPhoto cropped without effect application



Rocket Bakery Garland

I love popping into small local coffee shops when I have the chance. I've driven by this little place on Garland every time I go check my post office box. I stopped in finally and found that it may have been very narrow across the front, but was long inside all the way to the back.

It was quiet and I practically had the place to myself as I sat and enjoyed my cup of coffee and a scone. All alone but for the man in the Hawaiian print shirt waiting for his wife to get back from looking at the Tinman Gallery just down the block, and the two folks at the counter who couldn't decide which baked good they wanted to order.

As I sat there, two elderly couples came into the place together and I overheard them talk with the barrista. The older man had once owned the bakery in that location decades earlier. He had helped build the place. One could tell he was quite proud of his accomplishment and it was an emotional moment for him to go through the establishment once again. He even wanted to go see the back of the building in the alley. Apparently he had a very prominent sign back there. It was gone, and he wasn't surprised.

It was so much fun vicariously enjoying the ex-baker's reminiscing. I also appreciated that the young barrista was very accommodating and encouraged the oldster's tale of long before she was born.

I felt very comfortable in this "little" neighborhood bakery. I took a number of iPhotos. Rocket Bakery on Garland in Spokane is one of about eight Rocket Bakery locations in Spokane.

Day 244



Front Window Seating




Regulars




Table I occupied. Don't you love the table surface?
Film grain effect