The emotional roller coaster of recent months proves all anyone can do to keep a strong head and heart about them.  I share in the feelings of most in finding myself a bit “out of control.”  And it seems those feelings became directly reflected in my art.

 

Call this piece an excuse to dig down deep and express my angst for the state of the world and our own personal discord with one another.  Desperate times call for desperate measures and this piece came along during our collective breath-holding experience.  This great horned owl family lived on a stone wall during the summer of 2019. I watched them for months before the owlets finally fledged.

 

I burned in the owls (in my signature detailed style) the summer of 2019 and left the owls literally suspended for a year before coming back to it just two months ago, during these difficult times.  Then I decided to let this piece take on a life of its own.

First, I cut off a couple inches off the bottom for a better composition.  Then I protected the owls with a liquid mask, which allowed me to cut loose throwing paint around without affecting the owls. Then, the piece became an exercise in letting myself go, allowing the paint take me where it wanted to go.  That is, there was no particular plan of anchoring my owls…no wall, ground, nest or tree cavity.  I slathered layer after layer of paint in a most haphazard way, I found it cathartic and could not stop.  What a better time to face my own insecurities and confusion, to break tradition and just LET GO without caring whether or not I would keep or trash the work.

 

It was fun painting wherever my mood struck - no boundaries or logic, just splattery, drippy, smathering paint.  After weeks of playing with paint I removed the mask, continued tweaking a bit by softening the edges of the owls and adding nesting material that overlapped the owls.  It felt good to add and not subtract from this work and not worry about perfection or too much detail.  And when I was happy with it, I finally called it finished.  "A New Generation" was an exercise in feeling my way through it, finding untapped expressions and simply exploring new ways to express my honesty.  The lessons learned were invaluable.

"A New Generation"

12" x 18" Pyrography, paint, oil pencil on heavyweight paper

(c) Copyright Julie Bender

Available for purchase

 

I sincerely hope you all stay well now and into the future.