Painting with Abandon at the Tao Workshop

 The Tao of Painting Workshop yesterday was such fun. Lots of energy with everyone looking to work with the natural flow of creating art works. The morning was spent working in group exercises designed to relieve all painters of the potential for judgment and comparison, the fear of the blank canvas, and rules. For the paintings shown here, each participant was given a sheet of multi-media board that had random painted marks (each board different). They were instructed to focus, react and respond to the marks presented with their own addition of color, line, or texture in any medium. A variety of painting tools and media were available and had been experimented with in an earlier exercise.  After  +/- 5 minutes of work, the boards were passed to the painter to the right, and this "round" continued until each board had been worked on by each painter.  We all liked the results of this particular exercise so much that we decided to donate the set of 5 to the Bangor School Department fundraiser for Japan relief. Kal Elmore, a workshop participant and art teacher at Bangor High is facilitating this donation. Participating painters in addition to Kal: Christine Swersey, Deb Jellison, Linda Miller, and Darlene Smith.

The afternoon was spent applying the experiences from the morning exercises...painting intuitively...to a still life, and finally to a work from memory or imagination.

Emily Mason, Abstract Expressionist and Colorist Extraordinaire!

I just read an Art in America review of Emily Mason's recent show at LewAllen Galleries in Santa Fe. One of my very favorite colorists and abstract painters, Mason is not as well known as some of her more famous contemporaries such as Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler. I've never figured out why that is. Her work is so exciting and bold, and as she approaches 80 years old, it's great to see new works as vibrant and luscious as ever.  To read the review, follow this link:

http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/reviews/emily-mason/

Photo: Emily Mason: Everything Unknown, 2003, oil on canvas, 40 by 38 inches; at LewAllen.