Introducing More New Works

Another insanely busy week! Here are pics of some recent works for your enjoyment:

Sediment, 12 x 36 acrylic on canvas   ©2015 Lynn Edwards

Titled Sediment, this 12x36" painting is acrylic on a gallery wrapped 1 1/2 inch deep canvas. I've used a limited palette of colors and a variety of special techniques to suggest a dreamy, "floating downward" movement.

You can't see them in this photo but the dark band across the bottom also contains some interesting patterns.

This painting can be hung vertically or horizontally. It would look terrific on a narrow wall! Hung horizontally, it can be reversed directionally by changing the location of the hanging hardware on the back.

Sediment is now available for purchase through 2Rules Fine Art Gallery, 85 Church St., Marietta Ga 30060. The gallery may be contacted by phone at (404)355-6897, by email at
helen@2rulesfineart.com, or through its website.














The second painting, shown below, is Winter Lights, acrylic on a 24 x 24" gallery wrapped, 1 1/2 inch deep canvas.

Winter Lights, 24x24 acrylic on canvas   ©2015 Lynn Edwards

This painting features a very textural, tactile surface.

Something amazing happens to this painting when it's illuminated by a picture light or gallery style lighting. The silvery area at the bottom and the stars emit a beautiful soft glow! The effect is what you'd see while gazing at a frozen lake under the light of a full moon.

I did not use any gimmicky fluorescent paints to achieve this effect. In fact, I didn't discover it until I went to hang the finished painting on the gallery wall in my studio, which is lighted with halogens. This painting is lovely without any special illumination, but my jaw dropped when I saw it under the gallery lights. I also discovered that its appearance can be altered dramatically by dimming the light to varying degrees.

To learn more about this painting, contact me directly by clicking on Comments below, or by visiting my web site and clicking on Contact the Artist.

Have a good weekend!

Text and images ©2015 Lynn Edwards

Join Me for My Demo at This Friday's Art Walk

If you've been curious about the process I use to create my mosaic collages, you can watch me construct one at 2Rules Fine Art this coming Friday evening, June 5, for the Marietta Square's First Friday Art Walk.

It's one thing to work in the privacy of the studio, and quite another to demo my process in front of an audience. Fact is, I'm feeling just a wee bit apprehensive. The piece I'll be working on is comprised of 285 tiny pieces of paper, each just a fraction larger than one square inch in size. So what could possibly go wrong??? Oh, lots of things...like if somebody sneezes and all the papers blow away, haha. I can just see the gallery being subjected to a blizzard of "confetti." (It would be rather festive...but it's a scenario I'd like to avoid. Maybe I'll just store those papers in plastic bags as a precautionary measure.)

Here I'm working on a painting on canvas. Cropping the photo made my studio look tidier than it actually was.

Anyway, the piece I'll be working on for the Art Walk will be done on a cradled wood panel. I've been using wood panels in my work a lot. They're a joy to work on, particularly for collage pieces, since there's no "bounce" to the surface like there is with a stretched canvas. The unyielding surface makes adhering the papers that much easier. Better yet, wood's durability makes any art created on it less vulnerable to being damaged.

On Friday night I'll be creating an ombre style collage, using five analogous colors to achieve a softly blended, striated effect. My inspiration for this piece came from a small swatch of upholstery fabric. I'll have the fabric swatch on display to show how it's possible to achieve an exciting relationship between a work of art and one's home's decor. If you'd like to have me design a custom piece for your home, I invite you to come by the gallery Friday night and talk to me or to gallery owner Helen Rule. If you can't attend the Art Walk, just give Helen a call at 404-355-6897, or email her at the address below, to discuss your needs:

2Rules Fine Art
85 Church St.
Marietta, GA 30060
404-355-6897
Email: info@2rulesfineart.com

Text and image ©2015 Lynn Edwards

Painting an Artist Trading Card or ACEO with Sponges

Why is it the art I seem to be most satisfied with are the pieces created "off the cuff?" Yesterday was a good example. I had been dipping the ends of some fabric beads in iridescent silver paint. When I finished, there was about a teaspoon of paint left over.

I didn't want to toss it, or wipe it off onto the cloth I was using for a cleanup rag. Instead, I decided to see if I had an old or unfinished painting I could stamp onto with the silver paint. Maybe it could rekindle my enthusiasm for some orphaned project. So I went looking in my stash for a suitable piece to work with.

The perfect candidate turned out to be a 2 1/2x3 1/2" artist trading card my friend Rebecca Salcedo had given me a few years ago. Rebecca is both a decorative artist and a fine artist. She had been experimenting with faux paint treatments for a client's walls, and had created several of these little cards to test various effects and color combinations. One afternoon she had stuck her head in my studio door (at the time we were both tenants in a communal studio space), handed me two of the cards and said, "Here's something to start some tiny paintings with." Intending to do just that, I had placed them in a drawer. Where they languished until yesterday.

One of the cards featured a bit of texture on its surface. It was painted a mid-value grey, lightly glazed with what looked to be a mixture of Pthalo Blue and black, making it an ideal blank slate. Eureka! The leftover silver paint would look great with those colors. I got right to work.

A 2 1/2x3 1/2" abstract, painted entirely with sponges.

Instead of a brush, I decided to use itty-bitty sponges. These were actually pieces of a large sponge I had previously cut up for another project. Back then I had used the pieces to stamp small squares onto a canvas. The biggest of the bunch was about the size of a thumbprint, the smallest about the circumference of my middle finger.

Painting with sponges was a way to leave my comfort zone and give something different a try. It's part of my New Studio Mantra: new digs call for exploring new directions. Since moving into my new space, I've been doing just that and having a ball, inspired in part by a book titled Mixed Media Revolution: Creative Ideas for Reusing Your Art by Darlene Olivia McElroy and Sandra Duran Wilson. Already Sandra and Darlene have led me down several new pathways to creative opportunity.

Doing this little sponge painting was great fun. I held no expectations for its outcome, just allowed myself to play and dabble. In addition to the Iridescent Silver, Carbon Black, Titanium White and Payne's Grey rounded out my palette. I learned quickly to use the very lightest of touches when applying the loaded sponge to the paper, or a big blob would result that had to be covered up. The sponges' textured surfaces created a delicate, yet intricate interplay of colors; layering and veiling and layering some more produced a remarkably detailed level of complexity my clumsy photography can't capture adequately here. Nor can it capture the luminous glow the metallic silver paint infuses.

As I worked on this I was fully in the Zone, dabbing away and enjoying every minute as the painting took shape. When I finished it, I noticed it looks equally good turned in any direction, and because the silver paint is reflective, each orientation looks very different from the others. It's like four unique little paintings in one!
©2013 Lynn Edwards 









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The Secret of Bagger Vance

Watched The Legend of Bagger Vance last night. I needed a break from my frenetic preparations for next month's studio artists' show, and this movie about a golfing has-been's comeback just fit the bill. I'm not a golfer but my husband The Wizard is, so we settled in to enjoy the flick with two entirely different agendas: his to immerse himself in all things golf, and mine to take a brief respite from all things art.

The story line and the striking cinematography grabbed me right away. It was set in Savannah, one of my favorite places. Though I don't know a birdie from a plover, I was immediately entranced as I watched the war damaged young golfer (Matt Damon) coached back into both the game and life under the tutelage of a mysterious, sage-like caddy, played by Will Smith.

One of the secrets the caddy teaches his charge is to focus solely on the flag marking the location of the hole as he prepares to swing. To exclude from consciousness all other distractions -- to focus exclusively on the flag and the envisioned trajectory of the ball. To engage both body and mind so completely on the joyful act of delivering the ball to the flag that all other distractions simply fade away. The goal, the caddy reveals, is to meld oneself so totally into the moment and the purpose at hand that you achieve -- however briefly -- unity with the ineffable.

Wow. This exactly describes what happens on those very memorable magical days when the art seems to make itself and every color, texture and gestural stroke on the canvas seems to come from a place so much grander and greater than ourselves. When five or six hours fly by but you could swear it was merely an hour ago that you took up a brush. When you step back from the painting and wonder from where and how such delightful nuances of color came to be when you have no recollection whatsoever of having painted them. Oh yes, I think artists can soooo relate to that sublime sense of timelessness and oneness as described by caddy Bagger Vance.

Watching the credits roll at the end (we have a niece in the film business so we always watch the credits) I learned The Legend of Bagger Vance was authored by Steven Pressfield. Who happens to also be the author of The War of Art, a wonderful book about the creative process and its challenges. Thank you so much, Mr. Pressfield, for giving us both. My intent in watching The Legend of Bagger Vance was to take a break from art. Instead it reminded me in a profoundly moving way just why I love it so much. This movie both relaxed me and renewed me. Today as I painted in my studio I could swear I heard Bagger Vance whispering softly in my ear.

Impressions of Summer

"Dragonfly" mixed media collage, 12x9"

Heat and bugs are the essence of summer in my state. I wanted to capture summer's fiery warmth with this mixed media collage while providing a nod to dragonflies, one of my favorite "bugs." There's a small water garden alongside my porch where these beautiful creatures congregate. It's great fun to watch them hover over the water, then zip off into the garden. My environment provides many little inspirations like this for my art. I find such moments to be some of the most rewarding when I'm looking for something to jump start a painting.