Dispirited Restoration

Dispirited Restoration was made at the beginning of 2016. I was struggling to keep positive. It was all about feeling destroyed and I needed to focus on rebuilding. I came home from a particularly bad day at work. I went to my studio and just started cutting canvas. The first stroke with the razor blade and I drew blood on my thumb. That was a sign to continue...just cutting and tearing. Then I stitched it back together and dipped the whole canvas into Potassium Permanganate to antique the fabric. Once dry I added a layer of plaster, oil paint, ink, encaustic wax etc...until done.

This piece is very special to me. It helped me heal...

Detail picture of the stitching and skeletal bones.

Mr. Boston ATC

This ATC (Artist Trading Card) was made for the GOE monthly meeting exchange. I was playing around with a different colour for me. I really wanted it to be red but for some reason it looks more pink. I started off with card stock, overlaid with white & printed tissue. Then I added a Boston postage stamp that I had in my stash & worked water over the tissue until it framed the stamp the way I wanted. I then dry brushed some bronze Lumiere paint for accent & used some rubbing alcohol to remove some of the excess paint so that some of the printed tissue would show through. I put it aside at that point because I wasn't sure it was finished but didn't know what I could do to be more interesting. So the next night I added some random hand stitching and then it was finished. I really love the texture you can get with the tissue. I should know who the person on the stamp is...but sorry I don't...at least not at this point. Maybe someone will enlighten me.