New Pieces for the New Year!

I have been working constantly on new pieces since my last update and I'm finally going to post a few! I'm mostly working on some beautiful mahogany boards I bought several years ago, but am continuing with my "cardboard quilts" and of course the "found" wood I've used for years. These pieces are painted using mostly Old Village paint, pigments matched to antique New England homes, although I mix hues together as well. In addition I'm using permanent markers and paint pens, and all of them are finished with several coats of protective polyurethane so they won't ever fade or peel.

More art news since my last post: I was accepted into the prestigious and juried Guilford Art League fall show this past September, always a great pleasure for me! Also, I'm showing in Guilford's newest art gallery, The Bird Nest Gallery & Salon, 25 Water Street, in the 18th century Fitz Greene Halleck House. Please stop by there and tell 'em Casey sent you. : ) 

Please find me on Facebook. I have a new page just for my art, as well as my personal page and my page for my car renderings. Please look for Art by Casey Shain or click here. Thank you all of my dear readers for continuing to check out casey/artandcolour and I apologize for not updating the site since summer! I wish everyone a very happy new year. How did it ever get to be 2016?!?!?

I'm Now Showing in Hamden!

I am very pleased to announce my newest exhibit. "Gallery Twelve 24 at Framed" in Hamden, Connecticut is showing more than twenty of my paintings right now. The exhibit runs through the end of July and the reception is Thursday evening, June 25th, from 6-8 pm at the gallery. 

This is my third consecutive show for 2015. I couldn't be more pleased. There is a nice mix of my early work as well as my newest pieces. This show was hung by my great friend Jane, an incredible artist herself, and I couldn't be happier with the result.

Artandcolour: Now Showing in New Haven!

I've got a new exhibit hanging now, a great way to start off 2015! I have twenty seven of my pieces hanging in New Haven at a very cool wine bar named  Cave à Vin: A Wine Bar on State Street. They will be hanging through the end of March. This is my first showing since "LocalColour" in 2009 at the Keyes Gallery at the Willoughby Wallace Library in Stony Creek.

As you walk in these pieces are to your right. The recently updated "Hoohoo's Honeymoon Harley" is on the lower right, with the new "Checkerberry No. 3" above it. 

A cool seating area in the front of the bar features these leather couches and easy chairs. This informal grouping was selected so seated customers have eye-level pieces to look at.

The rear of the room features a grand piano and Cave à Vin offers live music weekly. The odd angular shape of "Demonseed" lower center, echoes the open grand piano just off to the left of this image. I have a good mix of brand new, never-before-seen pieces and a core group of my earliest ones. "Sunday Morning" is in the very center, and is a newly updated piece using one of my grandmother's 1920 photographs taken at the Indian Point House in Stony Creek.

An accent wall in this rich darker hue really helps these three pieces pop. Making their public debut are,  "Sunflowers," center, and "Me, My, Mo," raight. Far right is a mirror with two bottles on it and that is reflected on the wall to its left. It looks like there are two mirrors with bottles! With the naked eye, that reflection was barely visible. The digital camera really picked it up.

The "business end" of Cave à Vin with the wonderful proprietor, Linda, on the right. I thank her so much for giving me the opportunity to show my new work! Buddy James is to the left, always there supporting me, along with his fiancée, Nikki who set up this show for me!

A great photo of my bestie June. We packer her Subaru to the rafters, packed Nikki's Volvo to the rafters and schlepped all the art into New Haven. Here relaxing on the leather sofa later!

Nikki, right, was instrumental in setting this show up for me. Having known her since 1981, and our mothers were friends before that, Nikki has always supported me 200%. Both of these "gals" as my dad would have said, have gone out of their way a million times for me and I thank them immensely!

Yours Truly

Your humble blog host at the opening of the Guilford Art League's 67th annual juried show last Friday evening. My piece, "Suddenly, Last Summer" was selected to hang in it. Just about 300 pieces were submitted and  70 paintings were chosen so I was in very esteemed company! I rarely like photos of myself but I think this one came out just fine. The show hangs until October 4th, and for the local peeps out there it's at the Guilford Arts Center, 411 Church Street. It's just about 100 yards north of Exit 58 on I-95 and is open daily.

Wish Me Luck . . .

I entered a juried art show yesterday, the first one in almost six years, the Guilford Art League 67th annual show. Entries were limited to two pieces, and I brought the two above, "Out On a Limb," left, and "Suddenly, Last Summer," right. They can accept one, both, or neither, and then there are some awards, as well. I'll be very happy to have at least one accepted!

My Sunflowers. New Piece Finished!

My Sunflowers, 23 x 23 inches on industrial paneled plywood. Images include sunflowers I've grown in my gardens as well as members of my family and photographs from my collection. There's a pale yellow tiger swallowtail butterfly worked in as well, and it perfectly blends in with the sunflowers.

Second Period

"Reading Between the Lines" is made from three vintage clapboards joined together.

I've come to think of my work done from 2008-2011, give or take a year on either side, as my "second period" of paintings. I concentrated less on a single central image and began working smaller images into cohesive wholes, or as I like to think, wrote a song with harmonies. If an image is a musical note, I string notes together into a nicely orchestrated song by the end of my pieces, lol. All of my vintage images are from my family's collection of negatives, slides, and prints.

"And Thus it Began." This piece includes very brittle, lacy dried leaves which Nature radically decomposed for me. I found them on my daily walks, in the fall, and each one was a work of art. I knew I had to include them in some art. They're completely clearcoated and will last forever. Or longer than I will, lol.

"Pals, Peaks." Images include an artfully designed poem I wrote in the 1980s, as well as scans from an old 1920s children's book that belonged to my mother.

Working on a New Piece

A sneek peek at a new painting of mine. This will be part of my "knitting needles" series, with a bit of a twist, as each piece does. This painting is on vintage joined pine boards and measures approximately 23 x 24 inches.

"Suddenly Last Season"

Work continues on the new pieces. This is how "Suddenly Last Season" is shaping up. It has had some finer brushwork added and some toning of the background in a geometric pattern. I watched the afternoon shadows cross over on this piece one day and I toned the background in those shapes the next day. 24 inches x 24 inches on heavy plywood paneling, 3/4" thick.

It takes so much time but I have at least 25 new works in various stages from first layers to just-about-done, and about 15 more ready to begin.

From the Inside These Days

Much has been dusted and rearranged for the indoor seasons this year. I wasn't going to look at everything the way it had been for so long. Some things went up to the attic, some things came down, much really stayed pretty much the same but dusted and polished.

Refinements and Updates Continue

"Buick Eight" has been refined with a photo collage and additional repetitive color work. The car image is the "bucktooth" grille of the 1950 Buick, a photo I shot in 1980 at a car show. The rest of the images were mostly shot by my father during the 1940s. If something is still hanging in my house, it's never really done.

"Grace of the Fallen" has evolved floral images and a counterpoint added to the right side. Additional pinstripes and gridwork will follow.

"Suddenly Last Season," has new layers of "needles" painted on it suggesting shadows, following in the series started by Nanny's Knitting Needles. Interestingly enough, the other morning this piece was covered in these striking early morning actual shadows.

"Out on a Limb," or "Up a Tree," I can never decide on the title of this piece, has had a layer of sepia-toned clearcoat removed—well, most of it. I left it in the low points of the textural layers. Its removal has restored some of the original brighter color paints and papers the sepia had dulled. "Dulling" was my intent at the time, but after looking at it for several years, I wanted to see the some of the original colors again. If anything, "brightening" this piece has "aged" it in an even more period-correct manner.

Flag-ish

This is a work in progress, "Flag-ish," approximately 25 x 15 inches on a new "cardboad quilt." Besides my wooden pieces, I have about a dozen of these sandwiched pieces started. I think this series of "quilts" may have a hard backing and glass fronts with small clamps and no visible frame. I've added several layers to this piece I began almost a year ago (I think...). I have perhaps 15 wooden pieces in various states of finish all around, too. These will be part of the "Needles," series begun with "Nanny's Knitting Needles." In this case the multicolored, thin "needles" are, in fact, meant to portray stitches sewing this piece together—Americans are the bright threads sewing this crumbling nation together.

Nanny's Knitting Needles, 2013

My newest piece, done in a brief but furious 24-hour period recently. Approximately 19 x 28 inches on pineboards once used as a blackboard.

M Y  A R T — "Nanny's Knitting Needles" is the first of a new series I've just started. I'm still using fairly rigid stripes but I'm not adhering to a graphpaper-like grid. Looking close, the grid is still there, but I'm trying to work with a type of "balanced chaos." This first piece is an homage to my grandmother. When I was just a little kid, staying at my grandmother's after Kindergarten and the early grades, she was confined to her bed or a wheelchair. We did everything together anyway. She even claimed I helped her learn to walk again as I'd stand in front of her walker and help move it forward. I remember telling her "just one more step, Nanny" and other encouraging words, and more than once I'd get a kitchen chair for her to sit down because we'd gone one step too far, lol. She used to toss her big container of knitting needles on the rug for me and have me pick up all the red ones, or blue ones. She taught me colors that way. Later she'd have me pick up all the No 4s. or 7s, as I learned my numbers. We were so close! We laughed a lot, even though she was dying of cancer and I had had my own traumatic experiences by then, but I have nothing but the warmest and most loving memories of our short time together. She died in 1969 when I was 12. I still have her container of knitting needles, and if I show this piece in public, I will make an arrangement with those needles to show my inspiration.

This next series will explore this "balanced chaos" and the second piece I'm working on has a photo collage in the background.

A Little Tease, Works-in-Progress

Turned on its side outside, drying in the sun this afternoon, is a four-drawer chest I'm working on for a friend. I completely stripped it and primed it inside and out with a nice bright white to give myself a clean slate. I'm going with all the flaws in this old wooden piece, highlighting each and every repair someone made to it through the years. The main color is a grayish green, inside and out for a beachy look. This side is rather Harlequin-like, with the diamond-shape segments of the checkerboard a new motif for me. I was analyzing an antique afghan my grandmother made and then decided to use those diamond "pieces" in my next piece of art. More to come as I finish it!

My newest painting is on industrial-grade grooved plywood. I found a bunch of pieces of it at a construction site, cut in various sizes and thrown out next to a dumpster. I walked home with all I could carry under my arms! This is a first layer of painting. I'll sand this down and then do as many as 12-15 more layers of paint and glazes. The right edge will get some gold-leaf paint, evocative of a frame as none of my pieces are ever framed.

Reading Between the Lines

Reading Between the Lines—This piece is created on four salvaged antique clapboards. The images are based on photographs my grandmother shot in the 1920s and some digital photographs of some of my vintage books. The woman in the black and white shot is sitting outside during a warm summer day reading a newspaper. On one hand, it's just a very ordinary thing. On the other hand, it says so much about the time and their friendship. The little girl is from a series of city photos from when my grandmother lived in New Haven as a young bride during her first marriage. There is a look in her eyes that just fascinates me. I wish I knew who she was. The vintage clapboards themselves were sanded and cleaned, but I left quite a bit of the original paint layers and based my own painted stripes on the colors I found on the wood.  This piece is 24 inches X 15 inches, paint, paper and polyurethane.