She Who Watches - the evolution of a painting

©Anahid-2011 - 'She Who Watches' -mixed media on wood with shells 28"X24"

(click on image for a larger view)

This piece started with a pencil drawing I had done a few years back of a woman pushing back her covers like she was getting out of bed. One day I was looking through my sketchbook and thought it would be nice to use that drawing in a painting. I had a large piece of found plywood that lends itself to collage and assemblage of all kinds. 

So I traced the drawing onto the wood that had been gessoed white on the top right hand corner; the rest was gessoed with clear gesso so as as to retain the natural wood grain which inspired some of the painting, and the rest of the elements just kind of fell into place one by one.

I enjoy doing collage or assemblage paintings in a spontaneous manner, just letting them slowly over weeks kind of "feel right" and grow gradually and a theme emerges. I also like painting a lot (I love painting!) and so the water which is one of my most favorite things to paint was asserting itself. I feel that once an artist learns to let go and let the painting tell her what it needs then it flows really well, albeit sometimes slowly, (partly because I like to savor the process). I am not a fast painter, it takes me weeks to finish one piece, but I've learned to work on two or three different pieces at once, (my small studio allowing...) so if I don't know what to do on one, I can turn to the other and by the time I come back, the first one is ready to tell me what it wants. It's a magical and surprising process.

There are some three dimensional elements in the painting, like pieces of wood, dried seaweed, and the shells which were added later.