Show next Friday, Please Come!

Elise on 04.26.12 @ 10:37 AM AK [link]

Close to My Art Giveaway Contest

Love this site, many ways to enter, check it out!

http://www.close2myart.com/blog/2012/04/close2myart-giveaway/
Elise on 04.20.12 @ 03:55 PM AK [link]

A few pieces that will be in my new Show

Elise on 04.20.12 @ 11:04 AM AK [link]

Not Painting, but still creative...

I've been finding lots of creative outlets lately not related to working on my upcoming show...thought I'd share a few of my recent endeavors:

This is a pumpkin I carved in homage to my favorite artist, Frida Kahlo.

This is a meat and cheese dish I made for our creepy Halloween buffet...the students loved it and it tasted really good!

This was my entry (that won the People's Choice Award) in our library's edible books contest. It's the Monster Book of Monsters from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Hopefully, I'll get started on my show soon, and my actual paintings will be my evidence of my creativity!



Elise on 10.31.11 @ 04:27 PM AK [link]

Lunch-time ski at the Mendenhall Glacier

One thing I love about living in Alaska, is being able to go out for ski somewhere like the glacier below, within the span of a 1-hour lunch break. The Mendenhall Glacier is a 5 minute drive from the University of Alaska Southeast where I work, and though it's considered dangerous to be out on the frozen lake, it's one of my favorite things to do.



This was an ice berg that had a heart shaped tube running through it!





This is a photo of a couple of skiers off in the distance, you can see how windy it got. At one point there were 3 "snow tornadoes" out there at the same time...it kind of freaked me out. One strong blast of wind knocked me down and blew away one of my gloves and a ski pole (that I later was able to retrieve).




If you look at the woman in the red jacket with her dog in the lower right side corner, you get a sense of the scale of things.




This is a photo I took of myself holding the camera out away from my face. The ice berg behind me was nearly 4x as tall as me. One of the reasons it's not safe is because only a tiny portion of the berg is sticking out the top, and if they shift (one made a *very* loud scary noise while I was near it) they will crack open the ice on the lake and in you go.


Elise on 03.03.11 @ 04:10 PM AK [link]

Winter in Juneau

Ah yes, it wouldn't be winter in Juneau without lots of snow, and skiing at Eaglecrest ski area. My family and I have gotten ski passes the last couple of years and it is such a wonderful thing to have practically in our back yard, here on Douglas Island. We can go up anytime we can get away for a few hours and it feels like going away on holiday. So much fun!


Elise on 01.10.11 @ 06:42 PM AK [link]

Photos from this summer in Alaska

Aaron fishing at the base of a large waterfall.




Aaron in an amazing hot springs.




The hot springs is also by a large waterfall.




Feels delightful to float in...




Here is Aaron rowing me to a beautiful lagoon for a picnic.




Pulling the rowboat ashore!




Here I'm out practicing rowing...it feels great!




Here are a few shots of the lagoon where we had our picnic.




The colors were beautiful.




A family photo taken at the East Glacier Loop Trail.

Elise on 09.08.10 @ 07:05 PM AK [link]

Ceating on my blog...

Yes, I've been off blogging on another site...a fitness site. It would bore you all to tears I'm afraid, talking about exercise and portion control and all of that. I came to realize the best thing I can do for my art is to take better care of the artist. I've been working really hard these past two months and I've lost 23 lbs and I'm feeling stronger and more alive than ever.

I've set some goals for the coming months...
Clean and restock my studio
Put together an application for a solo show at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art (a long shot)
Fix a damaged painting that's already sold (a hard to repair scratch that's draining my life force)

That's about it. I'd like to get some more paintings going soon. I have a TON of cool new photos that I've taken out in the wilds of Alaska over the summer. I'm feeling very inspired overall and really want to get going now that the weather is starting to turn.

As a reminder, I do have a page on face book called "Alaskan Artist Elise Tomlinson" that I post to regularly, you can link to it from my banner. Also, I have a comments section that I monitor. Thanks for still coming around!
:)

Elise on 09.07.10 @ 06:22 PM AK [link]

It's official

I sold another painting tonight. I've officially made more from art sales this year than ever before! Yeah! Now, this gives me a bit of a break so I can just focus on producing 20 of the best paintings I'm capable of (without having any pressure of an exhibit hanging over my head).

I'll be able to see if I can work without a deadline, and I'll be able to just experiment and see what works without having to worry about having X number of paintings ready to display by a certain date. Even though the general world economic outlook is bleak, if not downright dire...I feel like I'll have had this one good year to see me through psychologically speaking.

When my "best" work is finished I want to have the pieces professionally photographed, and I want to have enough time for them to dry that I can varnish them before they're sold. And I want to apply to a couple of larger venues for a show, maybe to a juried exhibit or try to get a show at a downtown gallery in Anchorage or Seattle.

I feel like I need to keep pushing myself and my comfort zone as an artist. I can't wait to see what happens next.

Elise on 06.29.10 @ 08:39 PM AK [link]

I did it MY way...

I have several good friend who call me up from time to time to give me ideas for my paintings...they range from "paint bigger" to "paint smaller, and "paint more realistically" to "paint less realistically". I have one friend who gives me themes, and I think her ideas are great...but they're *her* ideas. She's artistic too, though she hasn't done much lately, I think she needs to explore these feminist/conceptual ideas herself.

Personally, I'm not really trying to "say" or convince anyone of anything.

All I want from a painting I'm working on for me to feel like it is successful is three things:

1. Composition of physical elements. There has to be a certain distribution of the objects on the canvas. I like compositions that sort of circle in on themselves. If you look at the women in my paintings, they are more likely curled up in some way, rather than standing straight up.

2. Color distribution. The way the color is distributed has to create the same balance and flow as the organization of the physical objects themselves. I prefer pure, undiluted colors, often working in color pyramids.

3. Subject matter/narrative. This is the only element that possibly fits into the "saying" something catagory. But I'm still just giving a vague idea that something is going on, left to interpretation...and really this aspect is secondary to color and composition.

What I want to say, is 100% visual. I want people to respond emotionally to shapes and colors. I don't want to give a message about how I feel about the role of women in society or about the future of the planet or impending economic collapse. I just want to paint something that makes ME feel balanced and centered, both when I'm creating it and when I'm looking at it. I want it to make ME feel good. If others look at it and feel some kind of positive emotion from it, that's awesome.

These may seem like low level goals, but I'm a visual artist, this is the language that I know how to speak and it's really the only message I care about sending out into the world.



Elise on 06.28.10 @ 01:29 PM AK [link]

Talking about art get's my blood pumping!

Yesterday late afternoon my friend Jeff stopped by my office at work and we got to chatting about art. Not really about my paintings or his photography and videos (check out the site he just started) My Alaska Life but about all the cool stuff we'd like to do relating to the business/marketing aspect of what we do. It was a happy coincidence that I've been really in that mind space lately, and it was wonderful having a fellow artist to talk to about all my various schemes.

Plus he had some great ideas. For example, I wanted to order some stickers with my art work but the cheapest way is to buy a large quantity but then they all have to be one image (and I wanted lots of different ones) so he suggested going for a larger sized sticker comprised of 8 or 10 images and then cutting them down to individual stickers with my paper cutter. Brilliant!

Also, he has lots of expensive cameras and camcorders I can use for free and he also showed me some tips on how to use a plain old piece of white foam core to bounce diffuse light onto paintings for photographing etc. etc.

I've been lamenting the fact lately that I don't have many artist friends to get together with just to talk about these topics that my non-artist friends find boring. I felt super energized after our 3-hour long talk. I went home in a great mood only to find several phone messages from the friend I was supposed to meet for dinner some hours earlier. DAMN!

I don't know how I could have forgotten. This was a great friend I hadn't hung out with in a long time and I'd been really looking forward to it. How many times can a person say "I'm SORRY!"...? At least she was very understanding about it.


Elise on 06.22.10 @ 05:49 PM AK [link]