I’m still working on a project that has a pretty tight deadline, so I haven’t been able to create anything new to share with you this week. Instead, I’ll just go back to a piece I created early on in my art journey. I’ve chosen this one to share because it points out a truth that I think is both important and comforting.
This piece is china painting, which is the first art medium I worked in to any extent. In case you’re not familiar with it, it’s painting on porcelain. The paints are ground glass which are mixed to a paint consistency with oil. The type of oil you use matters and many of the famous artists have their own mixtures that they market. After painting with these paints, you fire them in a kiln. The temperatures are relatively low (1350⁰ to 1460⁰F) compared to ceramics (2200⁰ to 2350⁰F) but one still needs a kiln for this.
Typically, finishing a china painted piece involves several fired layers, often five or six or even more, so your image builds up slowly and once a layer is fired, there’s nothing you can do to change it. The fortunate thing about china paints is that—unlike other types of kiln work—the colors typically don’t change when they’re fired.
Anyway, I had been attracted to china painting because of the beautiful floral designs, but I ended up painting animals. Fortunately, there was a wonderful teacher, Vicki Geretschlaeger, who taught every year at a convention in Mesa, Arizona. I still have this pendant she painted and it is one of my most valued treasures.
I went to that convention every year for five or six years. It was lots of fun, but odd in a way because in those long-ago days I was the youngest attendee by far! The jokes some of the ladies told went over my head! Now I'm on the other end of things.
So, what is the “truth” I wanted to share which this piece demonstrates to me? It’s that progress—or maybe it’s better expressed as improvement—in one’s art is not linear. This is an early piece, and yet I really like it. I like it better than probably the majority of things I’ve done since. So, at any time, we can surprise ourselves and create something wonderful! And that can keep us going through hard times.
By the way, I think china painting is just wonderful for animals!
I suppose I could also say something discouraging about this piece. Maybe I haven’t gotten that much better in the nearly thirty years since I painted these little chipmunks. But I’ll choose to take the more positive spin!
Do you have early pieces you really like? I hope so!
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