<![CDATA[Portraits of Circus Dogs - Blog-In the Studio]]>Tue, 01 May 2012 20:26:49 -0800Weebly<![CDATA[Portraits of Circus Dogs]]>Mon, 30 Apr 2012 17:33:42 -0800http://www.alainadiaslara.com/2/post/2012/04/portraits-of-circus-dogs.htmlThis small series is hanging at DiPrima Dolce, north Killingsworth in Portland. These are dogs that lived in the 1930's. They were working dogs, show offs, loving the attention. If you've had any dealings with dogs you probably know that they love to serve. I had an Australian Shepard many years ago, Orr. We took long walks in the country, jumping the fences that obstructed our path. She would herd any and every thing. She'd run ahead, jump a fence and start gathering sheep, nipping at their heals in a commanding voice until they were all crowded near me. Tongue hanging loosely with a big smile on her face. I've posted the series under Gallery, take a look and go see the originals at DiPrima they will be up until June 1st. ]]><![CDATA[Going to the dogs]]>Sat, 10 Mar 2012 21:28:37 -0800http://www.alainadiaslara.com/2/post/2012/03/going-to-the-dogs.htmlI've started a new series. Portraits of Circus Dogs, let me tell you how this came about. A great source of material in my work comes from the three large boxes of photographs I inherited from my mother. The photographs range from 1888 to a few years before she died, five years ago. There are dogs all along the way. I do not have a dog now but I grew up with them, sometimes quite a few at once. When I was a kid I had no idea that other people dressed their pets up and took pictures of them. 

Skippy and Hiho Silver were very compliant considering they were not familiar with getting dressed. Mom made dresses and a wooden doll stand for them in preparation of the photo shoot. She had her poses in mind and would set up the scene. Giving me orders to keep the dogs still because she's using a 4"x5" camera balanced on a box and some books. The next photo is Poopy, the last photo she took of her pet. There are many photos of Poopy including one as Santa Claus. My mother was a doll and Teddy bear maker.

I recently ran across an old photograph of Mexican circus dogs. When I was growing up in San Jose there were impromptu circuses in the parking lot of Sears or the Five and Ten stores. You would go in the store and come out to a woman spinning from a wire by holding on with her teeth. A man on stilts. Maybe a bearded woman and dogs wearing bright cloth collars and hats. The dogs danced, flipped backwards and could do amazing balancing acts. Have you ever met working dogs? They are eager to perform. I started researching circus dogs and found that performing dogs seemed to have existed at least as long as the camera. I was struck by the look in their eyes. I wanted the paintings to reflect the dogs sincerity. A portrait of the dog at his job. 

Expanding the ideas of identity into the life of a canine gives me the opportunity to explore our relationship with the dog.  My sister's dog, Pluto, keeps a close eye on her when he's burying his bone in the sofa. I want the portraits to reflect personality over breed. I find painting them quite complicated. I must follow the same methods as painting human faces. Following all of the nuances of light on surface. I am using a limited palette for the series of Ultramarine Blue, Sap green, Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre, Cad yellow light, Cad Red light, Indian yellow and Alzirian Crimson.  I am enjoying the series and will probably keep it to 8-10 pieces.

Thanks for reading. Until next time. ]]><![CDATA[The Symbols We Share]]>Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:56:36 -0800http://www.alainadiaslara.com/2/post/2012/02/the-symbols-we-share.htmlFrank DiPrima was Italian American, fought in WWII, married and fathered four children, lived in New York most of his life, flirted unabashedly, loved life, loved dunking anything in anything. When he and his wife, Josephine, moved to Portland he was a regular at the bakery.  Opening the door for customers, doing a jig if he liked the tune, telling tales, complaining about the help today and offering his view on any and every thing in existence. 

Patricia DiPrima wanted to honor her parents and heritage with this mural adding Frank as a rooster only seemed fitting. There will only be a few of us that will know that Frank, symbolically, amuses himself with the customers and keeps an eye on the door.

I will be finished with the mural this Monday and think there should be a little gathering the following Sunday. What do you think?  ]]><![CDATA[color complexities]]>Sun, 12 Feb 2012 19:59:22 -0800http://www.alainadiaslara.com/2/post/2012/02/color-complexities.htmlTomorrow will be the fifth Monday of mural work at DiPrima Dolce, 1936 N. Killingsworth. It's taking much longer than I anticipated.  Picture
Green is the most difficult. Green against the gold wall changes radically from palette to leaf or fruit. I thought I could use a limited palette of 3 -6 primary colors (yellow, red & blue), mixing greens...that's how I like to work. I find very few greens worthy of purchase except for Sap green. Sap green is so transparent that it can tint nonchalantly, barely breathing on it's counterpart, only hinting at being green. 

The golden wall of DiPrima Dolce made this palette plan undesirable. I started buying greens trying to find something I could work with, something that resembled a true growing green once it stood next to the saturated wall color, adding blues and yellows to alter it's intensity. Still the green became odd when in contact with the wall. SAP GREEN to the rescue! Last Monday I glazed all green efforts with the Sap. That color changed the relationship with the wall as well as with me.

Thanks for visiting...
]]><![CDATA[Tree of Bounty]]>Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:51:32 -0800http://www.alainadiaslara.com/2/post/2012/01/tree-of-bounty.html
My dear friend Pat Di Prima is once again accepting the challenge of metamorphosis. She has transformed her italian bakery into a trattoria. If you haven't had the opportunity to visit before I highly recommend you drive all the way to north Portland, where we are not so scary but a growing and progressive neighborhood and enjoy real italian delights. I'd like to tell you a little about Pat's journey so you will fully enjoy your visit.

Her family is from New York and just like any good NY italian her parents frequented their neighborhood bakery. The little pink boxes her father brought home rested comfortably in her memory. She married, moved to the west coast and worked for Tri Met for many years but those little pink boxes would spill their contents all over her consciousness. 
Wanting out of Tri Met she took a baking course at a local cooking school. She bought a beat up building with a great door in a neighborhood full of potential and opened an Italian bakery. An ITALIAN BAKERY, no maple bars! If there is such a thing as a donut-loving neighborhood it  would be north Portland. One of the reasons I love living here. The bakery has survived being off of the beaten path for a long time because of her commitment to excellence. 

But change was inevitable. It kind of pissed her off when people would ask where the donuts are? and she hated being thought of as a coffee shop. And then wah-lah, Pat followed once again her desires and created a trattoria that still is a bakery. The interior has been remodeled and the menu reflects a true Italian environment and eatery.  
Here is a link to her website and menu: 
www.diprimadolci.com/


Lunch, dinner, bread, cookies by the pound, canoli, homemade pasta...actually everything is homemade. If you have been to Italy and crave real Ciabatta bread then you have arrived. Dean, her long time baker and dough guru turns out several daily varieties along with ciabatta and they are all worth trying. 

In that re-model I am repainting the mural over the door to the garden. The tree of bounty is a fictional fruit tree bearing many different kinds of fruit. The challenge in this is to have it seem as if the tree belongs to the many fruits without getting cute. I've decided to choose the following from Pat's list of favorite fruit: pomegranates, pears, lemons, plums, figs, cherries, tomatoes and olives. It seems to me that the leaves are the key ingredient to making this work. I started with the plum tree in my back yard as the base for the fruit to live. I decided to start with the fruit at the tips and not get too carried away with too much fruit and leaves but let each area grow in relationship to the other branches. 

The learning out come on day one is have the right sized ladder. I have to remove the tomatoes because I was about two feet too low. 

I'm using acrylics with a lightfastness of 1, golden gel medium so I have to erase with wall paint.

Thanks for visiting. Now go eat bread. ]]><![CDATA[8 moons and 3 hours]]>Sun, 18 Dec 2011 16:53:50 -0800http://www.alainadiaslara.com/2/post/2011/12/8-moons-and-3-hours.htmlSo it's over. A 3 hour opening and eight months of work. The next day it's a little like the first Christmas you find out Santa is make believe. 

I had intended to write about my experience in the studio for this particular exhibition. Expressing the development of a painting, my interpretations  of objects as a vehicle for identity and so forth...but alas my friends I truly needed more discipline.  Let me fill you in on what happened. First of all the dead line was not nearly close enough to set my pants on fire. So I procrastinated and became distracted with making shrines for Dia de los Muertos and dressing skeletons, not an easy task. As fun as this was when October rolled around I knew I was in serious trouble. I was never going to have enough work from October to December to occupy the entire gallery. I had several paintings going but was taking my sweet time with them. 

I asked my neighbor, an installation artist, Tyler Stuart, if he wanted the rear of the gallery. I love his work and we have had many over-the-fence conversations regarding art and metaphysics. He agreed and I felt much relieved but still had to kick ass to get what I wanted by hanging time. My studio is a small bedroom downstairs with great lighting. I have two easels so I started working three paintings at a time. This was crowded, all pieces were around 30" or more but a good way to work for an oil artist, giving work time to dry between sessions. I painted seven paintings in less than two months. (Please see Liminal Suspension in the gallery)

There are twelve paintings. I asked six friends to collaborate with me in choosing objects that spoke a little of who they are, the other six paintings are of my interpretation and relationship to objets that are personal to me.
It's up until the 30th of December, if your in town...

Out of this body of work came a great release of interpretation. Stay tuned and THANK YOU to everyone who came.
Thanks for visiting my website. ]]><![CDATA[8 hands]]>Sun, 31 Jul 2011 10:23:35 -0800http://www.alainadiaslara.com/2/post/2011/07/8-hands.htmlThe problem of painting a person with eight hands is they all have to be the same size, be relative to one another and yet not be stagnate.  ]]><![CDATA[Man in Motion]]>Sun, 24 Jul 2011 23:33:58 -0800http://www.alainadiaslara.com/2/post/2011/07/man-in-motion.htmlThe second in the Identity series. I have asked several people to participate by selecting objects that they had some definitive relationship with. The first was Patrick and his trumpet (The Musician) but there's more...more than an object and a person. We have relationships with objects in ways that I feel symbolize our hidden relationships with ourselves. 

Patrick's mother called me to suggest that the next time I paint him, paint him smiling. It's what a mother wants, a son to be a ease in all his endeavors but this is not life, is it? My mother would have said, "Next time you paint him paint him crying." I have to go beyond both of these sentiments.

I want to see the pensiveness, the waiting, the butterflies, the excitement, the engagement, the depth that seeps through. 

Here is Kevin as the Man in Motion. This has been very challenging. I asked Kevin to select objects that he felt strongly about. Kevin is a renaissance  man with his hands in everything. When he wondered how all of these objects would work, Wendy (his wife) suggested that maybe he should have eight arms. Even though I took plenty of pictures there were many things that I didn't take into consideration. 

I like to find my way with the drawing. Sometimes I'm very disappointed that the drawing disappears under the painting. In this painting the drawing has to remain loose in order to keep the feeling of motion. I must stop before it becomes stagnate. Wish me luck.
]]><![CDATA[holy time lapse batman]]>Sun, 08 May 2011 22:13:38 -0800http://www.alainadiaslara.com/2/post/2011/05/holy-time-lapse-batman.htmlWell, hello it's been awhile. It's the fault of canvas curing. I had to work on the other side of this exhibition, The Mysteries. Everything is loosely titled at this point but I need a way to identify the work. 

The Mysteries are a group of paintings that are beginning backwards. I am allowing spontaneity to move the painting forward rather than having a definitive idea. A photographic image may attract me, lately the images have involved billowing clothes, the painting is only influenced by the photograph then I give the image what it calls forth. There is a strong subconscious desire to incorporate a symbolic structure allowing the meaning to remain a mystery until the piece is finished and/or beyond finishing. 

I'm moving between worlds in my approach to this body of work. The Shaman would say a foot in each universe. One foot firmly planted in the perspective of now. Our physical forms, what we can hold, see, hear, feel, smell and taste. Our relationship to objects and how that relationship places us in the world. The other foot in the void of our connectedness through symbolism and the subconscious. Our Beliefs, Our Mythologies, Our Cultures and Our Heart's Desire. 

How can these images even be manifest in the physical world you ask...
I don't know. I'm just letting it happen. 
Will it all make sense in December when the show goes up?
I don't know. Does it have to?
]]><![CDATA[In between the work...]]>Sat, 19 Mar 2011 21:11:51 -0800http://www.alainadiaslara.com/2/post/2011/03/in-between-the-work.htmlthere is work. 
I have to admit that I have been sloppy at preparing surfaces to work on. I am eager to begin, to create, to watch the collaboration between  what is conscience and tangible mingle with what is intangible and unknown... but for now patience is called for and layers of preparation need to dry and become a foundation for the unknown. 

I'm working towards the December show using materials that are new to me, epoxy and resin. This is the best part exploring the possibilities of growth. There are two paintings setting the stage for the ride, Patrick and Kevin (to be renamed later) these paintings begin with a look at objects that reflect their identities. I started Patrick two months ago but had to put it aside to prepare for the March show. I will be preparing the canvas tomorrow for Kevin, this is also a new process. I'm using an oil based ground instead of gesso...each painting has to be done separately and left to dry for 24 hours before a second coat can be applied and need to cure for a week before the painting can begin. So in the meantime I'm gluing pages of books together in order to rearrange their content and waiting for canvas to dry and that is about all I can do for now in the space. 

I can not paint in the studio until this work is done.
This is where I stopped, luckily I made a note of the palette colors.  ->->->

Thanks for visiting.


 

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