Evoke

“The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke” said Jerzy Kosinski. So this time I didn’t want to make an exact image, I wanted to try to let the textures, maybe even a special smell evoke some memories. (Crazy idea, isn’t it? Well I always have an urge to experiment, to push the line further, to try something else.)

If I think about my childhood one of my greatest memories is the smell of my granny’s kitchen after baking a cake. It was so sweet… I’ll never forget it. So my first step was to dry some “sweet” smells for my art, yes you read it good, smells. So I took orange, cinnamon, eucalyptus, bael and mehogni to dry (I had look the last day and night we had high temperature and a lot of sun). I found some old lace in my box and I applied all of them on a turned-around canvas.

As I said I didn’t wanted to have clear images, I wanted some other senses than your eyes to lead, I covered everything with white gesso (this canvas has an amazing smell even after all the layers of paint and ink, oh I used beeswax as glue).

When it dried I was trying my first color combo, I used Lindy’s stamp gang sprays (raspberry lemonade and c’est la vie cerise).

While it was drying I saw the frame – the edge of my shadowbox, so empty, I wanted to have there some texture, so I used modeling paste with Ronda Palazzari’s Moroccan tiles stencil, and I painted my tiles with inka gold yellow for sort of a shine.

Now that pastel pink and blue was getting a bit shining frame, but wanted some more light in the middle and the white seemed now so crying rather naked, so I painted them to orange with inka gold.

Now I had that warm antique feeling as well. I just added my word and some more splatters with acrylic ink. I closed my eyes, feel pity that I can’t post smell for you but it’s amazing, my canvas has a sweet enchanting smell of honey, orange, bael, cinnamon and eucalyptus. And now some details:

I enjoyed painting something different this time, especially working with all those pleasant smells of the past and bring them back to my studio.

I am sharing my canvas with One little word word up #85 evoke and with Paint Party Friday.