Kirsten Bailey: Art

This week’s topic over at Illustration Friday is Immovable.  The first idea that came to me was stone – but then I got to thinking that even stone isn’t really immovable.  Sure, it might take a long time but even stone is worn away by weathering and water.  So that was my inspiration for this painting – stone being worn down by water:

Please forgive the horrible photo – I took it at night without flash so it’s pretty grainy.  I’ll try to upload a better version when I get time to take a good daylight photo – but that probably won’t be till the weekend and I didn’t want to miss out on Illustration Friday!

One of my favourite books of all time is First Light by Richard Preston, which is about the Hale Telescope (and is a fascinating read for anyone interested in astronomy).  One of the passages that stuck with me was this:

“There is a saying among those who polish astronomical mirrors for a living that an optician never finishes a mirror – you take it away from him.”

I think that pretty much sums up how a painting like this is for me – I can’t guarantee the picture above is the final version because every time I walk past it I think about adding another brush stroke here or there, another layer or another detail.

I managed to remember to take pictures as I went for this one – here’s how it looked as it progressed:

What do you think?

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At first I wasn’t sure I was even going to contribute to this week’s Inspire Me Thursday.  I thought about making homemade soup and photographing it, but it’s the middle of summer here and I just don’t feel like eating soup.

Eventually I came up with this idea:

“Primordial Soup”

Primordial Soup - Watercolour on watercolour paper - 25cm x 35cm - $45 unframed

The original plan was to do a background and then paint over with black to make amoeba-looking shapes.  But I liked the background so much that I thought I would just keep it the way it is.  You can imagine the microscopic amoebas floating around in that water.

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This week’s topic over at Inspire Me Thursday is “Fuse”.

I deviated totally from what I was originally planning to do for this topic, but I guess that’s how it goes sometimes with art.  Here’s what I came up with – “Cold Fusion”:

"Cold Fusion" - Acrylic on canvas - 16" x 20" - $150

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I would like to share with you a new series I have been working on – “Moons of Jupiter”.

This is a set of 4 watercolour paintings based on the 4 Gallilean moons of Jupiter – Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

Io:

"Moons of Jupiter - Io"

Europa:

"moons of Jupiter - Europa"

Ganymede:

"Moons of Jupiter - Ganymede"

Callisto:

"Moons of Jupiter - Callisto"

These paintings have been framed, and are $100 each, or $300 for the whole set.

"Moons of Jupiter" series in frames

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