In The Studio

Some of you have been pestering me for photos of the work I am currently creating. I’m glad you have because it forces me to keep a record of my progress. Some of the work takes months to resolve  but I think it will be interesting to see the process and in particular how it can change direction many times before I can say “It is finished” Gee! I’m glad Jesus wasn’t that un-decisive with his creative work!

"It is Finished"  in my Studio
Okay, this is what I have been up to in my studio. This first piece was originally an orthodox style Jesus on the cross and the cross itself was made out of collaged papers. It sat in my previous studio for months because the mother of one of my students loved it and warned me not to paint over it! She’s going to kill me but she should have bought it!

It then became this black, white, gold and bronze, industrial abstract theme with some collaged book pages added. I didn’t like it at all! If it had been on a smaller, cheaper canvas I would have sent it off to the opportunity shop, but it is a large good quality canvas so after a few months of it sitting and facing the wall like a naughty child (actually the parents fault!) I pulled it out again and thought I might attempt a brightly colored city sky-line of Japan because my step brother in-law commissioned me to do this about 3-4 years ago and I’ve been tackling it on and off, mostly off, since then! Sorry Tim and Belinda...I promise it will happen this year! It is interesting that I haven't had a clear vision on how to pull that one together, but I’m getting closer as you will see soon. Anyway back to the brightly colored attempt. Looked very pretty and by this time has a shit load of texture but it got sent back to the corner.

Close up of artwork "Unknown" by Janet Pfeiffer

And then something caught my eye on an advertising postcard and a new idea was born. I love words or phrases and I am constantly trying to think of ways to combine my thoughts and words and painting together and this was a good place to start. I wrote the word onto the canvas and then painted around each letter and all the colour (and the words) popped out! 

"Unknown"

I’m now in the process of doing a whole collection of these, kinda like graffiti I guess.