Fallin in Love with Paul Klee, Again

Crucifers and Spiral Flowers, 1925 and Before the Snow, 1929 both by Paul Klee

One of the things that I'm enjoying about having more time to pursue art and art making, is time spent looking at art made by some of my favorite artists.

I've just finished reading Six Bauhaus Masters then I found a great retrospective on Paul Klee and spent this morning looking at about 50 of his paintings. He is one of my favorite painters. Though I enjoy his non-objective abstracts, I appreciate his figurative abstracts the most. Most of his work was done in watercolor with pencil and ink, usually on paper mounted on cardboard. He worked in oils too, but not too often.

I really appreciate his use of color. He was a minimalist, working in dark, saturated shades and lighter tones and pastels eschewing pure hues. His shapes are fanciful and unrealistic as though everything exists in a dream world. They are easy on the eyes, drawing you in, yet leaving you filled with questions.

I have been spending some long hours in my new studio. Some time spent on preparing for teaching, some on preparing for video shoots and some on creating new art work. Working on the new art work is the most stimulating time I've experienced in a long while.

I'm calling this new series, Sculptural Collage Quilts. The work excites me so because it mixes my old favorite, machine quilting, with my new favorites, wet collage and painting. This past Thursday and Friday I prepared four new collages that I will begin quilting next week.

I've commited myself to spend Tom's off hours (weekends) with him, but it's really hard not to go over to the studio today and start quilting. It's a three day weekend for Tom and I'm going to spend it with him - relationships are like making art - they need care, serendipity, creativity and dedicated time too.