Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Paper painting with Elizabeth St. Hilaire-Nelson

Back in early June my daughter treated me to a three day class with an artist whose work I've been admiring and following for some time--Elizabeth St. Hilaire-Nelson.   You can follow her blog here--you'll be amazed by her creativity.  And did I say she competed in a triatholon the day before our class?   Amazing energy.

Anyway, my daughter drove from Connecticut and I drove up from Pennsylvania and we met in Penn Yan, NY where the class was held.  It was sponsored by the Art Center of Yates County.  We had to come with a painting of an apple or a pear that we had prepared before class.  Then we began painting any and all kinds of papers.  Some of the students had been to the class the previous year and they brought along many different kinds of papers that they had collected during the year, some already painted and some which they painted during the class.  Each was to bring a sketch of the subject they wanted to work on.  I chose one of my favorite subjects--the chameleon.  You might remember that I did a chameleon in a workshop with Susan Carlson about two years ago.  Seems I have a reptile thing going.  Anyway, here are my two completed projects.


Fortunately one of the students had the perfect paper for the head of the chameleon which she generously shared.  If you ever have a chance to take a class with Elizabeth, don't hesitate.  She recently shared a photo on her blog of part of an old fence that she'd done some paper painting on.  Since then I've been searching flea markets and yard sales for some old fence but have not met with any success yet.

2 comments:

  1. All I can say is, Wow! Her stuff is absolutely amazing. I can see why you wanted to take a class with her.

    Your two paintings are wonderful too, but I especially love the Chameleon. What fun it must have been to create them. Have you done any more since your class and where do you having these hanging?

    There are just too many great art projects to do aren't there?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you for your nice comments. It was fun composing the pictures. Of course, just like fabric, you often don't have just the "right" one. Fortunately you can just paint some more paper, wait for it to dry and start ripping.

    Yup, there are way too many things to learn. And I want to do them ALL!

    I don't have them hanging yet because I haven't figured out how to hang them. They're on canvas and I haven't found the right hardware yet. I don't think I'll hang the apple, but definitely the chameleon. My next project using this technique is going to be the fence for my garden. Hoping I'll find a portion that needs to be rescued soon.

    ReplyDelete

Dena Crain Work

Dena Crain Work
Tesselated Design