The Three Fates - In Progress

My current obsession is a painting I'm working on for Principle Gallery's April 2012 show,  "The Expedition and Beyond"

Work by 14 artists, introduced through the Women Painting Women phenomenon of 2010, who continue to be challenged and inspired by each other.

The Three Fates, 30x40, oil on panel, (in progress)

This is an allegorical painting of Diane Feissel, Sadie Valeri and Alia El-Bermani as The Three Fates. In real life these models are artists and the Women Painting Women bloggers. The painting doesn't even have one complete pass of color yet so I still have many days left go on it.

I've included items for each of them that is personal to their work.

Alia is wearing flowering weeds in her hair, a shout out to her recently completed series of paintings honoring southern weeds. Sadie is wearing a ruff made of wax paper to represent her beautiful wax paper still-life paintings. Diane is wearing a bracelet of a cat cameo in tribute to her Fabrication series about animals.

Diane, Sadie, Me and Alia after the Robert Lange Studios Women Painting Women Invitational, November, 2011.

It's making me very happy to be working on this painting! I met all these women through the Women Painting Women experience, and since have become good friends. I'm so grateful to them for modeling.

The four of us, along with 10 others will be showing work that we did on a painting retreat in Charleston, SC in the fall of 2010, and work that was inspired by our trip. (a complete list with links to all the artists in my next post about the finished painting and show)

Here's the set up in my studio, where I work from a monitor and from prints. I set my palette up on a French easel to ease the strain on neck and shoulders. An added benefit is that the light on the palette is the same as the painting when it's set up this way.

This is a close-up of my palette. I generally pre-mix at least 4 strings of flesh colors, working back and forth between the strings to get small nuance of color.

Here's a reflection on how the WPW reminded me of my senior show "I've Gone Full Circle".

There is a preview of the catalog for the Expedition and Beyond. Here's a post about the Expedition.

WPW and the 2010 invitational in the press. 

More pictures when its complete.