3 Canvases: Nature, Peace, & Creativity

My mom recently turned 60, so I wanted to create some canvases for her to hang in her office. Each canvas signifies a piece of her:

Seeker of NATURE: my mom loved horses as a kid, but never had an opportunity to ride. In 1997, her prince rode in on a horse and scooped her away . . . well, he actually wore a cowboy hat and lassoed her. He is a calf-roper, has two horses, and they live happily ever after out in the country of Wyoming.

Finder of PEACE: Just five years ago, my mom decided to learn how to play the guitar. She's wanted to do this for years and finally made it happen. She practices daily and finds a deep peace in the process. Inspiring, for sure.

Maker of CREATIVITY: My mom has always been creative. I remember rearranging our living room multiple times as a child. She sewed dresses, quilts, curtains, and pajamas for us. She made my 3 bridesmaids' dresses and 2 flower girl dresses. She always had clever ideas for Halloween costumes. She's been a lover of photography for as long as I can remember. My dad would often start drawing a new stained glass pattern and she would finish it years later. Today, she owns a creative framing store, where she is always trying new things – guns, fishing lures, bridal bouquets, photo name mats, etc. She also is a stained glass and sandblasting artist. Creative blood, indeed. Check out her work at Rocky Mountain Framing

Here is a little more of the process that went into these. I wanted to experiment more with the xerography process I tried in this post. I found images & words that I wanted to use and printed them with a black laser printer.

I cut and tore them apart, laid them on the canvas to decide on the layout, then covered the backs with gel medium to adhere to the canvases.

One of my favorite techniques is adding texture with stencils and modeling paste.

I went to grab my paste and learned I was out, so I did what my mom always taught me: WING IT! I dug through what I had and ended up trying extra heavy gel medium. I loved the results.

I just laid the stencil on the edge of each canvas and applied the gel with a palette knife

After they dried completely (heat guns speeds this up), it was time to add some color!

Many more layers of paint and textures were added. Sometimes, I just rubbed in some color with my fingers, other times I sprayed on colors. My favorites are Ranger's Color Washes and the shimmery Tattered Angels: Glimmer Mists