Paintings, Two Art Shows, and Self Portraits

“Your life is an island separated from all other islands and continents...

Delorse Lovelady 2010 Passage Through the Islands 5x7 Acrylic

"...Regardless of how many boats you send to other shores or how many ships arrive upon your shores, you yourself are an island separated by its own pains, secluded in its happiness” Kahlil Gibran

Behind the Painting
Do you ever wonder what might have been in the mind of an artist when looking at a work? Well, I am not so much a literal painter as a metaphorical one. The quote describes a bit of what I was contemplating when I painted the "Passage Through the Islands", a scene from my imagination but not unlike scenery I have viewed in the Northwest... basically that we are all self-contained separate islands floating past each other though still connected in the cosmic soup...

Local Miniature/Small Painting Show

You are invited to the First Annual Miniature/Small Painting Art Show at Gallery North featuring 65 Northwest and other artist's work. I'll have 3 mixed media/acrylic paintings in the show including the one above, "Passage Through the Islands."

Gallery North

508 Main Street

Edmonds, WA 98020
SHOW DATES: March 1 - 30, 2010

HOURS: Mondays-Saturdays 10-6pm
Sundays 11-5pm

Artist's Reception: MARCH 7 from 1-4pm - refreshments served
Edmond's Art Walk: MARCH 18 from 5-8pm

An Artist's Self Portrait

“A portrait is a painting with something wrong with the mouth.” John Singer Sargent

I don't ordinarily consider myself a portrait or figure painter... however, recently I took up the challenge of the Art House for artists to do self portraits, and I painted it in my latest experimental medium of acrylics. I used a reference favorite photo of my smiley happy self and painted it in a somewhat realistic style. I look so in-the-pink! But then, I guess sometimes I am...

Delorse Self Portrait 8x10 acrylic

It is definitely challenging to paint portraits, particularly of yourself. You have to really look and take in all the details, the little line here or there, that didn't used to be there. And, after all, we are ever changing, not static beings. There are hundreds of expressions and ways that we all have looked over a lifetime. Which one is the real you? Well, they all are, and we are just perfect in our imperfections at any stage. However, I do like the Sargent quote, because it seems to sum up what most people think when looking at any portrait, that it needs a little something on the mouth, or maybe the nose could be different... So, no that painting is not an exact replica of me, but it wasn't meant to be, and I could never do it anyway. I don't know that anyone could truly capture an exact replica of a person. Painting portraits or self portraits from my view is more about trying to capture just a moment or a sense of that person...

I finished it just barely in time to mail it off to Art House this past Monday on March 1, to be displayed in Brooklyn in April, and be added to a book collection of artist self portraits. If you haven't visited the Art House, it hosts quite an array of artist projects that sound quite fun. You can also post some of your art there.