Joan Mitchell Center Artist in Residency Redux

We moved into our studios on March 2nd, and moved out 2 weeks later. It was the right thing to do, and absolutely necessary. After New Orleans spent a couple of months in Phase 2 and colleges started to reopen for the fall semester, JMC gave us a second chance, and we moved back the day after Labor Day. This time all the residents were local artists, and national artists were offered deferral until 2021.

I had never painted on linen before, and I thought this would be the time to finally try it out. I truly hate painting on stretched cotton canvases with passion, and I ordered oil primed linen canvas on a large roll so that I could directly tape it onto the expansive walls of my JMC studio. The two images above are about 20"x15" each that I started as a warm-up, and I was pleasantly surprised how receptive the surface was, even with my aggressive reduction method with brayers. 

Underpainting for 30"x60" landscape with train tracks, oil on linen

Oil primer must be the key, since it is less absorbent than acrylic primers. When scraping, wiping, and scratching the paint layers, there is nothing more annoying than absorbent surfaces like acrylic primed canvas. That was the main reason I had to switch to painting on solid, non-absorbent wooden panels. 

I love painting on wooden panels but it's just extremely time consuming to cradle, prime, and gesso... I spend more time building them than actually painting on them. And they are heavy, they warp, and they pile up in my tiny shotgun house. 

Now I just have to find a way to make a shit ton of money so that I can paint exclusively on linen.

Time to build more cradled panels!

Food For Friends Pt.2

photo by Kurt Lacourrege

Thank you for your generous support! The total amount of donation to Second Harvest Food Bank has exceeded one thousand dollars during the first round of Food For Friends campaign and studio sale.

For the second round, I have a list of plein air paintings from the streets of New Orleans, Chalmette Battlefield, Jackson Barracks Military Museum at the edge of Orleans Parish, and the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. Quite a few pieces from the first round are also still available: Visit this page for your consideration.

Like the first round, 50% of all proceeds go to Second Harvest Food Bank of Greater New Orleans and Acadiana, a non-profit feeding those in need throughout Southern Louisiana. If you have a preferred organization in need of COVID-19 related donations, please let me know and I will donate your portion to them instead. 

Interested? Send me an email at kaorinola@gmail.com with Food For Friends in subject line, and include the number & title of the piece you'd like to purchase, your full name, shipping address, and phone number in the body of your email. Then we will arrange payment method, and pickup/delivery/shipment. I will also send you a proof of donation. 

Local pickup in uptown New Orleans is welcome and delivery is available within the greater New Orleans area. UPDATE: I ask you to chip in 50% of domestic ground shipping if the cost is over $20, and please inquire about expedited or international shipping with extra fee.

Hope to see you all safe and well when this health crisis subsides.

Kaori

#E1 - New Orleans Botanical Gardens (plein air)
12"x16" canvas board
250

#E2 - Staple Goods on St. Roch Ave. (plein air)
12"x16" muslin on flat wood panel
250

#E3 - Mississippi River at the Foot of Canal St. (plein air)
12"x16" canvas board
250

#E4 - Uptown Cemetery: workshop demo (studio)
12"x16" canvas board
250

#E5 - Camp at Harmony, Garden District (plein air)
12"x16" canvas board
250

#E6 - Chalmette Battlefield I (plein air)
8"x12" RayMar panel
200

#E7 - Chalmette Battlefield II (plein air)
8"x12" RayMar panel
200

#347 - B26, Jackson Barracks (plein air)
10"x20" stretched canvas
250

#368 - Jeep I, Jackson Barracks (plein air)
10"x20" stretched canvas
250

#369 - Jeep II, Jackson Barracks (plein air)
14"x18" stretched canvas
300

#370 - Jeep III, Jackson Barracks (plein air)
14"x18" stretched canvas
300

#376 - Arabi Water Tower (plein air)
24"x18" stretched canvas
450

#344 - Fontainebleau State Park (plein air)
12"x16" flat wood panel
250

#345 - Freedom study, Madisonville (plein air)
12"x12" flat wood panel
200

#347 - Closed Today, Slidell (plein air)
18"x24" stretched canvas
450

Lagniappe! 

Here are some photos of me painting "Closed Today" in Slidell, LA in April 2018, by Kurt Lacourrege, who happened to drive by and caught me in my natural habitat: by the ditch. Thank you, Kurt!

photo by Kurt Lacourrege

photo by Kurt Lacourrege

photo by Kurt Lacourrege

Food For Friends

Dear friends,

How are you doing? I hope you're feeling well and all is safe.

Here in New Orleans the situation is not looking great. Luckily I am still healthy and so are my immediate family members. But there are many, many people who are not so lucky, and I want to help, with your help.

It may be difficult for some of you to even think about helping others. With that in mind, below is what I'd like to present: please read on if you're in a position to help.

I have set up a Food For Friends campaign and studio sale here.

50% of all proceeds go to Second Harvest Food Bank of Greater New Orleans and Acadiana, a non-profit with a long history of feeding those in need throughout Southern Louisiana. With the onset of COVID-19 they have expanded their already wide reaching operation to include feeding healthcare workers and first responders, service industry and gig workers (that's me), public school children, and practically anyone who needs to eat. They deliver meals door-to-door to seniors and disabled, and in addition to monetary donations, they're accepting fresh produce and non-perishable food, cleaning/sanitation supplies, and volunteers.

Many of the small oil paintings below were created as experiments (except for one that was made for a group show), and there may be minor irregularities in size and shape. Some have been on my website for a while with higher prices. All are in oil, and come in three different grounds: archival paper, canvas boards, or stretched canvas. Canvas boards I use are considered non-archival, although they will definitely last for our lifetime. All in all, the pieces are priced at minimum for this campaign.

Interested? Send me an email at kaorinola@gmail.com with Food For Friends in subject line. Please include the number & title of the piece you'd like to purchase, your full name, shipping address, and phone number in the body of your email. Then we will arrange payment and pickup/delivery/shipment. I will also send you a proof of donation.

Local pickup in uptown New Orleans is welcome and delivery is available within the greater New Orleans area. Domestic ground shipping is free. Please inquire about expedited or international shipping with extra fee.

If you're in New Orleans area and interested in my larger pieces on my website, please inquire to arrange a private, social-distanced viewing in person. And let me know of your preferred organizations in need of COVID-19 related donations. Unfortunately I cannot ship my larger pieces at this time.

Like many of you, I had to ask my parents to stay home and not go out unless it is absolutely necessary. Since they live in Japan I can not bring groceries to them, and they don't have a coordinated support like the one Second Harvest offers. If you have neighbors who are older or disabled, please check on them and say hello as much as you can. And please take care of yourselves and your community.

Best,

Kaori


oil on archival paper (unframed)

433 - Adams Street Grocery II
14"x10" image, 15"x11" paper
200

432 - Annunciation and Melpomene (plein air)
14"x10" image, 15"x11" paper
200

431 - Tchoupitoulas and Orange (plein air)
10"x14" image, 11"x15" paper
200

413 - Hooly, Inc.: N. Alexander near Conti (plein air)
10.25"x14" image, 11"x15" paper
200

412 - Stop: Conti and N. Olympia (plein air)
10"x14" image, 11"x15" paper
200

417 - Rust IV
13.5"x10" image, 15"x11.25" paper
250

416 - Rust III
13.5"x9.75" image, 15"x11" paper
250

415 - Rust II
12.75"x10" image, 14"x11.25" paper
sold

414 - Rust I
12.75"x10" image, 14"x11.25" paper
250

oil on board (unframed)

377 - Behind the VA: Banks and Rocheblave (plein air)
16"x12" canvas board
250

375 - French Quarter Alleyway: Iberville and Clinton (plein air)

8"x12" muslin on Gatorboard

220

374 - View from Maurepas: Dauphine and Louisa (plein air)
10"x20" canvas board
250

373 - View from the Bomb Factory: N. Robertson and Japonica (plein air)
12"x8" muslin on Gatorboard
sold

372 - Neutral Ground: St. Roch and N. Villere (plein air)
8"x10" muslin on hardboard
sold

oil on 7/8" deep stretched canvas (unframed)

407 - Redemptorist Gym: Josephine near Constance (plein air)
10"x20" stretched canvas
300

406 - Royal at Clouet (plein air)
10"x20" stretched canvas
sold

405 - Laurel at Josephine (plein air)
10"x20" stretched canvas
300

404 - St. Alphonsus (plein air)
18"x14" stretched canvas
sold

403 - Architect Street (plein air)
14"x18" stretched canvas
sold

387 - Didn't See You
12"x9" stretched canvas
200

Rust

These were painted from reference photographs over the summer, with modified Zorn palette. Each piece took about 2-3 hours to finish, except for the first one that took one hour. They are about 14"x10", oil on paper. Oil paint dries through oxidation which is how rust forms. 

When I travel to less populated parts of the U.S. the use of land in those areas always fascinates me: Forests, farmlands, swamps, parking lots, and factories; Mid-sized towns with no public transportation or sidewalks; Dilapidated downtowns and suburban drive-through Starbucks; Dead cars rusting away in front yards, back alleys, and vacant lots. 

Appetite for Destruction

Destruction proceeds the creation, or re-creation. I enjoy smudging and erasing images just to see if I can rebuild them differently. If I don't take the time to do so, the finished paintings would look odd, because they lack this certain quality that I'm after, which I can't explain in words exactly what that is. Energy? Tension? Danger? Attitude? I don't know.

It feels invigorating to completely erase a finished painting! When my paintings come out dead, I take an electric sander and sand them down to nothing. This is another reason I love painting on wooden panels.

trace of gray paint stays after sanding

The leftover paint acts as a groove and I kinda like painting on a surface that is not completely white. It also fits my subject matter of aged or abandoned structures in urban landscape.

underpainting in transparent oxide red

My underpainting sometimes turns out really tight. Depending on the subject matter I go back and forth between really loose and tight underpaintings. I wanted to be faithful to the form of this car but left the background less defined.

Tempest, 2018, oil on panel, 32"x48"

Painting with brayers opened up a whole new universe in front of me. When I paint plein air I still use brushes, but in the studio with larger panels, I don't even dream of using brushes.

Nowadays I stop sanding the original paintings halfway and leave ghost images.

I painted over these in a way that the ghost images showed through - they became the "under-underpantings."

By the way dried oil paint powder is toxic. Don't forget to wear a mask and goggles when sanding!