>Blissfully Consumed By Strangers

>I am blissfully consumed by a new series of large portraits of strangers, 36” x 40”, utilizing my usual repertoire of encaustic and mixed media. I tend to move the same vintage photographs around my studio for years, until one day, their juxtaposition to another photograph, a piece of paper or swatch of color makes them ripe.

This new group of about a dozen images is always on my mind. The facial expression and posture of the figure in the photograph influence the palette, lines and marks that I use to create the biographical abstract drawings and paintings. There is a dialogue between encaustic paint, image, paper and ephemera. I work on 3-4 paintings simultaneously because they inform each other and lead me to the next step. There are no rules for placement of the components, but some how they are there guiding me to find the right balance. My studio is humming. 

Work in progress:

>Blog Triage

>In an effort to revitalize my blog, I am participating with thirty artists in a four week, on line Blog Triage Class with Alyson Stanfield, and Cynthia Morris. We visit their blog daily for a blog repair task. The first assignment is to define our readership. I hope that the readers of my blog are other artists, gallerists,  people interested in my art and  art in general.  What I really want is my visitors to interact with me: comment, start a discussion, analyze, criticize or fraternize.   Here are potential readers of my blog:

Who are they? I don’t know, but according to this Google Analytics report, in the last 30 days I have received 176 visitors from 123 cities from 31 countries to http://marybethrothman.com/. My website has a clearly displayed link to my blog. I am afraid a visitor’s enthusiasm for my work wanes when they see my blog, as it is not as advertised. The subtitle, Studio Update  describes my original intention for blogging. I wanted to illustrate what was happening in my studio, which is a lot. Instead I have been using it to show finished work that is about to go up on my website. This is redundant and boring. I have a lot of work to do.