Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Week two, bicoastal project

Second week—
Libby Ellis sent me a great batch of photos, it was hard to choose which one I was going to paint. I found myself thinking which image would go with the first painting, but decided I had to let go of that and go with my gut decision. I love this image of the chair on ice (what is it doing there?) with the futuristic sleds in the background. I enjoyed the process of painting, even though it had been a rough day and I ended up painting very late. Libby and I haven't talked about these (other than she texted she was hoping I'd choose this one), we've both been very busy… will add a note after we do!






Chair on Ice, photograph by Libby Ellis









Chair on Ice, painting by Kalen Meyer

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Bi-coastal Art!

My friend, Libby Ellis, and I are starting a new collaborative art project.

Libby lives on Martha's Vineyard (currently under 4 or 5 feet of snow) and I am in California. We had been talking about doing a project together for a while and on a recent trip to L.A. we came up with this!

Each week for 16 weeks, Libby will send me 5 photographs.
I will choose one and paint it. After Libby sees the image, she sends me a new batch of 5.

After some debate, we decided I can't crop her image.




Photograph by Libby Ellis





Painting by Kalen Meyer



This is our week one. When Libby sent her images, I knew immediately the one I would paint, however the image was so much more abstract than anything I usually work with, I was a little daunted!

I sent the image to Libby while she was on a call, and when she called back she said, 
"Wait, is this a painting I am looking at, or the photograph?" (it was on her phone), which brings up the question, why paint when you have the image already?

After digesting the fact this was my painting, we both got fairly excited about going on.
Stay tuned for week two!