At the end of the year I like to review the work I created during the year. It’s always interesting to see what I’ve done & reacquaint myself with pieces that have long been completed. 2024 was somewhat of a weird year as we’re undergoing a renovation so I was without a dedicated space to work for some time. Thankfully, that all changed when the studio was completed in early October. I’m happily all moved in and have been working away in my new space.
My fascination with the gel plate continues and I’ve used it to continue my portrait series as well as have been delving into landscapes, mostly desert, and portraits of cacti. I’ve also been steadily fulfilling orders for the one-of-a-kind cow skull t-shirts throughout the year and plan to introduce a few other t-shirt designs in 2025.
Mid-year, when I was limited to a card table as a work surface, I started creating smaller mixed media (acrylic, ink, collage, charcoal, and graphite). This experimentation resulted in the Invasive Species series. I’m having a lot of fun with this series that explores the invasive nature of things into our lives and into nature in general (it started as a reaction to the political vitriol from this years election and expanded to my distaste for government overreach/control into our lives and the environment). A parallel series of of mixed media pieces focusing on women also emerged. We’ll see where these go.
2024 saw continuing with the lawn chair series with the completion of “The Horror”, three versions of “I’ve Heard That Story 1,000 Times” & “Oh Really”. I’ve been flipping between acrylics, oil & a hybrid of both on this series. An outgrowth of working smaller was an addition of multi-media pieces to the lawn-chair series. Next up in this series is a larger, 40″x30″, canvas based on a study that I completed in 2023.
Late in the year, I returned to one of my favorite themes, how I and other women experience and navigate the world. This ongoing theme typically combines the naked female form in various real, surreal, and contrived spaces and landscapes. The latest in this series are on mixed-media backgrounds. I’ve got a few more of these on the go.
I’m excited with where I’m going and look forward to what 2025 brings!