These are the final prints from the third piece in my Pine Curtain Stories project. They feature my father and my aunt, most likely in the 1960s. They’re standing outside my grandmother’s beauty shop, a business addition to their home.
My favorite parts of these prints are my aunt’s pink purse and the dog that my dad is holding, a chihuahua named Pinky who lived long enough to emerge from under my grandmother’s couch and glower at me when I was a baby in the 70s. With the styling of the print, this Pinky looks more like Poncho, a long-haired chihuahua who my dad is probably at home holding right now.
There are subtle differences in the print, and I only added gold leaf to one. The other, I “shined up” with metallic, iridescent and inference acrylics.
“Outside the Beauty Shop, 1/2” by Stephanie Khattak.“Outside the Beauty Shop, 2/2” by Stephanie Khattak.Detail shot of dog.
More printmaking experiments! These are Posca marker on Dura-lar. It’s a different look than the paint on plexiglass, but same process. This was a nice alternative for a quick visit to my studio when I didn’t have the time or focus to get out my paints/inks or work from a large plate. I still have some extras to add, but in general, I like the direction they’re headed.
“I have been continuously aware that in painting, I am always dealing with… a relational structure. Which in turn makes permission ‘to be abstract’ no problem at all.” – Robert Motherwell
This is another plexiglass print based off an old family photo. Pictures don’t do it justice, but I am still comfortable and happy with the idea that the abstraction is a bonus, if not the entire point. With that in mind, when I embellish the pieces (this time with Posca markers) I try to do so using texture or pattern versus filling in the blank spots or going over the lines to make them look more real.
I like this Motherwell quote and feel that it does a good job of summarizing what I’m doing with this art project. Relational structure vs. a copy or exact representation. In this print, for instance, the way the two figures relate to each other and the lilac sky’s relationship to the gold grass are the important parts of the work. The colors invoke not only the vintage photograph source material, but also a very specific type of “magic hour” that you get in East Texas, when the light is warm, soft and golden. The figures, my mother and uncle, are dressed up and posed in their Sunday best, the clothing and details are abstract, but I believe their relationship to each other and the moment is captured pretty well. (If I say so myself, haha!)
I ordered a few colored plexiglass squares to experiment with. Since they’re so small, instead of printing with them, I just embellished them with acrylic and gold leaf. I ordered this blue color, a hot pink transparent and an opaque red. I really like the effect!
The guide is a heavy pencil drawing that I used for painting and printing the larger pieces. I am hoping to get multiple uses out of these, especially being able to focus in on details for smaller pieces.
Acrylic on Blue Transparent Plexiglass, by Stephanie Khattak.Acrylic and Gold Leaf on Blue Transparent Plexiglass, by Stephanie Khattak.Acrylic and Gold Leaf on Blue Transparent Plexiglass, by Stephanie Khattak.
I love the look of stained glass, but my overflowing supply cabinet and relatively small studio space tell me now is not the time to learn a new craft! So, I tried painting on *Grafix Dura-Lar to mimic the effect for now.
I used a combination of ink and acrylicsand lined it with Pebeo relief outlinerto get more dimension and a stained glass edge effect.
I’m happy with the way it turned out, and because the Dura-Lar is more portable than a heavy window, I can move the pieces around to different windows, easily make larger pieces or switch them out for seasons, etc!
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I’m still having a great time going through my art supply stash and finding new ways to use things. This piece is a magazine clipping under plexiglass, both embellished with acrylic paint to make layers. Plus gel pen on the magazine page, and a tiny bit of holographic spray paint that’s hard to see in the photo, because I’m not used to working with spray paint and am being very cautious for now.
If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve seen my photos evolve from travel, art galleries and around the town stuff to nature and home, and that’s about it. I know I am not the only person to make such a shift. It’s really inspired my art, as well, not only in wanting to recreate some of the pretty spring scenes I have encountered, but also wanting to recreate a bit of a fantasy world to escape to in my mind.
I wish I could self isolate on that beautiful veranda behind flowering vines, with sparkles in the air!
An upside of the social distancing we are experiencing, is that there’s not much to entertain or distract me from my studio. When things get busy, it is one of the first activities to be pushed aside, which makes no sense, because when I am in there, almost immediately, I feel relaxed and productive. I think it’s human nature, or at least American nature, to feel that if something is “fun” than it isn’t work, and if it isn’t work, than it’s not as important as work. Even though I like my actual “work,” I am not immune to that attitude.
Anyway, I’ve been wanting to work with oil paint, but my studio supplies are getting out of control and I don’t want to buy anything new until I work on that. But I have oil sticks, pigment and oil binder. So, I decided to try making my own oil paint from pigment and safflower oil, and with a little oil mixed into oil stick.
There are so many ways that creative work can bring joy and satisfaction. I love being able to experiment with raw materials to make something new. I’m self aware enough to know that I am not the world’s best artist, and that’s okay. My creative satisfaction comes from the act of creating something completely new, whether it’s a piece of art, a rubber print block that I carved and used, or mixing up paint in an new shade or finish. I enjoy breaking things down to their component parts and then rebuilding them into something useful and custom-made.
In this chaos, for me at least, it’s going to be important to look beyond the usual for validation and happiness. Everything from client acquisition and feedback to social media measurement will dip, so those things aren’t accurate metrics right now. My business, like most businesses, will just have to be what it is for a little while, but I can regain some of that validation through my creative work. While I don’t know what life will look like on the other side of this, it really does help to identify healthy and creative things that I can control, and do more of those things while the world works itself out.
There wasn’t sparkly green, antique rose gold or sheer pink iridescent oil paint in my world before I went into the studio yesterday, and now there is. I can see it, mix it, paint with it, and finish the day knowing that I built one small thing that does what it’s supposed to do.
“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”
T.S. Eliot
After a nice Christmas and New Year’s Day, by ten a.m. on January 2, I was at the veterinarian’s office saying goodbye to my 17-year-old cat, Molly. Diagnosed with osteosarcomain August and mostly stable, her final weeks, while treasured, were helped along by painkillers, and balanced an increasingly volatile situation as her tumor spread along her cheekbone and toward her ears, mouth and eyes. Thursday was the day. I would never have been ready to let her go, but it was clearly not a moment too soon. I was grateful that it didn’t appear to be delayed into constant pain, either. Cosmic timing in many ways. As we say, 17 great years and one bad morning.
My acute grief and forever love for Molly is its own thing and needs its own post when I am better equipped to write it. But today Molly’s journey and the changing of the years made me think of the T.S. Eliot quote written above. Every end a beginning. How hopeful that is!
For me, new beginnings mean things like taking time to set healthier habits now that I am no longer needing to care for Molly in such consuming ways. I miss my old routine so much, even the dreaded eye drops that I know Molly doesn’t miss at all. (To be fair, she got the short end of that stick.) My heart breaks a little when I wake up in the morning and she’s not crunching from the pile of treats my husband gave her before his shower (we were definitely in cat spoiling mode!), or running to me for her morning brushes. While I never want to lose those memories, I am trying to make a new routine by reading from a book between the time I wake up until James leaves for work and beginning my own work day, filling my “Molly time” with something relaxing vs. opening my laptop or clicking around aimlessly online, or thinking about what I have lost. Every end a beginning.
My husband has his own changes to make and goals he wants to reach now that his routine is different. He had “night duty” with Molly because he naturally stays up later, but that often meant a few extra chores before he could relax and sleep. He’s working to channel that found rest and energy into his physical health.
Our theory is that things are different anyway. Everything from our routines to the way our house looks and sounds. (Who knew the absence of a tiny cat and her thousand toys could cause a house to echo?) Why not guide those changes for good, to the extent we can? Every end a beginning.
One day, we will be ready to open our hearts to a new kitty or two, and by that time it can make its own, beloved, precious place in our lives, not simply fill the Molly-shaped hole that is so deep now. Every end a beginning.
We can’t control much about the endings in our lives, but we can control where and how we start from. That’s the lesson that I take from this sad start to a new year that still has a lot of potential and joy to be discovered.
In August, on the day that Molly was diagnosed, I sat on the couch and carved a rubber block while she rested in her carrier and slept off her X-Ray tranquilizer. The repetitive motion of the carving helped keep my hands busy while my mind was moving in a lot of new and confusing directions. It was a fun little piece then, and now, I love it not only because it features my favorite subject, but because it reminds me of the beginning of this journey, of Molly’s victory lap. How rich and rewarding and challenging the months in between have been, and how at the end of it, Molly still shines and so do we.
Every end a beginning. Every darkness an opportunity for light. MollyPop, my “Muse who Mews,” inspiring me even now.
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