Gayle Gerson : Artist

Finally I Can Spill the Beans

ggerson — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 02:16:55 +0000

In late November, the Colorado Council on the Arts and Colorado Friends of Culture commissioned me to do three paintings to present to the winners of the Governor’s Art Award. I was to do one for Telluride, Colorado, one for Creede, Colorado and one to hang in the Governor’s office in Denver. This was great and scary news for me. However, there was one catch: I couldn’t tell anyone.
The Council wanted to keep the winners a secret until February 26th, 2010 which happens to be Art Advocacy Day when they would be presented to the mayors of the winning towns.
I enjoyed doing these pieces using promotional materials for Telluride, Creede and Colorado in general as my base collage and embellishing with paint and painted papers. For Telluride, because we are frequent visitors, I was able to use my own photos which is my favorite collage method.
The ceremony was great fun although pulling black drapes off my paintings as they were presented was anxiety-producing in the extreme. My nerves were quelled by the many nice people I met there and the positive comments.
I have included photos taken by my husband, George, of the ceremony.

Tackling a Portrait

ggerson — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 21:02:27 +0000

I am fairly sure that I have finished a portrait project for a Blue Pig Gallery Show which opens on January 22, 2010. The assignment was to create a portrait of a local community leader/personality in the artist’s usual medium. I chose Dave Fishell, a historian and story-teller who is well known in Grand Junction for his lively presentations. I wanted to use old photos and images to collage his portrait in sepia tones. Dave kindly allowed me to use his book, The Grand Heritage – A Photographic History of Grand Junction, for much of the source material for this collage. I am including only a small slice of it in this post, so as not to spoil the opening exhibit.

Three Martini Lunch

ggerson — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 02:20:07 +0000

This painting started out as a response to a challenge posed by this year’s program for the Rocky Mountain Collage Society. We were asked to bring a black and white collage to our November meeting. I collaged a random selection of black and white collage pieces onto a piece of yupo. I then began to try to find a good abstract design in the chaos by unifying and blocking out. It just didn’t come together so I decided to do a grid design and depict flower pots which was a challenge in itself because I depend so much on color. Well, I began to like the characters forming in each pot and it ended up as a watermedia-over-collage piece. I call it “Three Martini Lunch” because of the martini glass shape on the left with the black circle that cries out “olive”. I guess I should call it “Nine Martini Lunch”, but I don’t like to promote that much over-imbibing.
In March 2010, it was juried into the Rockies West National Juried Exhibition and won a merchandise award.
This painting is 26×20 inches, unframed, and is for sale for $800.00

Come Into My Cave

ggerson — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 02:07:56 +0000

This mixed watermedia painting has had several lives. It started out as a figure painting and morphed into some sort of totem that I called “The Big Kahuna”. It was OK in this form–the colors were interesting, but the shapes just weren’t good enough. As it was hanging around my studio and I needed an entry for a watercolor show, I began to carve out the building and cave-like shapes. Once I had the roof-line, I knew it was going to be more successful as “Come Into My Cave” then it was as a big Kahuna. This painting is approximately 20×28 inches, unframed and is for sale for $900.00

Mini Dotties

ggerson — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:34:45 +0000

In response to The Blue Pig Gallery’s annual miniature show, I decided to do some encaustics on little 5×5 boxes. I knew I wanted the common theme of dots, so I made dots, using my magic Krink applicator, on many different pieces of scraps of painted paper and encaustic pieces. I started out with flowers in pots, but that quickly evolved into birds. As I was allowing the pieces to come together with wax, jewelry findings and the aforementioned dotted papers, phrases kept on popping into my head, such as, “Take Me To Your Leader” or “I Read Somewhere That Birds Are Descended from Dinosaurs”. So I decided those phrases needed to be the titles of the mini paintings. Of course, I decided that some of these titles were way too quirky not to be part of the art work and so I bought some little letter stamps and added the phrases to the face of the works, again using that Krink–which applies well to slick surfaces. This project was a great transition from the very meticulous work of the forest panels. Now my head is clear to pursue other forms of forest collages.

Photos of the Mesa State Panels in Place

ggerson — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:04:24 +0000

Here are a couple of photos of the panels I completed as they are hanging in the third floor lounge area of the new Academic Classroom Building at Mesa State College.

Summer Moon

ggerson — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 02:02:18 +0000

I did this experimental watermedia piece as a classroom demo. I began by just painting a bunch of random stuff using stamping, cheesecloth and various other watermedia techniques. I slowly refined shapes and worked it up into something that reminded me of a cool summer evening. This painting is matted and framed and is for sale for $800.00. It is 29″x21″.

Big Commission Completed

ggerson — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 01:53:00 +0000

Well, it took most of the summer, but I have completed the four panels that the Colorado Council on the Arts commissioned for the new Mesa State classroom building. Each collage is 6 feet long by 2 feet wide, done on a cradled board. In preparation to do each one, I took photos at four favorite recreation venues around Grand Junction: The Riverfront Trail, Serpent’s Trail on the Monument, Hawthorne Park and Lincoln Park in the city. I used these photos (manipulated via Photoshop in a myriad of ways) as a base collage to which I added paint, tissue paper, images of animals and people from old magazines, and even snake skin in two of the pieces. At first glance, the art looks like a regular landscape, although the medium is difficult to pin down. Upon closer inspection, the viewer realizes that the perspectives are off, the shadows are surreal, things are either bigger or smaller than they should be and the placement of many elements would be unlikely in real life. I have created a fantasy world based on images from the real world. I love this new way of making art and I have plans for other pieces using the same technique. I have included thumbnails of each piece below.

Mt. Garfield Area Map

ggerson — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 01:43:37 +0000

This collage is done on a 40 inch by 30 inch wrapped canvas and is the second in a series of Mt. Garfield (the iconic hill of the Bookcliffs near Grand Junction). It was chosen to represent Southwestern Colorado in the Creative Capitol Series sponsored by the Colorado Council on the Arts and is currently hanging at Denver International Airport. It will move to the capitol building in Denver in December. This piece has sold.

Enchanted Forest

ggerson — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 01:23:02 +0000

This piece was my second attempt at a forest collage and it is the one with which I am happiest. It has long since sold and I have made 11×14 prints of it which are available at The Blue Pig Gallery in Palisade, Colorado. I love that fact that some of the trees on the left side of the painting are actually pictures of asparagus.