February, 2015 | Beverly Shipko, Artist

Beverly’s Top 10 from the 30/30 Challenge: When Less is More

February 20, 2015 by Beverly

I must thank my friend Lynn for reminding me that less is more on so many levels.

Last week, Lynn and I met for lunch at the Beverly Hills Grill in Southfield, MI – our tradition when I visit my mom (Lynn likes the idea of “Beverly at Beverly Hills Grill”). How’s this for a paintable entrée?

When I told Lynn, an old art history buddy from the University of Michigan, about the 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge, we started going through my blog posts on her phone. You can read about the 30/30 Challenge which began on New Year’s here.

I was pretty shocked by how intimidating those long paragraphs looked on a cell phone screen (vs. my large desktop). While I had seen my posts on my iPhone, I had never tried to actually read them. Lynn gently suggested shortening future posts for mobile devices (less copy, more photos). Good advice, don’t you think?

It turns out that even in this digital information age less is still more! This applied to my blog, my painting and the rest of my life during the Challenge.

So here are my lessons learned from the Challenge in a list which I call Beverly’s Top 10: When Less is More (missing Letterman already?):

10. Less copy means more involved readers.

9. Fewer diversions = more painting time.

8. Laboring less over my paintings translates into fresher work.

7. Using less paint can result in a more realistic impression.

6. Painting smaller allows for experimentation with more new subjects (like the double yolk egg paintings on Days 14, 30, and 31).

5. Less shopping = more money.

4. Less cooking = more painting productivity. (Thank you Bonnie and Jay!)

3. I ate less, weighed less, and was happier with how I felt and looked.

2. Less time spent cleaning = more focus (mentally and physically) = more clutter – oops! A subject for another day.

Try this instead: Cleaning less somehow resulted in more motivation now to de-clutter and get organized (go figure…), if nothing else, for the next challenge. I got so much out of this one that I will do it again.

I saw that for a month that I was very happy without using any of that stuff lying around my house, just like the Happiness Project book promised (which I highly recommend). By ruthlessly focusing on one thing that mattered, I enjoyed painting more than I had in a long time. And so, I will end this blog with something important for you to consider:

1. Less complexity = more satisfaction and fulfillment = more fun.

Katonah Museum Exhibit

February 12, 2015 by Beverly

Right before the 30/30 Challenge began, this painting was accepted to a juried show called Line Describing A Cone: Tri-State Juried Exhibition at the Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, NY, which is up through February 15th.

This exciting news got lost in the shuffle of cranking out 30 paintings in January.

If you haven’t been there, the Katonah Museum is an interesting building architecturally. The museum is light and airy inside, and has a lovely garden in the back with lots of trees, which you get feel for from these snow scenes. It’s a small museum whose mission is not to collect, but to service the community by putting up exhibits. The museum does’t have a permanent collection or any storage space.

The juror is Eva Respini who was a Photography Curator at The Museum of Modern Art when she put this show together. She recently became the new chief curator at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA). So it’s not surprising that the show, which was hung in three large galleries, includes a high proportion of abstract works and has a contemporary vibe to it.

It’s always fun to go to an exhibit and look for your own painting. I found mine in this room, among some abstract and semi-representational works.

The opening was a success and very crowded, so I didn’t get to take a lot of photos. Here’s one of my friend, Ceclia Soprano, and I in front of her painting, Web, an intriguing work with crystals embedded in it, giving it many layers of meaning.

My husband and I went back another day to get a better look at the show and to take the installation photos. Another visitor was kind enough to snap shot of Jay and I in front of A World of Cakes. Zaro’s Bakery at the Grand Central Station Marketplace was the inspiration for the painting. This angle really shows how the cakes define the seemingly endless space.

This light installation by Lara Knutson won first prize. This sculpture has great presence in person and certainly does an excellent job representing the theme Line Describing a Cone.
If you like seeing a variety of contemporary art in a single exhibit, this show is for you. There’s one more week to go. So enjoy it!

Day 31 of the 30/30 Challenge – Double Yolk Egg Raw

February 7, 2015 by Beverly

I had intended to do this Double Yolk Egg Raw painting last Saturday for Day 31 as a sign-off, my third egg from the same lucky carton. That was before my main desktop computer went to computer heaven (aka the Apple Store) for a new logic board and power supply. Now that my iMac is back after a week, I feel whole again – and am ordering a second external backup drive today.

A number of people have asked me why I decided to do the 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge. The best way to explain might be to show them this painting.

Day 31 of the 30/30 Challenge. “Double Yolk Egg Raw” by Beverly Shipko, Oil painting on cradled panel, 5 x 7 inches.

This is something I would have not have attempted before the Challenge for a variety of reasons.

This painting would have taken me so long in a larger version (maybe weeks) that I probably wouldn’t have invested the time in something with such an uncertain outcome. If I did go ahead with it, I probably would have given up in the middle as I got caught up in all the minutia (especially the bubbles). Instead, painting this in one day forces you to work the total image and take a more global view within a short span of time – to get to the essence without getting too hung up in the details. I constantly checked in with myself, always asking, “What are the most important features that make this look like an egg?”.

Before the Challenge, I felt that this egg was a risky subject in its rawness, with the metallic reflection showing through the very transparent egg – not nearly as “safe” as my previous two attempts, which you can see in my Day 30 post.

For the record, I used to think those first two eggs were risky too, but everything is relative with practice and confidence, isn’t it? And that’s what the Challenge did for me. It gave me confidence and permission to experiment and explore new avenues in a different way than before. I was able to work up to this painting in three stages in a matter of days – first with the double yolk in a white bowl, then a partially cooked egg in a metallic pan, and finally the raw egg against the metal.

As it turns out, I like this painting for its design. Last night when I glanced at it in my studio, I thought it almost had an abstract quality to it. Somehow it felt more spontaneous in its subject and composition. Maybe I even took a walk on the wild side with the double yolks separating from each other, almost like an Impressionist view of an egg (my art history is showing again).

Now the big Post-Challenge questions remains:

How will these small daily paintings on wood translate into larger 16 x 20 inch oil paintings on linen canvases? Will I miss the style I developed painting on firmer wood? (I just placed a special order for expensive linen canvases with less of a texture, so I feel obligated to use them. At the time, I wasn’t thinking about using wood!)

And, which of the three eggs should I do first?

I would love to hear what you think.

What a lucky carton of double yolk eggs this turned out to be! You never know where your inspiration will come from.

Collage of 30/30 Challenge Paintings

February 4, 2015 by Beverly

Sometimes you just get lucky. That’s what happened to me last weekend.

Fortunately, I was able to finish my Double Yolk Egg Cooking painting on Day 30 and get my post up before the power supply on my desktop computer died on Day 31, aka Collage Day. I was so happy that my computer got me through the Challenge, even though I was frustrated at the lack of closure that I had anticipated from making a collage of my 30 daily paintings. It seemed to me that the collage was a great way to look back and reflect on everything I had accomplished in January.

My computer is still at the Apple Store, along with the images of my 30 paintings from the Challenge. However, tonight Jay thoughtfully offered me his computer so I could finally make the collage.

“Collage from the 30/30 Challenge” by Beverly Shipko

This was much harder than it looked, like most new tech tasks. It didn’t help that I had to download all the photos off my blog and resize them before I could get started on the collage itself. I got 29 of the 30 paintings but couldn’t figure out which one I missed!

The collage above was a custom collage that I put together online, without using a template. It took me a good hour to figure out how to manipulate the images effectively. I would like to try this again another day – it’s very late, there must be an easier way to do this, and I’m not thinking too clearly. I know that because my first attempt below using a template (which was quick and easy) only included 25 of the 30 paintings, and it took me quite a while to realize it…

There is something nice and clean about this version.

The notion of showing 25 paintings seems like a good advertising concept in the future (think April Open Studio). All the images are clearly visible, unlike the 30 painting version (although I am confident I can improve on that with another try). However, I felt this wasn’t complete since 5 paintings were missing.

But maybe less is more. Which collage do you like better?

Even though I did finally get to make a collage, there hasn’t been any time for reflection (broken computer and blinds, with an almost broken TV… among other things). That will come later. I promise. I just can’t say when.