Acrylic and stenciled spray paint on 2′ x 3′ canvas.
After the first stencil dried, I worked a little more on the hat, then went to work on the rest of the stenciling. First I did the white on the hand, the fleur de lis pattern in the corner, and the white flower on the hat. Once that dried, I brought in the blue swirls and smoke. There’s a lot I like in this, some bits I don’t, but enough to do a series in this vein. I’ll probably limit the palette in the next pieces to try some things out with contrast.
This series is called Heartwork, a play on both ‘Artwork’ and ‘Hard Work’. All of my series this year have had the word ‘heart’ in them: Skull Says Heart, Streethearts and Hearts of Darkness. It hit me while naming this new series that I was doing something subconscious with that. I had my second heart attack in the middle of the year, so maybe I’ve been trying to work that out. Now that that’s more conscious on my mind, I may do a more ‘serious’ piece in light of what my brain is wanting to address.