A Wacky Painting for Wacky Times

"Scarborough Fair and Tentacles" (AKA "Pandemic Pandemonium")
(c) 2021 by K.K. Remus
Gouache on paper 

This is my latest painting, inspired by the need to create something wild and colorful.  It's my reaction to being cooped up in Weird Ville for too long.  It was therapeutic to create, and I also find it therapeutic to view.

This image will be featured on the cover of the magazine, Hay Happenings, a publication concerning the Scottish family of Hay.  For more information, see http://www.clanhay.org/

Some viewers have told me about images they have spotted within this work:  a spaceman, a butterfly, a football player, sea creatures, birds...  It has also been interpreted as both an undersea and outer space landscape.  

What do you see?

 

Everything Works Out/Has a Cost

"Everything Works Out/Has a Cost"
Pen & Colored Pencil on Paper, 11" x 14"
by KK Remus (c) 2020

IT'S TRUE!  Everything works out, and everything has a cost.  These two truths hit me hard within this last year, but they changed me for the better.

The drawing above illustrates, if you will pardon the pun, that everything does indeed work out.  I began with no concept of how the finished product would look.  All I knew was that I wanted to build a composition around the two phrases, arranged in "crossword puzzle" fashion, with one shared letter between them.  I chose "R" as the common letter, but I could have chosen "S." That would have would have led to a completely different drawing, but it would have worked out!

I could give many more examples--gut-wrenching, heart-breaking, grief-inducing, potentially life-threatening examples--of how everything worked out this year, but I want to keep this short and focus on the drawing.  So, let's move on to the "cost" part of the equation...

The only real "cost" of making this peice was time. I already had the materials. I spent two to three hours per day over 4 days.  Maximum time: 12 hours. Each hour filled me with joy and freed me from distress.  

Furthermore, this time expenditure did not prevent me from doing anything "more important."  This was exactly what I needed to be doing.  If I got tired, or didn't know what to do next, I put the sketch book away, knowing that the next time I picked it up, I would know what to do. Faith and the love of art guided me.  

The benefits far outweighed any cost. The final drawing makes me happy.  I hope it makes you happy too!

 

Art Project: Making and Destroying a COVID-19 Virus Model

Step 1. Use some orange clay left over from your bust of Trump (see previous post).  Add blue food coloring to make it gray.  Drink alcohol as needed, because this is going to get gross.

Step 2. Mix blue food coloring into clay, and add red if it turns too green.  Oh man!  It looks like horribly wrong baby poop!  But that's fitting, since it's left over from Trump, and we're making a model of another disgusting thing.  See what I meant about gross?

Step 3.  Mix clay until it is a uniform color, roll it into a ball, and then start poking holes all over it.

Step 4.  Once it's riddled with holes, sprinkle baby powder on it to create that mottled, cement like, surface look.

Step 5. Get some of those paper ad flyers that you were saving in case you ran out of toilet paper, and cut red triangles out of them.

Step 6. Fold the red paper triangles in half.

Step 7. Bend the wide ends of the paper triangles flat, so that that they look sort of like golf T's.

Step 8.  Poke the sharp ends into the holes of the grey orb.

Step 9.  Continue filling the holes until you have created a ballpark hideous image of the COVID-19 virus.

Step 10.  Now pretend that this is an actual COVID-19 virus--the granddaddy of them all. Ball your hand into a fist so tight and angry that the veins pop out, place it above that sucker like a hammer, and pound the crap out of it.

Step 11. Enjoy the result. Hope that your metaphorical actions actually affect this "novel" virus and have a ripple effect that renders it impotent.

Incidentally, this is now a model of an "attenuated" virus--one so damaged that it cannot function but which still contains the unique materials that if placed in a vaccine, could trigger an immune response in the body to fight off an intact virus.  

Let's all hope that the real world version of this is coming soon!  

Be safe and healthy.  Make the best of what you have. Live long and prosper!

Citrus

"Run Away And Join The Citrus," gouache on paper, 11" x 13," (c) 2018 by Karen Kay Remus

It's a bad pun.  It's a painting.  It's outer-spacey.  It's lettering.  It's images of oranges.  It's...Run Away and Join the Citrus!

PS: Hey Trump, oranges were orange way before you were, and they wore it better!

Lost and Profound, Chapter VI

Snake Eyes

An Original Painting by Karen Kay Remus, Copyright 2013

Created on "Paint"

...and on the fifth post, Karen Remus, Genius Billionaire said, "Let there be COLOR!"  And there was color, and it was good.  And it surprised the crap out of her, because it only took about 30 minutes to create the entire composition. 

Where does the belief come from that anything worthwhile has to be hard?  I used to believe that.  In fact, I also believed the converse: that anything easy cannot possibly be worthwhile.  Therefore, I grew up thinking that everything that came easily to me was worthless:  art, music, writing, humor, acting...basically, the ARTS in general.  Therefore, I tried to develop the abilities at which I sucked.  That strategy was rewarded by society, but after several years, it nearly drove me insane.

To make a long story short, I got over it, and I started pursuing things that I really loved.  Career transitions are challenging, but they're not impossible.  I'm here to tell you that if you're good at it, you love it, and it's legal, then DO IT!  You'll make yourself and everyone around you much happier.

By the way...  Today I stretched a 48" x 30" canvas that will become the REAL PAINT version of the digital creation above.  If it's cool on the screen, it will be that much cooler in creamy, colorful, gloriously messy PAINT.  Someone will buy it, and then I'll do another one.  That's how it works.