Remember your Medicine: RedCan 2020 Print
Remember Your Medicine
$35.00 USD
16" X 20" Printed on Archival Paper
Limited Edition of 20 Print Available: HERE
Proceeds from print sales go toward the beautiful programming of The Cheyenne River Youth Project.
See more prints by the rest of the 2020 artist line up here.
ABOUT: This was my first year participating in Red Can. Usually artists are invited to CRYP for a week long event of painting and art classes for the youth, but because of the threat of COVID, it was decided to close the area to protect the community. You may read more about this in my last entry. Each invited artist is asked to paint a mural, teach classes to the youth, and create an original piece of art to then be turned into a print for fundraising. Purchasing a print also shares the light and spirit of Red Can.
Please enjoy the process photos of my painting inspired off one of the themes for this year "Remember Your Medicine".
I chose a very personal approach to the theme "Remember Your Medicine". Since I hadn't been to CRYP before I didn't know what to expect or how I could be utilized so I offered how I give myself medicine; this is what I I do to heal. For me this means I'm showing them a little about me so that in the future when we come together next, we can cultivate something together. I wanted to highlight elements of where I'm from, the temperate rainforest, our ferns, mosses and grasses that grow wild. I wanted to slip in Seattle's dragons and claws reaching out and creatures that invoke life. I added a woman as a reminder and testament that our indigenous sisters are still missing and we are all praying for their safe return, justice for their disappearance, and mourning their loss.
As you can see in the next round of photos I slowly add color like a coloring book. This helps with placement and a base for what I will then layer on top. It's a game I like to call 'building with color'. Afterwards I come through and outline with a dark shade of what the base color is. I find that using just black is too harsh on the eyes. I choose instead to use a darker shade of what the base color is, so for the green ferns, I did a dark green, for the serpent body a dark blue. I feel like this adds to the movement of the piece.
What inspires me the most about painting is keeping my conscious brain active. This allows my unconscious brain to wander as I paint and problem solve. Sometimes you come out of a paint session so mentally exhausted. It's like playing a game of chess with yourself to get your painting to look on the canvas how it looks or feels in your brain. Translating something so introspectively is exhausting! And as you can see I'm sitting on the ground painting. While I sometimes use an easel, you can generally find me sitting criss-cross-applesauce in front of the tv binge watching nostalgic movies. This painting I watched Coraline which I had just finished reading the book. Highly recommend.
This painting was the foundation of the mural I painted for Red Can's virtual mural unveiling. You can see progress of the mural in my next blog post.
- Angelina Villalobos Soto