My greeting cards are a way of getting the healing images out to you.
How do I get there? Choosing the block of wood is the first step. I spend a lot of time holding it, feeling the hardness and texture of the wood throughout the piece, sensing the shape, where the knots are, where the cracks fall, whether there’s been some residual saw or router marks. Sometimes I can tell right away that this is the piece I want to work with right now. Other times I go back and forth between pieces, especially if I have to paint it for someone else, and I’m not yet sure what they need.
I only gesso the areas I’m sure of painting–the rest I keep natural. Acrylics, my current medium, are great for doing layers. So I might do a series of colors or a wash, stare at it for days, do another part, contemplate, change the whole thing, get rid of part of it, paint over it, spray it, paint again… Or else I might paint the whole thing in one go, more or less.
What I’m looking for is a certain quality, a type of pathos: I want the painting to speak to me, or at least speak to somebody. And I can’t rest till it’s right. And “right” might be adding just one spot of color or darkness somewhere, changing the whole picture and making it luminous. I go for the light.
Now it’s on to digitalizing the images, adding words, printing them up as greeting cards, and getting them off to those who need the image.
To see my greeting cards, go to www.tauhealingarts.com.
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