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Where does creativity come from?

Great art is not necessarily autobiographical. What about the spirit of exploration? Or being obsessed with a theme or technique just because it lights something up inside of you and makes you happy? It's both personal and impersonal and often sublimely spiritual. I would encourage everyone to read Creativity: The psychology of discovery and invention by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly. It's an excellent study of the creative minds of scientists, writers, musicians, and visual artists. Enjoyment, delight, and curiosity play an enormous part in the creative process. You don't necessarily have to be experiencing existential angst to create.

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Sky's the limit!

I’ve completed two “Sky” series so far (“Red Sky” and “Yellow Sky”). The “Red Sky” series was created first, inspired by a hiking vacation in the Desolation Wilderness at Lake Tahoe, California on the heels of the great Yosemite fire. The sky smoldered. I could smell the smoke from more than 50 miles away and sensed its fierce, destructive force. It was frightening and awe-inspiring at the same time.

After I completed the “Red Sky” series, I had the idea to create more nature-inspired abstracts with different sky colors as the theme, so I went on to develop the “Yellow Sky” series. I like the idea that the paintings are modular—they can be mixed and matched in multiple configurations. This concept plays off the idea that within the finite, there are infinite possibilities if we are open to exploring them.

Each set consists of 12 paintings on wood panels that measure 12” by 12”. The color palette is highly saturated, vibrant, and intense. They all thickly textured with a glossy sheen.

The “Red Sky” series was exhibited at the “12x12x12” show at Cabrillo Gallery, and I was among the artists who received the “People’s Choice Award.” Also, “Red Sky” and “Yellow Sky” pieces were on exhibit at ABRA Gallery in Los Angeles and at the R.R. Blitzer Gallery in Santa Cruz.

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“On the Verge”: The turbulent rebirth of our world

Inspired by a prophetic dream I had, the “On the Verge” series speaks to the idea of transition, expressed as an abstract confluence of mountains, ocean waves, wind, and sky swiftly carrying us toward a higher evolutionary plane toward a better world, where all good things are possible.”

My “On the Verge” series is large in scale (up to 4 feet by 4 feet on stretched canvas) with a combination of techniques used to create the paintings. Working deliberately with the unique chemistry of acrylic paint in mind, I poured the paint in stages, allowing each layer to dry before applying the next. I then used a palette knife for creating thick textures and brush strokes for smoothing out surfaces and finer details. The colors for this series are emphasize a brilliant variety of blues and greens with accents of earthy ochres. You can see the same hues in the Hubble telescope photographs of our beautiful planet.

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French panache meets Cubism and street art: The "Anduze" series

The South of France and experimentation with techniques inspired by Picasso and street art led California artist Mary Karlton to give birth to her colorful and expressive “Anduze Series” of paintings.

Mary and her musician-composer husband, Peter Sterbach, were enjoying a month-long vacation in the village of Anduze—a charming, artistic village on the border of Provence—when inspiration struck.

Early one morning, dark clouds shrouded the Cevennes mountain range, visible from the villa where they were staying. Torrential rains, booming thunder, and flashes of lightning persisted into the night. It seemed like the perfect time to light a fire, open a bottle of red wine, and get creative. So Mary decided to pull out her sketchbook, paints, and pens. She started making a mark here, another mark there, which led to intriguing shapes, which then led to Cubist-like compositions.

“Many of the people I had observed or met during our stay in France—including the waitress at our favorite café in Anduze—started coming alive on paper. I was unstoppable. I was on fire. I barely budged from my drawing table, working well into the night, producing dozens of sketches,” she said.

Mary and Peter went on to explore Paris and then returned to their home in Santa Cruz on the Pacific coast. “I didn’t really think too much about the sketches for a few weeks until I pulled them out at my studio one day. At the urging of my husband, I transformed the drawings into fully realized paintings,” said Mary.

“Just before our trip to France, I had watched the 1956 documentary ‘The Mystery of Picasso,’ which captured the modern master’s creative process as he painted on glass. What stayed with me was how he was able to transform a few random marks into powerful paintings that made sense compositionally and thematically. At just about the same time, the street art in the Mediterranean cities of Europe grabbed my attention. Much of the graffiti I saw was spontaneous, imaginative, and often very beautiful,” said Mary.

Each painting in the “Anduze Series” was executed using a variety of media—acrylic paint, carefully selected collage materials, and inks—on wood panels measuring 24 inches by 18 inches. The paintings, which have a very “designed” look, came to embody the ideas that had been incubating within the artist’s mind for some time: the spontaneity of street art, the fractured compositional lines of Cubism, and exciting juxtapositions of pattern and color.

“While I tend to create purely abstract paintings with a more painterly style, I feel that the ‘Anduze Series’ is one of my signature expressions—and I continue to explore this direction further,” Mary remarked.

Mary was honored with a two-month solo exhibit of her “Anduze Series” at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History.

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Balancing form and formlessness in "Free Fall"

Whenever I begin a painting, I start by setting forth an intention of where I’d like the painting to go, its overall design structure, and a general idea of the color palette. In this acrylic/multimedia painting, entitled “Free Fall,” my intention was to achieve a certain serenity and simplicity that evokes Asian minimalism punctuated by movement or an event frozen in time. My chosen design mode was the cruciform shape.

I started with a 30” by 22” sheet of 300-lb. Fabriano watercolor paper, which I like using for acrylics and multimedia because it doesn’t curl and has a hefty feel. Before I started painting, I primed the paper with two or three coats of white acrylic gesso to make the surface stiffer and prevent paint from soaking through. For the basecoat, I chose a soft neutral tone—Titanium White combined with Raw Titanium White and a soft, pale gray (Titanium White mixed with a small dab of Lamp Black). With a palette knife, I spread some of these soft colors liberally on a sheet of waxed paper. Flipping the paint-laden wax paper over so that it was face down on my sheet of Fabriano, I ran a rubber printmaker’s brayer across the back of the wax paper in different directions, moving the wax paper to different areas of the surface until I achieved a stucco-like effect. After each coat dried, I repeated the process several times. I ended by spreading pale yellow (Titanium White and Hansa Yellow) in patches using the same technique.

When I was satisfied with the results, I turned to various drawing tools—fine-pointed markers, pens, and sharp pencils—to draw the grid-like structure with a light touch. I sealed the drawings with a matte fixative spray and allowed it to dry over night. I found the contrast of the freeform background and the delicate geometric line drawings interesting, pleasing, and suggestive of the philosophy of Yin and Yang. My objective was to express the juxtaposition of form and formlessness, the opposition of manmade structures and the unarticulated matter of nature, and the inchoate and unborn contrasting with the rigidity of the old and outworn.

Once this was established, I injected a jolt of color, the red sparks igniting the quietude of the mysterious landscape. Here I introduced bits of handmade red-stained paper with small shreds of newspaper showing, gluing these into a sparse cascade that suggests the slow floating path of cinders in the wind. I finished the piece with a light coat of satin acrylic varnish.

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A Debussy dreamscape: "Le Rêve"

For as long as I can remember, I have had abiding appreciation and passion for impressionist music of French composer Claude Debussy with his dreamy, sensory, and lyrical passages. One day at my studio, while his music played in the background, I was inspired to create this acrylic multimedia piece called “Le Reve” (“the dream” in French).

A key step to developing this painting was creating a rich background with multiple layers of transparent acrylic glazes. I used Fabriano 300-lb watercolor paper for my surface, applying two to three coats of white acrylic gesso for added stiffness and to prevent porosity. I began by loosely covering the surface with a thin coat of Indian Yellow, moving my three-inch brush in different directions loosely to great an organic effect. After allowing the paint to dry completely, I followed the same process but this time used Iron Oxide Red. While the paint was still wet, I randomly sprayed the surface with rubbing alcohol, which created a lovely mottled effect. Again, I allowed this layer to dry and then did one more pass with Thalo Blue followed by another spray of alcohol. The end result was a surface that resembled the rich patina of oxidized bronze. I finished the surface with a light coat of acrylic gloss medium.

The next step involved applying the collage pieces (with acrylic medium and as the adhesive). While assembling the pieces, I had in mind a Cubist-like arrangement, similar to the early collage compositions of Georges Braque and Picasso but with the bright, colorful hues of the Fauves, particularly Henri Matisse. I applied a selection of rice papers in various shades of blue, along with a delicate, lacy white—a pleasing complement to the warm background. And then I used handmade red-stained paper with newspaper bits to add punch and draw the viewer to the focal point—the white mask-like shape to the left that suggests the face of a dreamer. I added two shards of blue rice paper to create an unexpected chasm—underscoring the apparent separation between the realms of reverie and reality—when, in fact, as the painting asserts, these realms often overlap and merge. When I was satisfied with the piece, I sealed it with several coats of acrylic gloss medium for a lovely sheen.

Mary Karlton
mkar[email protected]

Mary Karlton