Random Acts of Mabness

Lilith in the Dark Garden

Lilith was created for a show curated by New York artist Richard Saja called Replanting the Garden. All works for the show were directly inspired by Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights.

I had an utter blast painting her, and spent two weeks drinking red wine and painting myself into nightly oblivion. I love working on all-consuming pieces like that and suffer severe postpartum painting depression when my work is done. There's always a sense of loss and lostness, when your work is no longer your little, beautiful secret and you have to let it go out into the world. Sharing can be tough.

The show was very successful (Thank you, Richard!) and packed despite stormy winds and rain.

New works now up on http://mabgraves.com/

Ghosts in my Paint

PAINTING PROCESS

My painting process? I have none. Only twice ever have I sat down with a sketch and said "I'm going to paint this!". It just never works out that way. My paintings are mostly all completely doodles. I just start freehand in paint. No pencils no plans.

I begin ramdomly with an ear, or a shoe and just travel on from there.

They usually turning out to be not at all what I thought they were going to be.

Kind of like children.

Quite often they will at one time or another have creatures and companions that disappear before it's finished. They are hiding in the canvas. I have ghosts in my paint.

A friend once told me I should try stopping once every hour, and take a picture. Then I could play all the shots together and see the evolution.

I'll have to try that on a big piece sometime.