Claiborne Colombo is an artist, Creative and Design Director based on Lopez Island, WA.NOTES
Making art and designing things where the land meets the sea. A digital journal and visual record of Claiborne’s art, life, design, and inspiration among all other things…
Dog days of summer
When it gets hot out hit the water and take the watercolors with ya. You can make art anywhere.
River meets the tree line
The Zissou on the Columbia River
LOURDES SANCHEZ // Merengue 1, 2015. Ink on silk // 19 × 14 in.
"...understanding her materials to the extent where she creates limits and then sets them free, allowing natural seepage and absorption to determine the form they take." – K. Sundberg
well i can relate to that. clarity words is always refreshing when talking about the visual world.
LOURDES SANCHEZ // Abstract Dots Small, 2014. Ink on silk // 22 × 30 in.
Artist crush: Laura Vandenburgh
“My work has long been driven by questions of how we are situated within, and continuous with, natural systems and the physical environment; how is place a dynamic situation we are a part of rather than a location? how do we experience longing? how are we both near and far?”
Beautiful chaos.
Collage materials collected since 2005
It's funny to look through things I've held on to for so many years. It's even more peculiar when they have nothing to do with my past but someone else's.
Found objects are the majority of material I use in my collages - some of the items are random fortunes, receipts, or scraps of paper that caught my eye. For whatever reason I grabbed it an have kept it for years.
Now that I am back using these materials again I need to start collecting and adding to my supplies. Let the search begin.
When it just feels right.
You would think it would be obvious. I have worked in mixed media since the beginning. Only recently have I been painting in solely watercolor. I have loved exploring and seeing where this abstract venture would go. It really pushed me out of my comfort zone - going full abstract changes everything. Some pieces worked better than others... some just felt flat. At first I thought I was just not used to working in only watercolor but then it hit me.
What if the watercolor was just the beginning. What if it was the foundation of a piece?
I want to keep moving forward. Is going back to a medium an easy fix or is it building on all my experience and developing my work even more? I've been thinking about it for the past week or so and this weekend I've finally had some time in the studio to sort it all out. It started with sewing yesterday and then today I went all in.
Bring out the YES! paste and the beeswax and let me at it.
God, it felt so good to be working with these materials I've been so intimate with. Honestly, I feel like I am back home after being on a trip. This visual comfort is so nice.
Hello mixed media, welcome back and I love you.
Collage materials: beeswax, pressed flowers, hemp, gel medium, yes paste, thread, oil pencil, and thoughtfulness
To the momma that made this possible.
family collage, 2005
here's to the momma that made all of this possible. to bare feet and magnolia trees, and a family that can love across a continent. i am one lucky gal.
A society of island universes.
“We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies - all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes. Most island universes are sufficiently like one another to Permit of inferential understanding or even of mutual empathy or "feeling into." Thus, remembering our own bereavements and humiliations, we can condole with others in analogous circumstances, can put ourselves (always, of course, in a slightly Pickwickian sense) in their places. But in certain cases communication between universes is incomplete or even nonexistent. The mind is its own place, and the Places inhabited by the insane and the exceptionally gifted are so different from the places where ordinary men and women live, that there is little or no common ground of memory to serve as a basis for understanding or fellow feeling. Words are uttered, but fail to enlighten. The things and events to which the symbols refer belong to mutually exclusive realms of experience.”
― Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell
One of the most important pieces of literature and, more pointedly, quotes that frames how I look at the world and interpret my art.
Stalemate.
Sometimes I get stuck trying to figure out my next move. Tonight, I was sitting there, eating my watermelon, trying to figure what to do. The big blue piece felt too symmetrical. The form was just mimicking the others and not adding anything new. It needed something to distinguish it. I needed to mess it up.
I always hate being at this place where I've gotten a good start and don't know what to do next. Once I realize my next move I get nervous. I really don't want to fuck it up and ruin it.
It's just a piece of paper.
SPLAT
Oh thank god.
It's funny how much risk-taking is involved with making art – especially when you're working with watercolor –the most unforgiving of mediums. I fuck up all the time. I still have paintings taped down from months ago. Because maybe one day it will click and I'll know what to do with it. But if I'm being truthful with myself, I fucked up and I don't think some of them can be recovered. Then they just are a thorn in my spine. That's not a bad thing. It keeps me going.
That's part of the reason why I love the smaller paintings. I fail rapidly, then try again.
Seeing what is there.
Bull Skull, 2015
Still life's are always interesting to me. I have never believed that I am good a realism. Painting them force me to try. What I've learned with still life's is that they will never be an exact replica of the photograph or the form I am working from. That's okay. The pictures, the objects are just a starting point for how I choose to represent them. They will never be perfect but they will always be an interpretation. They are always challenging and always force me to really look at things and how they come together. I am training my eye as much as I am training my hand.
¡ O L E !
S H O P
N O W O P E N
spontaneity sometimes opens up a whole new dimension to your work – in this case, becoming a small business owner.
a couple weeks back i started making small paintings. they allowed me to work quickly and explore new mediums and form. the more i did them, the more i fell in love with process. i was posting my progress on social media and i was getting some really positive comments [insert vibrating heart emoji]. people started asking me if pieces were for sale.
one thing that bothers me about fine art is how unaccessible it can be from a monetary perspective. i am in my late twenties and i find that i have definitely transitioned out of poster covered walls and want to fill them with higher quality work. in theory that's nice but in reality it's really *&$#ing expensive - don't even get me started on framing.
light bulb on! why not sell these smaller paintings? from a price point perspective, they are more affordable and from a production standpoint, they are sustainable. i like the idea of seeing which ones people gravitate towards as well. i definitely have my favorites. since they are abstract they sort of act like an inkblot test. different people gravitate towards different forms.
so now it's time for the real stuff – like figuring out a business plan.
U P D A T E : 3.16.15
lucky for me there are others that believe in the making art more affordable. i've partnered with simply framed – they offer quality framing at amazing prices. definitely something i can get on board with. plus they have some really awesome articles and spotlights on artist. worth checking out.
Man vs. Nature
La Quinta, United States
This image pretty much sums up the relationship of man + nature. Man needs to create order while nature creates awe-inspiring organic formations that are fluid. Both have their own internal structure but it manifest in juxtaposing ways. Both are beautiful.
I just want to live as the left side.
below are some more inspiring footprints
(google earth snapshots can be found in this chrome widget - totally beautiful)
Inspired by.
"Proof that you can make anywhere feel like more like home with a little bit of a mess." @HeatherDayArt
Completely inspired by Heather Day. Her mixed media paintings and approach to making art keeps me wanting to make more and more. I follow her on social media and completely love her approach and how she talks about her art. Also completely jealous of her studio space.
Details, details, details.
Yeah, okay I get it... with still life it is all about the details. I used to hate that. I just wanted everything to be expressive and to embrace the imperfections. I will never be a photorealist, but since I've been working as a designer my eagle eye for details has developed and I can't go back.
Life forces.
Ever since I was little I spent time outside exploring. As an adult it has become an essential outlet along with working in the studio. The more time I spend outside or in the studio, the more rejuvenated and centered I become. Both are powerful life forces for the soul. It is amazing how environments have the ability to build energy and also to take it away.
Tying up loose ends to make new ones.
It's amazing what a productive day in the studio can look like.
Buying new supplies reenergizes and prompts working. It's superficial of me but retail therapy is a very strong motivator. I always want to use the materials that I just bought right away. This time it was the watercolor sketch book. It's a smaller size and it lets me work quickly and produce a lot. This practice will develop my skills while also keep me busy when I feel stuck on larger pieces.
The great thing about working in watercolor is you work in spurts because the material has to dry before you can move on. With a pause in these smaller experiments I decided to revisit some older pieces. These paintings that were 80% there and I decided to take them to 99%. I say 99% because I believe you can always fine tune but the overall composition is set.
I guess I'll just have to keep swinging by the art supplies store on the reg to keep this momentum up – just kidding (mostly).
☠ V I B E S ☠
Sometimes to get back into it I have to go big.
Grab a new piece of paper and just start and see how it turns out. Now that I've started my first skull and I see how it is visually working, I need to practice. That means drawing and sketching a lot more so I am comfortable with the form. Also playing with small-scale paintings to get the watercolor just right. Find where the drips are work and figure out the whole depth thing.
When I work on a small scale I find I am less precious about the work. If it's not working then I'll start over. The key here is repetition. Through repetition hopefully I'll land on a visual language that will inform and improve my larger pieces once I get there.
I just got to get there.
The power of beauty.
Design inspired by R. Mosse
“A primal importance to me is beauty. Beauty is one of the main lines to make people feel something. It’s the sharpest tool in the box. If you’re trying to make people feel something, if you’re able to make it beautiful - they’ll sit up and listen. And often if you make something that’s derived from human suffering or from war and you present that with beauty, then sometimes it beautiful.”
One of the most inspiring pieces I've watched in a while. I am beyond excited to check out the exhibit in the Portland Art Museum but more excited to have learned another artist's perspective on beauty and their thought process.
P I N G - P O N G
A game of visual ping-pong, each image created in response to the previous image.
PING-PONG is a collaboration between Agata Królak and Claire Softley.
Loving the concept for this body of work, so playful.