How I Was Shaken Up by Anselm Kiefer

This is my final Creative Jumpstart Post, and I can't thank Nathalie Kalbach enough for the inspirational ride.  For the month of January, she and the other "Jumpstarters" had me inspired, stimulated and making non-stop art.  What more could I ask from an online class?




The final Master Artist was Anselm Kiefer.  His work deeply moved and troubled me in its unblinking look at trauma, struggle and the Holocaust.   Here is how I translated all of the lessons into my own work.













Inspired by Natalya Aikens stitching project, I layered ripped book, atlas, music and gelli print pages.  I scraped crackle paste by Deco Art through a stencil designed by MaryBeth Shaw to represent a landscape and forest.

Inspired by MaryBeth, I used my fingers to rub in paint.  Inspired by Joe Rotella's lesson involving the fragility of everyday things and new beginnings, I began to doodle buds and other flora with black paint and a thin brush, using my non-dominant hand.  

As I painted those shapes, they began to look like eyes to me.  

I rotated my canvas and began to work on it vertically.  I used a mask of a girl's dress to echo Joe Rotella's gorgeous project. 

Nathalie Kalbach's lesson involved explorations in texture.  In it, she completely painted over a prior canvas and scraped layers away.  I decided to be bold and painted over and scraped away parts of my canvas, and stenciled a window and a door. 

Inspired by Wilna Furstenberg's beautiful layout, I added brush strokes meant to look like stacks of books or twigs.  Inspired by the idea of ephemera like books and pieces of cloth, I scraped fiber medium on deli paper and stained it with orange and gold colors, and used strips of that paper to build a path and stairs through my canvas.  I also stamped a Hamsa to represent hope and blessings. 

Again, I rotated the canvas, added more marks and more white for hope and light.  I used a handmade paper cast embellishment to represent the homes we leave, and the homes we find.  To anchor the peace spiritually, I added a Star of David.  

Again - THANK YOU to Nathalie Kalbach and all the wonderful artists who made Creative Jumpstart 2016 so wonderful.

What do you think of all the twists and turns this canvas took on the way to completion?  I'd love to know!

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