Kristen Neveu creates summary, nature-inspired work and collages utilizing acrylic paint, pencils and blended media. She additionally paints geese for a soothing interlude away from her extra advanced creations. She titles every accomplished work with a poetic identify. So, is she a painter, a poet or a poetic painter?
As a result of Neveu has a day job, she paints three evenings every week and Saturday or Sunday afternoons. She likes to take heed to a California-based music radio station whereas creating. No matter comes on the station comes on the station, and there’s no distraction from her work time making music alternatives.
Her studio is in her basement, which has home windows permitting pure gentle to pour in whereas she works. All the house is devoted to her artwork – and laundry. She has an outdated dresser with inspiring knickknacks on prime to retailer provides and a storage room for completed artwork stock and ready-to-paint canvases.
There’s a desk she assembled utilizing sawhorses and a plain door. (Who has not used this splendidly easy setup someday of their life?) Neveu begins every new piece inserting it flat on this very giant work floor that may accommodate even her largest paintings. Lastly, there’s a giant easel she makes use of to complete every work.
Neveu often works on a number of work at a time, besides when she creates a 4-by-6-foot or different very giant dimension work. To begin new works, she selects a coloration palette, pulls provides from her dresser and lays them out on the desk.
In her course of, she begins on the backside of a number of canvases making marks and experimenting with colours. The acrylic paint dries rapidly, permitting her to color over colours quickly after she applies them. Nature isn’t removed from her inventive outlook.
Along with utilizing brushes, Neveu dabs on paint with paper towels or outdated shirts. This permits her to experiment with the kinds of marks she provides. At this level, she is simply getting right into a meditative state and has no objective for the portray. Her first session often lasts one to 2 hours, at which level she lets the brand new work “relaxation.”
When she returns, she begins transferring up the canvases, including paint as she goes, and begins to see how the work are evolving and unfolding. She provides extra marks to regulate coloration or texture whereas build up layers usually in a rhythmic high quality. She continues on this approach, beginning and stopping, for a few weeks or so. She may add extra impartial colours for steadiness in addition to watercolor and/or watercolor pencil marks.
At a sure level – Neveu is aware of it when she sees it – she should determine what the background coloration will probably be and what to do on the prime of the work. The background coloration represents land. She usually paints the highest with extra “strong” areas representing sky or water.
A circulate of psychological questions being requested at this stage: Am I performed? Does the portray have peace, steadiness and rhythm? Does every picture “click on”? When these questions are affirmative for anyone work, it’s time to create a poetic title.
Every title has two parts from nature that fulfill Neveu’s sense of completion. Some current titles embody:
- Black Chook Island with Daffodils
- Music Underneath Upcoming Skies
- Flights of Shadow and Suns
- Ballad of Melting Palm Bushes
- Stars Ring Silent
- Rhythm of Butterfly Wings and Ocean Skies
After the title, she logs, pictures and promotes the brand new creations on her web site and Instagram. She likes to attempt to maintain monitor of who buys her paintings however doesn’t all the time know.
Is she a poet portray or a poetic painter? You determine.
To be taught extra, go to go to Neveu’s web site at www.kristenneveu.com, Instagram at #kristenneveuart, Fb at Kristen Neveu – Artist, or her Evanston Made web page.
