Expanding Art Interests for 2019 - A New Year's Resolution

"Following the Star" ©Mary Montague Sikes

I don't much believe in making New Year's resolutions. They inspire us at first, then life gets in the way. For 2019, I decided, "No resolutions this year."

Then I thought about it some more, and I realized I had big plans for my art this year. After all, I have four different media that have caught and held my attention over the past several years. Three of them relate, but they each use different materials.

"Following the Star" (11" x 8") is oil and encaustic (hot wax) and was created using a toxic process that makes painting inside less safe. However, I love the method and the results.

In my studio, I have more than two dozen small encaustic pieces on art board, some of which I plan to use like working drawings for larger paintings. I love this style of work and the ideas it creates inside my head.

The cold wax with oil is the method most related to encaustics. Building history, then creating

"On the Crowded Street" ©Mary Montague Sikes

mystery from it is exciting and rewarding. I already have many starts using this process, and I am finding extraordinary excitement experimenting with it. I like spraying medium from a bottle to make changes in the surface. Using that process gives me more control than placing a heat gun above the surface of a painting to move the wax around. With both encaustics and cold wax, I have the opportunity to create texture on the surfaces of my paintings. "On the Crowded Street" (10" x 10") is cold wax on cradled board.

Using acrylic paints and a variety of gel mediums and painting with credit cards and palette knives is the third related working style. I love creating texture using this media. I can imagine myself with encaustic paintings as my guide, building all kinds of new work on canvas. This is truly a fun process that I have used for many years.

"Rendezvous on Xanadu" ©Mary Montague Sikes

The fourth procedure I plan to develop further is that of using the intense Robert Doak paints on Yupo to design new and magical work. "Rendezvous on Xanadu" (40"x32" matted) is part of my on-going Xanadu series. In these paintings, I use all sorts of found objects to develop texture. I love spraying the paint while blocking various spaces.

Every method I use offers opportunity to experiment and develop my work further. While I enjoy traditional art work and the use of carefully honed skills, the exotic experimental progression forever beckons me back. Large canvases of all sizes, hoarded for years in my studio, call to me to fill their vacant spaces with color and warmth. Some urge me to add Yupo to their surfaces and to continue my search for Xanadu.

I cannot ignore the call as I expand the horizons of all that exists inside my studio. An exciting new year summons me on.

An Angel Painting for Christmas

A few years ago, I started creating a work of art for our Christmas cards. Perhaps it all began when our children were small, and I carved a wooden block with two angels for a print. They represented the two young children, Allison and Alicia, we had at the time. Later, I wished I could add a third angel to the woodcut, but that wasn't possible. In more recent years with the use of my camera, computer and printer, I have tried to use the media and process in which I am working at the time to make my Christmas angels. A lot of those paintings have been small works on paper. Some have been larger, more abstract pieces created with watercolor on Yupo.

"Angel of the Valiant Cross" ©Mary Montague Sikes

This year, I decided not to work in my current processes of mixed media on paper and/or canvas or cold wax on board. I wanted a more traditional angel, so I painted her with Golden acrylics on a 20" x 16" gallery stretched canvas. Since adding texture to my paintings has become an important part of my work, I developed gold and silver halos with incised lines patterned in. The wings are textured as well. Also, I couldn't help but use my ink roller to print bubble wrap designs on the angel's gown.

The lovely crystal cross my daughter, Amy, gave me served as the model for the "Valiant Cross" my angel is wearing. Because I had just watched a movie about Winston Churchill, who praised the young men landing on the beaches on D Day for their valor, the cross became the "Valiant Cross".

So my 2018 angel was born on a blank canvas. For me, her silent presence brings meaning and joy to a world too often unaware of the goodness that can exist and the beauty we might see.

Merry Christmas.

What Is the Glow of Sedona?

"Coffee Pot Rock Formation" ©Mary Montague Sikes

In November, my husband and I spent two weeks in Sedona, Arizona. As we completed the two-hour drive from Phoenix, we saw the iconic red rocks rise up on the horizon ahead. And we felt the glow of the desert mountains.

The Sedona landscape encompasses and touches us like no other place on earth. Peace and quiet surrounds us as the dark night sky approaches. In Uptown Sedona where we spent the first few days, there are no street lamps, so it is exceptionally dark. Flashlights are provided at the Hyatt where we were guests.

"Bell Rock" ©Mary Montague Sikes

Years ago, when we first visited Sedona, silence surrounded us everywhere we went. There were many fewer restaurants, and the vortexes were quiet places without hoards of visitors.

Things have changed. Roads are wider now, with many "round-abouts".

When we visited in 2014, I was disappointed and worried because the highway construction confused the landscape and changed the "feel" of the area. I feared that civilization had encroached too far, and the Sedona glow would never be the same.

I was wrong. This time, the highway construction was gone, replaced by a more peaceful glow. The roadways seemed more congested than in the past, but there were places where respite from the everyday trauma could be found.

Looking into the sky over Bell Rock, I discovered the image of an angel, flying high above the formation. Perhaps the angel is symbolic of the glow of Sedona. Perhaps it explains a little of what the glow is all about.

Perhaps.

Perhaps I shall return and question the meaning of the glow one more time. Perhaps I will see more and understand at last why so many are called to the Red Rock Country. Perhaps then, I shall have no need to ask, "What is the Glow of Sedona?".

My Books Are Set Free

 During many years with Oak Tree Books, I have produced a wide array of books, starting with my reincarnation novel, Hearts Across Forever. Following publication of that book, my publisher, Billie Johnson, created the "Passenger to Paradise" series for me. A very talented lady, Billie produced many beautiful books, including five in that series. We also developed books set in the small fictitious town of Jefferson City that somewhat resembles the little Tidewater Virginia community where I live.

Through the years, Billie started a series of "Snapshot in Time" books that are spinoffs from my big coffee table book, Hotels to Remember. She took all the books I ever sent to her without my ever going through an acquisitions editor.

A few weeks ago, Billie Johnson passed away following a long illness associated with several strokes. The debilitating strokes forced her to move from her home in California, the place of her heart, back to be near family in Illinois. It was the second time she had left California. The first was because of problems with criminal activities that threatened her in the neighborhood where she lived. The story of her life would probably make quite a book.

Oak Tree is gone now. Losing a publisher is difficult in many ways. For a long time, I have been quite troubled by seeing my books disappear from normal sale sites. Since they are no longer returnable, my books mostly aren't available for signings.

Disappointing. That is true. However, for every negative, there is a positive.

Now, I realize, my books have been set free. I have control to make good things happen for them. I always regretted the title, Night Watch, for my story set in Trinidad. I can create a new title now for that book. Since many people believe Daddy's Christmas Angel is a children's book (it isn't), I'm considering changing the title back to the working one, Riding Carousel Horses.

The possibilities go on and on. Self-publish or something else? Choices to make. Positive decisions.

My books are set free.

Spirit Visions Soul Songs Is Published

My new book, Spirit Visions Soul Songs is up on Amazon, both as a printed book and as a Kindle. I am excited because I believe this book of paintings and writings will be meaningful to many. It can also be just a pretty addition to a parlor table.

 Beyond my windows, I see the trees in the forest and study them for inspiration.  Words and images come to me intuitively.

"It is the zodiac moments that guide our spirits in the long journey through the green valley," the words say. "From under the little trees, the fairies come and lead the zealous to the land of angels."

This is a book to lie quietly on a coffee table until a seeker reaches out to its pages. I hope it will bring joy in times more troubling than I ever imagined they might be.

https://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Visions-Songs-Mary-Montague-Sikes/dp/1729135323/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1540853717&sr=1-3&keywords=mary+montague+sikes