I am continuing to explore the depth and motion possible in a two dimensional surface. This summer the palette knife became my primary painting tool on canvas.  I begin with an underpainting suggestive of landscape or human figure. Layering paint and colour is mesmerizing for me as dimensions appear and become obscure again.  The Tibetan influence appeared again in three recent paintings. This time, the suggestion of swooping lines of prayer flags formed frames around sections of the paintings, creating miniature worlds within each frame. (click to enlarge)

Reach Out

Interplay of light and shadow

depth and mystery

the world is complicated 

we are a tiny space within it

we are also part of everything.

Put yourself into this picture
(click to enlarge)

Reach Out, 2011,  acrylic on canvas 30x40"

Shields-photos of the Beaulne installation and your comments

The Shields came down on June 5... a sad moment :( as the space was so beautiful and so perfect for them!  Deep appreciation to Beaulne Museum director François Thierry Toé; to Rose Schumacher, president of the board and to the staff and volunteers at the Beaulne for their unconditional support of the show, including the painstaking hanging of each shield so that they literally floated along the walls of the gallery. A special thanks to my creativity coach Jani Wright for her wisdom and clarity, and as always, my husband Peter Mendieta for more than words can ever express.

Glow /Spring Thaw/Torch(background)

Spiral Fire

Spiral Fire / Torch / Single Flame / Cell Tower

Torch / Single Flame

Peace / Eternal flame

Night Garden / Oil Spill / Tranquility / Volcano / Nautical / Ripple 

Lightning / Beach / Golden Heart

Elemental / Smoke / Snow Fire

"Incredible, alive, moving us - to create!"

"A great visual experience!"

"Thanks for making and sharing these, Allyna.

They're really beautiful and strong.  After being in the room with them I'm going out into the world less vulnerable than I came in".

"Beautiful colours and floating designs"

"Plein de vie! Plein d'energie!"

SHIELDS - exhibition at the Beaulne

 

BEACH SHIELD

20”/50 cm oil on canvas 2009

CELL TOWER SHIELD

20”/50 cm oil on canvas 2010

ETERNAL FLAME SHIELD

20”/50 cm oil on canvas 2011

Shields, 22 new paintings
March 6 to June 5, 2011
at the Musée Beaulne in
Coaticook, Quebec, Canada


The "Shields" project of 22 round paintings will be installed at the charming Musée Beaulne in Coaticook, Quebec from March 6 to June 5, 2011.  I have been gifted the beautiful, luminous, second floor gallery in which to display this project.  I hope you will come and visit the show.

“Shields” is an exhibition of round paintings which integrate sacred geometry, mandala and the colour symbolism of Tibetan prayer flags. The rich primary colours of the paintings are connected to Tibetan Buddhist colour symbolism and its’ associations with earth, air, fire, water and space. The imagery is mandala-like or draws from observations of nature and the cosmos or, as with “Cell Tower Shield” and “Oil Spill Shield”, our technological influences on these environments.”

The paintings begin with an equilateral triangle within a circle  - the triangle as a metaphor for body, mind and spirit and the circle representing wholeness.  These forms also suggest landscape, horizon, and depths of space and sky.  They create a centre and, from the centre, an unfolding of interconnected flow.

The “Shields”  project is also influenced by concepts of healing, wholeness and the sacredness of the natural world.

SPIRAL FIRE SHIELD

20”/50 cm oil on canvas 2009

More about the Tibetan connection.....
I wrote the following paragraph in the summer of 2009, just before a group of Tibetans monks came to Stanstead, Québec to make a sand mandala and share their teaching.  I am not a practicing Buddhist but I find great consolation and courage in the teachings and the otherworldly presence of the monks.  Their visit and the creation and deconstruction of the sand mandala was an additional inspiration for the Shields project.
It makes me happy that the Tibetans are coming, that I am reminded of my lifelong dips in and out of experiences of Buddhist practice and studies of the teachings, that I see in my work with the Shields the influences of meditation and Buddhist art and culture. A group of monks from the same monastery, Gaden Jangste, in India, were also here in 1993 on a North American concert tour. Through serendipity, they came to make an album of Buddhist chants in our small recording studio. We were blessed and reminded of how life could be lived with kindness, love and acceptance.  For me, personally, their arrival was preceded by dreams and other signs that made the whole event take on a mystical quality. When I am deeply reminded of the existence of other worlds and ways of being I am nurtured, nourished and inspired.

Cosmic Snow, Forest, October Frost and Red Blues

Cosmic Snow 2010      18x18" oil on canvas

...this painting is part of a new series exploring

depth, colour and contemplative access to imagination....

 waiting for the moment the colour calls

waiting for an interior stillness...

and the impulse and energy

that moves the brush ...

“...the idea of visual art as a response to the life and to the energy of the world”
Jane Urquart The Underpainter
"Each artwork is possessed by the unseen forces that motivate its creation"
Alex Grey The Mission of Art

Forest 2010 50x65cm gouache on Fabriano paper

October Frost  2010 50x65cm gouache on Fabriano paper

Nature is dynamic and each tiny part of its energy pulses within the visible and invisible. When I'm painting I am often thinking simultaneously big and small

and exploring the idea that landscape may be microscopic or macrocosmic...

"Everything we see hides another thing,
we always want to see what is hidden by what we see" René Magritte

Red Blues 2011              50x65cm gouache on Fabriano paper