One a Day Art Project 2019-2020
In February 2019, I was noticing my reluctance to start a new painting, feeling pressured to somehow achieve The Best Idea of All Time and nothing was coming to me and I felt afraid to just play. After enough frustration, I took a cue from several friends who had shared their experience with making art every day for a month. Inspired and hopeful, I committed to creating art every day in a 9”x9” sketchbook, beginning on 2/13/19 and lasting until 8/24/2020. The idea was that anything could happen on the page, and to just keep doing it. The entire One a Day collection can be found online on my Instagram @christine_dis_aster. If you’d like to see all of them in person, contact me and we can set up a studio appointment! Many of them are for sale, and have found homes all over the country and internationally.
Regeneration, 9”x9”, 1/2/2020
The Tree Series
In the middle of the year of One a Day Art I fell in love with a large oak tree near my home. It was uniquely larger than all trees nearby and rose majectically above the adjacent farmland. I visited it with a dear friend, and it became the subject of many pieces. All trees are embidoments of this special tree. I call it The Spirit Tree, and it still informs my paintings today.
Mixed-media paper was the most versatile substrate and my choice for this whole series. My favorite 9”x9” sketchbook (they distribute to a wide variety of stores) is this: Bee Paper Company 9"x9"
The Palette Knife
So many of these palette knife One a Day pieces were swift, textured experiments which resulted in cool blends of colors and inspired larger paintings along the way. My first experiments with the palette knife were amidst this project and I was totally in love with how the colors blended effortlessly and sometimes made beautiful, unexpected color blends.
Distance View, 9”x9”, 9/29/19
Combinations of mounted pieces from this project created so many interesting wall collages
Solo Show at Nido 2/1/20: Nowhere, Now Here
These pieces as a group transformed into a solo show just before the quarantine in Durham, NC on February 1, 2020. The pieces were small, and my ideas were simple. Many times I began painting or drawing without any ideas, just being in the process of mark-making or adding paint to paper. Each piece is titled (the fun part!!), and the titles can be chosen from my emotional responses to colors, shapes and textures. Sometimes a song lyric got the brush going. More about this show is found under Recent Work.
Each of these One a Day pieces was given a title, which became so much fun to choose (I asked my students and friends to help with naming) and often was the initial prompt for creating the piece.