BOUNTIFULNESS Scuba Vest Dress

Quick and easy, this A-line vest dress adds some sass to your class. The Scuba fabric with it's heavy-weight knit weft (95% polyester, 5% elastane) gently drapes over your curves yet still has plenty of room for movement. The 60s inspired cut with accent binding gives it a modern sensibility, day into night. It's meant to be a statement piece but, when you put it on, you'll definitely be the punctuation. Add this dress to your wardrobe and you'll never have to worry about what to wear for those days when you want to feel casual while knowing you're really FANCY.

ABOUT THE PAINTING:

BOUNTIFULNESS: Acrylic on canvas, 2 x 1 FT, 2024.

This piece is about limitations and expansions. The thing is, when I start a piece, I rarely have a construct going into the work. Don’t get me wrong, there are many times throughout my career that I’ve had concepts for series and such but, as a standalone piece, I often just pick a color. For instance, this piece started in the deep violet you can see on the sides as well as bars both above and below the focal. Picking that first color to cover a blank canvas is the hardest part of the whole piece, if you can believe it. Here is wherein lies the limitations: color.

As a musician is tasked to make an original piece with only so many notes on a scale, visual artists are really only playing with variants of three primary colors and maybe a white or a black. “But, what about ROY G BIV?” one may ask. Sure, the rainbow is the natural spectrum of colors we all know. Yet, if you think about it, rainbows are the primary colors of red, yellow and blue with buffers which allow primary colors to blend into secondary colors of orange, green and different shades of purple. Of course, this is a simplistic way of parsing a color wheel and I’m not going to get into the logistics of complimentary colors or tertiary shades or warm versus cool values. Color theory is a tool I use in my work but not necessarily something I can summarize in a paragraph for those who are actually interested. That said, these are all thoughts I’m pondering as I begin a piece, as that first ground that covers the blank canvas is drying.

This piece was originally about expansion with the dynamic diagonals overlying the rigid vertical lines… somewhere along the way, thinking about how limiting colors can be, I saw one of the many magnets on my fridge that reads “Bloom where you’re planted.” It was from there I masked off the basket. Here’s a little-known fact about me: I never use black from a tube in my paintings, don’t even own a black. That basket is all painted from purples, yellows, reds, golds… can’t really remember what all colors but it sure was fun playing with them! And, would you believe it, the limitations became bountiful.