Little Weed

Little Weed by Teena Marie Fancey
8"x8" mixed medium on board, Admiral Moth wings, dandelion seeds

New painting for my exhibit Altered Egos coming in NOV 2013 at the Craig Gallery, Dartmouth Nova Scotia

The Bohemians

The Bohemians. Mixed media painting by
Teena Marie Fancey

The Bohemians

Bo-he-mi-ans
n.
Those with artistic or literary interests who disregard conventional standards of behaviour.


 
You can find these Bohemians at the
Cape Breton Centre for Craft and Design.

The Weekend Dance-(Get your glad rags on!): THE BACK STORY

The back story: So much goes into bringing an idea to fruition. Hours of pondering, reading, and selecting/searching for the very right combination of colour, imagery and found objects to bring a story together on a 2-D surface. So, here is the story of The Weekend Dance (SOLD) ( mixed media on board with found object embellishments), a triptych ( 3 panels) featured in my exhibit When She Was Bad...now showing at the Cape Breton Centre for Craft and Design until July 22nd, 2011.

In creating The Weekend Dance (Get your glad rags on!) I was inspired by the contrast between our Saturday night and Sunday morning behaviours, vintage photos from postcards, as well as two tales of deadly apparel: The Red Shoes, a work of fiction by Hans Christen Anderson, and the true story of a stunning ball gown made of arsenical green tarlatan.


 The girl in Anderson’s tale wore her red shoes everywhere, and they were perceived as evidence of her vanity. Once cursed, the shoes took control of their owner’s feet. The shoes forced the girl to dance until she died from exhaustion after she boldly wore them to church.

 The 1862 documented gown was made for a socialite’s ball using a shining green imported textile. The twenty yards of fabric was dyed with a compound of arsenic and contained about 900 grains of the poison. While its owner danced, the dress scattered a dusting of arsenic about the ballroom making many of the guests ill and poisoning the wearer as she twirled about the floor.

 The subject in The Weekend Dance (Get your glad rags on!) is dressed in a fetching green frock and red shoes, ready for Saturday night. She hopes the weekend will bring something exciting and new. She throws off the shackles of the mundane and hurls herself into the dance with abandon; her red shoes move her through the hours. She will knowingly take risks tonight; she will be reckless and perhaps self-destruct in the complete surrender of her inhibitions.

 Things will look very different in the harsh Sunday morning light and she will feel a tinge of guilt. As the workweek begins she will start looking forward to its end, and once the weekend arrives she will do the dance again. She is compelled to.

Ma! I'm on youtube!

Please note: I say 2010 but I MEANT to say 2011!!

Or would you rather be a fish?

Would you like to swing on a star?

Carry moonbeams home in a jar

And be better off than you are

Or would you rather be a fish?

A fish won't do anything but swim in a brook

He can't write his name or read a book.

To fool all the people is his only thought

And though he's slippery he still gets caught

But then if that sort of life is what you wish

You may grow up to be a fish...

Inspiration for this piece, 'Baby Boy-Would you like to swing on a star?' (SOLD) came from an old photograph I found of a little baby in a very archaic looking 'jolly jumper'. The photo made me laugh out loud. The song Swing on a Star immediately came to mind! So, I put him in outer space, and painted his little knit hat to look a bit like a helmet. I cut a thin sheet of mica and put it over the jar of moonbeam Baby Boy is carrying to give the contents a bit of shine and to give the illusion of glass. The stars and blue 'bubble'-like embellishments were sparkly bits from a container of found odds and ends I have.

I do have more 'situations' planned for this Baby in the future. So, you can expect to see him again.

Redux, Redux...goin' solo

Redux, Redux will be showing at the Ross Creek Centre of the Arts in beautiful Canning Nova Scotia in July! I will be exhibiting solo as my Redux partner, Laura Moore has her hands full at her new boutique. Her presence and her fab work will be missed at Ross Creek but you can see her found object paintings and her other creations at Finders Keepers in Bras D'ors her on Cape Breton Island.

Meanwhile, I am excited to be showing off-island and hope that the Valley folk will come on out and enjoy my work.

Check out the Ross Creek Centre's website for info on my show and upcoming exhibits and their theatre company Two Planks and a Passion. I'm hoping to take in a performance of Rockbound, this year's play.

So Mainland Nova Scotia, here I come! Wish me luck all!

Blue Boy and Pink Girl

I have stalled on Bread and Honey but fortunately, being a creative, moody type, I have two more pieces in the works...ALWAYS have more than one thing on the go!


As promised new pics of two new pieces in progress!
These paintings were inspired by the nursery rhyme:
What Folks are Made Of
What are little boys made of? Snips and snails and puppy-dog tails;
That's what little boys are made of.
What are little girls made
of? Sugar and spice and everything nice;
That's what little girls are made of.



In these first two photos, both paintings have had a background of pink and blue applied and the photo transfers have been completed. These two kiddies come from a photo I found at a flea market. Where are these two now, I wonder? Did they follow a path that was laid out for them? Or did they follow the one less travelled?



The photos to the right show a bit more progress made. Both images have been embellished with paint, the transfers tend to be quite 'ghostly' as I have
mentioned before, so a bit of painting takes them to a new stage and kinda makes 'em my own.


I have worked on the background and chosen what found objects and ephemera I will be adding. At this point, I want their 'stories' to be about what society's general expectations are; what kind of man or woman they should aspire to be.

Objects for our Blue Boy include:
vintage Toronto Maple Leafs metal game piece, plastic army man, vintage wedding cake decoration, plastic baby, glass 'bubbles', ephemera from old encyclopedias and an illustration from The Modern Sex Manual (1942) .

Objects for our Pink Girl include:
doll shoe, vintage button, vintage swizzle stick, plastic baby, toy wooden house, glass bubbles in pink, ephemera from old encyclopedias, illustration from The Modern Sex Manual (1942) .



The Objects have yet to be attached to the piece. I will do so once I'm satisfied with the background and the bubbles. Then I'll integrate them with some fussing and glueing.



Stay tuned...I am really caught up in telling these little stories and am sure to have more progress to show you in the next day or so....