Thoughts on Creating a Collection

ABOUT Cradle of Life: The Treasures of Jordan

By the time I returned home from my vacation to Jordan in late September, 2019, I knew that I was going to continue the odyssey. I wanted to stay connected with my vivid memories. The easiest way for me to linger in the moment was to reflect my impressions of the journey through a collection of paintings.

My inspiration lit such a bright fire in me that it was not difficult to foresee this project taking a full year of studio time. Cradle of Life would be the first time I created more than three paintings with a very specific theme. I was laser focused and began in December, 2019.

There were hours of thought that went into the planning before a single brushstroke slid across the first canvas. I had to answer my own questions. Quantity and size were first. Do I keep all the paintings the same size and proportion? Perhaps groups of three within the total? The key sites I visited were Amman, Jerash, Wadi Rum, Petra and the Dead Sea. How many paintings to commemorate each location? Three of each? Two of each?

I had plenty of reference photos to review. This would help in the decision making. I let the images bring me back to Jordan in my mind. Those that stirred my heart were copied to a separate folder. Based on the choices I could see the collection taking shape.

As I was pouring over the photos, I began thinking of color and texture. Next time I will go into the creative process and tell you about my color studies, prototypes and fun tools.

View the completed collection at https://youtu.be/h95OmbazfPs

and watch for my next blog entry.