Collaborative painting for Central Florida Dream Center Auction Sat

I've been working on a collaborative painting to benefit the Central Florida Dream Center  through Arte Que Salva (Art that Saves).

Like many artists, I get approached for charities throughout the year. I usually like to choose those that benefit my community or an issue that is close to my heart. Central Florida Dream Center does both, working with families, individuals and children in need to offer a three pronged approach to their programs: spiritual, social and economic. 

So what is a collaborative painting? 

It is simply that you work with another artist to complete a painting. There are no rules. For instance, it can be done simultaneously in the same painting session or you can mail unfinished pieces back and forth with serious time lapses inbetween sessions. In this case, children from the Central Florida Dream Center started the painting on an canvas piece of cloth during an art workshop. Some of them chose to work alone on a single piece of canvas, and some worked with a buddy. Now, it's up to me (and other participating artists) to finish the work.

Here's a before and after. 

Collaborative work between students and me!

Students Alexia and Amiya created the painting on the left. The final piece after I altered it is on the right.

I thought about different approaches to painting on their painting. I thought it was really important to keep the integrity of their work and not completely paint over everything. But where to start? I usually paint realistically in oils but in keeping with the spirit of the piece I decided to work mixed media. I used graphite (pencil), inks, acrylics and papers. I wanted to stay with the vivid colorway and push it. I also wanted to incorporate a little realism and have that play off all of the kid's elements and the abstraction. I also wanted to build up layers. Layers of life, layers of thinking and of the possible future.

Did you notice? Ignoring an accepted "rule" of composition, I put the girls face and figure almost dead center in the canvas. Rules are made to be broken, hey!

This is a close up detail of the figure.

Detail of collaborative work between students and me

In the detail you can see the graphite drawing with paint glazes, torn paper collage, stamping, scumbling, sponging and painting.


The painting will be displayed and auctioned along with the other art pieces at the Jeanine Taylor Folk Art Gallery in Sanford, Florida. They will be displayed from 12-8pm on Saturday, May 16 with the reception and auction running from 6-8pm. Map here.

Enjoy a special, one night event with wine and refreshments and support the Central Florida Dream Center!

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