Hey everyone! For the new year, I’m really ramping up my efforts to get my artwork out there in the world. I stealthily started putting together an Etsy store, and am ready to share it with the world (or at least, my Facebook friends and the maybe two or three people who read this blog). For my Etsy debut, I’ve created a series of paintings which I’m calling “Hey Cupcake!”
This larger 18″ x 24″ painting, created as part of my “3 Paintings in 3 Days” challenge is the one that started it all.
I have since done a series of four 8″ x 10″ cupcakes on the same theme, with a slightly softer color palette.
I think the slightly lighter color palette is a little bit more appropriate to the subject matter, but more importantly, it also creates more of a contrast between the cutsie cupcakes and their prickly ornamentation.
This series began as one of the three paintings from my “three paintings in three days” challenge. I received some great feedback at the HYP event and decided to further explore this tasty topic with a series of 8″x10″ acrylic-on-canvas paintings. These paintings feature brightly colored, tempting cupcakes with a delicious twist. The first set of four include one “naked” cupcake, one garnished with a sharp fishhook, one sprinkled with prickly pins and nails, and one wrapped in spiky barbed wire. I decided to keep the background of each painting stark white, which objectifies the individual confections and lends more of a “pop art” feel to each composition.
I’m very pleased with the contrast between the enticing treats and their “keep-out” ornamentation. I think there are some very interesting parallels between our relationships with food (if you want to put cupcakes in that category… which I do) and our relationships with our own bodies and gender/sexual expression. But I don’t want to be that person, who shoves her opinions down your throat, so I’ll leave the specifics up to interpretation. I’m much more interested in what other people think of my art… I already spend enough time in my own head.
On a more practical level, this series has been a great learning experience for me. I have never really worked in a true series before (although I often do a series of sketches and studies before starting a final drawing or painting), so it’s really interesting to actually flesh out multiple expressions of an idea into finished products. Also, I have never had artistic quality prints made of my art before, so that has been an expensive but interesting process of trial and error, which I will be sure to write about soon! I will be adding prints of the four new cupcake paintings very soon, as well as some of my other recent creations.
Please also be on the look-out for more fabulous new content on this website, including additions to my sadly empty “Gallery” page, a more aesthetically pleasing banner, a direct link to my Etsy store, and exciting new posts, such as the finale (or should that read “Finally!”) of my very drawn-out series on “up-cycling.” Another upcoming topic is on the unique challenges of giclée printing online, as briefly mentioned above. That post will also include pictures of the prints, and a link to where you can buy the final versions.
I hope you’ll check out all of the above and share your feedback on my work and/or my store via Etsy (etsy.com/shop/JennyCooperArt) or in the comments section below. Well, that’s one step toward my new years not-calling-it-a-resolution (yay!). What are you working on for 2015?