Inner Space

Inner Space ~ by Heni Sandoval

I’ve just competed a new abstract painting titled, Inner Space. I liked the complexity of the last abstract painting, Outer Space, with the many colored spheres of various sizes and wanted to continue with that idea.

I follow the Design in Nature Facebook group and love looking at the various images posted on their page. Every so often an incredible image of a magnified leaf or flower will show up on my feed. Nature provides us with beautiful organic designs. Some of these images look a bit like space with the tiny particles and wave like lines.

I decided to imagine that I was painting a microscopic organic structure so small that I could see particles and waves. I enjoyed making the waves look like tree branches dividing and as they moved through space getting smaller. Perhaps because on my winter walks it’s hard not to notice all the many tress here with the intricate branch patterns. I used a lot of paint and played with the various sized particles to give it a spacious feeling. It was fun to do.

We’re enjoying a mild winter here, after surviving the record breaking frigid winter holiday season. The daffodils are out and the cherry blossoms are just starting. Spring will be here soon.

Uranus

Uranus – acrylic painting by Heni Sandoval

Uranus is my most recent painting and the final one in my abstract planet series. In these paintings, I like to imagine that the planets are connected with the surrounding waves of colorful energy and smaller spheres all moving through space together. I’m so enjoying getting back to painting and this one was a fun to do.

Uranus is the seventh planet out from our sun and takes 84 years to travel around the sun. It is a blue ice gas giant and is the coldest planet in the solar system. A full day on Uranus is 17 hours and it spins west to east unlike most of the other planets. Another unique fact is the Uranus’s axis is 99 degrees which means that it rotates on its side, so it spins like a ball rolling down a hill. I tried to show this as I painted Uranus with the light from the sun on the right side and the ring almost perpendicular on the page.

Uranus was discovered in 1781 and is named after the Greek god Uranus who was the god of the sky. In astrology Uranus rules the sign of Aquarius and it symbolizes the rebel, the outsider and the genius of the heavens. Since it was discovered at the time of the French and American Revelations, this planet has been correlated with independence, and breaking old structures.

Black Hole

Black Hole – acrylic painting by Heni Sandoval

Black Hole is the newest painting for my abstract outer space series. It’s darker than a lot of my paintings. With the challenging world events going I was in the mood to bring in more darkness contrasting with the light. I experimented with various colors, playing with dark planets contrasting with the light and the lighter planets against the dark space. I like the way the black hole looks a like an eye.

It’s horrific and shocking viewing what is happening in the Ukraine, the brutality of Putin’s war all over social media for everyone to see. It seems that the whole world may be coming together to say no more, I hope anyway. I’m beginning a new painting to distract myself and continue to hope for a peaceful resolution.

Cosmic Egg

Cosmic Egg by Heni Sandoval

A few weeks ago, I was chatting with an artist friend of mine who told me she works on several paintings at a time. I liked that idea; my studio is not ideal for that because it’s a small room off the main bedroom. I did, however start working on two paintings at a time; one larger abstract with more overlaid colors and the smaller looser tiger painting from last week. This week I completed the abstract which I’ve titled, Cosmic Egg.

I chose the cosmic egg because it helps me to have concrete theme as I paint abstracts. On Instagram I had had recently seen a post on geometric patterns using the vesica piscis symbol of the interlocking circles that I had used for the water element painting. The inside shape has also been said to be a cosmic egg, a common motif in mythologies. With this idea in mind, I started the painting with two interlocking large curves and kept layering colors and eventually forming the egg shape in the center.

The Cosmic Egg is a major creation symbol used in myths throughout the world. It is a metaphor of potentiality and held within chaos, prior to becoming the creative cosmos.

Curves

Curves -acrylic painting by Heni Sandoval

Curves is my most recent abstract. I’m enjoying doing these paintings, this time my goal was to use muted colors with darker tones. As you can see, I did not succeed with that goal, as I tend to always end up with jewel colors and while there are some dark tones, this painting is quite bright. What I do like about it is that the many layers of paint begin to give the painting depth and I actually love the rich colors.

I am going to force myself to change my color palette in the next few paintings to see how that goes. I also want to start painting in a larger format and am going to get some larger watercolor sheets in the next few weeks. We’re in for an overcast weekend after a few days of off and on rainy weather here as the remnants of another hurricane come through. I plan to start the new painting tomorrow.

Blue Spiral

Blue Spiral – acrylic painting by Heni Sandoval

I took some time off from painting to work on my artist website that I had made back in 2017. I had not done much with it since being in a two art shows in 2018. With my sister’s devotional, Awaken to Rest being published any day now, my website may get some more traffic. With this in mind, I uploaded several paintings from the last few years to the collection pages and made a new artist statement and projects page. I’m still tweaking it, but it’s in fairly good shape.

So, now I am back to painting. Blue Spiral is another abstract, I had the idea to paint spirals on all sides of the page. I began with the blue spiral centered horizontally on the page and then painted another spiral perpendicular and then two more coming across from the corners, each one a different color. From there, I began playing with more loops and circles and blending colors until it felt right. All the remained to be seen was the Blue Spiral.

It’s hard to believe that September is just a few days away, hope everyone is enjoy the last days of summer.