Compelled to Create

Fall is my favorite season in Los Angeles, watching the birds change color and fall from the trees.

David Letterman (1947–)

I know…it’s way past fall. But I love this Letterman quote, and with the fall leaves on the artwork I thought I could get away with it. It’s even funnier to me after living out there for a while!

This is my first real foray into using beeswax. I really loved it!

The surface is a standard background I use a lot; foamcore covered with brown kraft paper (kind of papier maché style). It creates a great texture and color to start with. A few layers of paint and ink were added. Then came the beeswax—to attach the leaves, feathers, and tissue.

The center leaf is one of the big cottonwood leaves I picked up last fall (and blogged about in Nature and the Creative Impulse). The piece is about ten inches square, so the leaf is about the size of my hand…probably not all that big for easterners, but for Colorado trees, it’s pretty big. 

Feathers are one of my favorite things, and these two are a couple of cool finds. The text on the piece is all foreign, and is off a dress pattern. I loved the way the beeswax made the tissue paper disappear, so all you really see are the words. 

So…why “Run Over by a Truck”? Because the smaller cottonwood leaf in the center was laying in the street for quite some time before I picked it up. It literally had been “run over by a truck” (and many cars, no doubt). I loved it’s frail beauty. It is so fragile that I thought  completely covering it with beeswax was the best way I knew to protect it. 

Sometimes I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck…I hope I come out as beautiful in the end as the leaf.