Stratalicious!! It's not just about rocks ya know

I am crazy about rocks, most of my friends know this odd fact about me. I pick them up everywhere and have several displays in my studio. I thought I would talk about the history of this journey.
I have to say my obsession started when I was a kid and spent so much time piddling around in the creek. That was back in the days when we didn't have air conditioning; we only had one car; we certainly didn't have computers or electronic toys, so the summers were long and they were hot. I swear my Mom used to throw us out of the house and we couldn't come back till mealtime. I exaggerate, but it was nearly that bad.
It is definitely true that we played in the creek a lot. With rocks and crawdads mainly. Me with rocks, my brothers with crawdads.
So I have alwaysalwaysalways loved the way that rocks look, especially when they are in water. It is so amazing because their color intensifies and there is so much variation of hue.
Several years ago, I went up to St. Joseph, MI for an art fair and found the most amazing rocks there; finding them brought back childhood memories like crazy. I ended up carrying a ton of them home and even did a series prompted by these rocks, "The Community Series."

St. Joseph, MI - the east side of Lake Michigan

8x8 on claybord, part of my Community series

Then, I visited an Open Mine in New Hampshire and ohmygoodness, that was all she wrote. I could.not.get.enough. The idea of depicting cut away views of rocks kept nagging at me and I knew I had to play around with this idea. That is when I started my Stratalicious series.  Here are a few paintings I have done:

Then, some friends asked me to teach them. Which I did, here in St. Louis.
I was stunned at the work they made. Beautiful, amazing interpretations, all very diverse. Look at just a few student's work. One person had never painted before.......ahem.....sweet, huh?

But ya know, it's not really all about the rocks. It's more about layers and how to build effective color and texture and especially trying to create numerous variations of texture. In fact, the pieces end up being practically texture samplers that are lots of fun to make.

I'll be teaching this class at Art Unraveled and also at Squam (where we will include an Encaustic layer too!) Still room in both classes......would love to see you there!