Featured Art: Dual Complexity

Woohoo! You get to see this first! This week I created a video explaining what inspired the creation of my painting Dual Complexity. I’m sharing this with you first (well, technically YouTube first, but that’s only because I need to put it on YouTube so that I can share it here).

I finally found the courage to talk about this painting for the strangest reason. A few weeks ago I was in a workshop with other psychic mediums where we took a few minutes every day of the workshop to practice with the other students. One person who was reading my aura told me about this “duality” in my personality, and how I often feel that most of the people in my life only know one half of me.

I created this painting in 2018, so at the time that I created this video in 2021, nearly three years have passed. Wow! No one else had ever recognized this about me before, and when I created this painting and gave it its name, no one truly understood it. Possibly I didn’t even fully understand it yet. This is why I love being part of the psychic mediumship community. We know each other even when we have never met before.

©August 2018, Francesca Bandino, Dual Complexity. Acrylic on Gallery Wrapped Canvas, 40x30x.8 inches.

Fear in the Yellow Cloud

My Moto for the last two years has been “have courage.” I realized that whether you have a fear of success or of failure, what’s at the root of both is the fear of change and of the unknown. Will things really be better? What if they get worse? This fear sometimes creeps up when I paint. Any mistake can lead to a painting being absolutely horrid or completely wonderful, and that fear can be paralyzing if I let it take over. 

In May and June of 2018 I had a solo exhibition called “Flowers and Their Meanings” at the Park Ridge Public Library in New Jersey. This featured paintings from my series “Flowers in the Garden.” Hands down, Roses in a Yellow Cloud was the star of the show. The vibrant yellow and red against the dark stems and leaves certainly made heads turn. Although bright colors tend to activate our minds, there’s something soothing and soft about this painting. When I started this piece I didn’t intend to go in this direction, but it happened because I didn’t let fear get the best of me. 

What the roses looked like before the yellow. ©Francesca Bandino

The Inspiration

Many years ago I read a book that has left a long-lasting impression in my mind. In it there’s a dictionary of flowers and their meanings in Victorian times. In this era, each flower, plant or fruit was used to send secret messages among the aristocracy. For example, a red rose was sent as a symbol of love while a petunia said “your presence soothes me.” I’ve never been one to really enjoy flowers, but when given a meaning, I have a different appreciation for them. So I started the process of painting a series of flowers that would express feelings and meanings through the flowers, their colors, and the colors that would surround them. 

 

 

 

The Process

Experimenting with the yellow cloud. ©Francesca Bandino

You see, I’m not really one to fully mix my colors on my palette. I mix my colors when my intention is to make something very specific and precise. Most of the time, however, I want my paintings to flow and for my colors to be as close to spontaneous as possible. I set the colors out that I would normally need for a specific color. Rather than mixing them, I just dip my brush into the different paints and then move my brush into the shapes, shadows, and highlights I create. I continue to layer, dark where I need dark, light where I need light, and out come these shapes with multiple colors. If you look at the roses from afar, they just look like red roses, but up-close you can see every single color that has come together to create each shadow and curvature. 

The Final Touches

Adding in the leaves. Still wasn't sure if to bring the yellow all the way to the roses. ©Francesca Bandino

The original background was a pink and purple. As always, my background came from paints left over while creating other paintings. The flowers I  originally intended to make were yellow in order to contrast the background. What I ended up with was this kind of red that I just didn’t want to let go of. I had to make a choice between my roses and my background. With every painting there’s always a little bit of fear that any change I make may ruin the painting forever. I can’t predict the future, but I can imagine what it could be like. I knew that my indecision was keeping me from painting, so I went for it and chose to change the background. I had never made such a drastic change to a painting I liked. The more I studied the painting, I knew something wasn’t right and so I had to go with my intuition. I created many shades of yellow, constantly changing the amount of each paint that was on my palette without any precise reason for the amount I had of each. It was an intentional spontaneity. 

What if I hadn’t taken a risk and ignored my fear? Roses in a Yellow Cloud wouldn’t be what it is. I now have a technique I’m able to and have been able to use in other successful paintings. I’m not sure if I feared failure or success. What’s important is that I took a risk, followed my intuition, and made the change I needed to make. “Have courage" continues to be my moto because overcoming fear is something I work on regularly. Maybe you do, too.

©March 2018, Francesca Bandino, Roses in a Yellow Cloud. Acrylic on Stretched Canvas, 30x20x.8 inches

Painting Outdoors

In art we often talk about inspiration. Going out, seeing different sights and experiencing new things can contribute to our inspiration because they open our mind to other possibilities.  In July 2017 I started painting in my garden, and I discovered that it drives me to paint endlessly.

My work in progress of An Empty City ©Francesca Bandino

I’ve heard that if you really want to paint then you’ll paint anywhere. Though this is mostly true, I don’t believe that I paint at my best from anywhere. In my previous life, I wasn’t happy being stuck indoors and depriving myself of sunlight. So why was I staying indoors now that I had the power to choose if to go outside to work?

Maybe it was habit or maybe it was the fact that I didn’t want to move all of my materials outside. Regardless, I stayed in my basement studio for a good portion of the summer. In fact, I had attempted to paint outside once before, but I did it all wrong. I was painting from a picture under the 2:30 pm sun. The light was reflecting off my painting while the colors on my palette dried too quickly for me to use them. Painting like this was not enjoyable.

Painting Dispassion in my outdoor makeshift studio ©Francesca Bandino

So the second time I attempted to paint outside, I made sure to paint in the shade and while it was still cool out. Painting became my morning priority. Suddenly nothing could pull me away from my canvas – except maybe lunch.

Outside, everything around me is inspiration and I’m able to use shade to my benefit. When the sunlight moves directly into my eyes or onto my painting, I simply pause that painting and move to a new spot to work on a different painting. The interruption allows me to decide what looks best on my canvas, using the plant or flower only as inspiration for what I create.

Sometimes I prefer not to have a chair. ©Francesca Bandino

Pictures don’t always show all the details I want to see. So when I’m painting from one of my photographs, I have to fill in the blanks with my imagination. While painting from a picture forces me to invent, when I’m painting outside I’m only responsible for creating. I don’t think that one approach is better than the other, they’re simply different. When I paint inside, I study my canvas. I study the colors and shapes and how they interact. I dream of those paintings and journal about them. I create a more colorful and bright world to compensate for what I don’t have indoors in the winter months.

When I paint outside I don’t go through the same process. I merely paint what I find interesting. I sit on the grass or in a chair, lay some colors that I see onto my palette, and then I paint what I want to focus on. My colors aren’t mixed to be realistic and match what’s in front of me. They’re mixed in a way that expresses what I feel when I look at that plant or flower in that moment. There’s very little afterthought. I journal about what I’ve painted and move on to the next painting. It’s simple.