Finished paintings, wonderful art events, failed experiments and more

So, this weekend I managed to finish the painting I have been working on:

"the Reckoning"
14"x18"
original acrylic painting by Chelsea Rose

I guess I managed to paint this piece in lil over a week.
Check out some other snapshots from the creative process:

(roughed out the background)

(outlined the main creature/subject)


(working on adding color to the creature and putting a posse of like creatures behind the main subject)
....its fun to document the creative process and be able to look back and see the artwork at its various stages. i think this has helped me really form a great procedure for pumping out artwork from my heart.

In other news Danny and I attended the 5th annual Portland Love Show artist reception on Friday night. There was over 350 artists who ended up participating and so it was really a site to see- sooooo much artwork everywhere! It was really amazing to see materialize into a show. The gallery where the artwork is hung is called the Olympic Mills Commerce center( 107 SE Washington st.) and the place was huge!!

here is Danny hanging out with his love show submission. His is the white mandala over blue and purple watercolor. I think the wall that his artwork was on was probably my favorite wall. He shared it with some pretty psychedelic/spiritual artwork, not to mention two mermaid pieces that i loved!

This is a shot Danny took of our collaboration piece- which is one of the body painting shoots from my photo shoot that Danny artfully photo shopped and colored.
see it big here.

Unfortunately my Love thy self painting was put into the explicit section of the love show which i think undermined and misrepresented the intent of the art and its truth. I didnt even know they were singling out artwork to be displayed separately and i was uneasy with the idea of my faery/goddess painting being hung along some of the art that was highly sexual.
i talked to Ben Pink the gallery director of LaunchPad and he was really understanding and helpful with everything. Im waiting to hear back whether or not they can move the piece to a different location.
crossin my fingers.
...just has made me think a lot about censorship lately, that of the naked human body. it think its important to take a critical look at society and the things it has named taboo. Its so strange that in this society violence is much more accepted in our mainstream media & art vs nudity & love. i think its time to reexamine ourselves, our beliefs and our comfort zones and get to the heart of things.

one step forward,
two step backward,
down inna Babylon

as far as valentines day goes:
Love thy Self
Know thy Self

Danny sold three out of the 5 pieces he had hung in the Culture Control show! Not bad at all for his first time displaying his artwork in an art show. He is already on his way to creating a bunch of new work and we are really having a wonderful time participating in the local art events.

It was perfectly wonderful fun to drive to Vancouver on Sunday and hang in the new art space ....The Space, fueled wonderfully by some of the amazing artists of Guerrilla-Media. It really was a treat to paint/create with such a wonderful art family.

Much love,
-Chelsea Rose

P.S.
Oh! and for those of you who were wondering. I didnt end up doing a body painting/photo shoot on Saturday. I had my model cancel. Hoping to make up for that this coming weekend on the 20th.
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Sold my first Painting+ SALE highlights and news

With only one day left before my solo show is taken down I finally sold one of my bigger paintings!

This morning as I was getting ready to get on my bus to work I noticed I had a missed call and voice mail. It turns out it was Tiffany Ruth the gallery owner calling to say that last night a woman walked into the gallery and bought one of my paintings. Apparently the women said for the past 2 months that the show has been up shes been window gazing and was really drawn that that particular piece. I'm so very pleased that she was compelled to buy the painting for herself and its a very exciting thing for me to know that it will be going to someone who will cherish it. So in the end I feel this art opening was a very good thing. Its sparked both mine and Tiffany's fire. She is thrilled that the show was successful, her being a new gallery owner on the scene and all. In the end we sold the piece above and 6 smaller acrylic/pen and ink paintings I did specially for the show. Coolness!
Come Thursday I will be going to the gallery to reclaim my unsold artwork. My goal is to get all of it into various local cafes, boutiques, bars and restaurants because i hardly have room for all of it in my tiny lil apartment and it really doesn't do any good to have them locked away in my lil cave anyway.

Danny designed me some new business cards that match the art portfolio website he made for me( http://www.chelsearoseart.com/ )....and these business cards will hopefully help me accomplish spreading out some of my artwork to the local business.
here is a comp so you can see what they look like:


I am very pleased with the way they turned out. We ordered them the other day so they should arrive in a few weeks.

In the meantime we are still doing our Holiday SALE in our etsy shop
So far we have sold 3 of the same exact thing during this first week of the sale:

the hot seller is: "Love thy Self" 5"x7" print of one of my original pen and ink drawings.
Its interesting that we have sold three of the same in a row...im curious to know what is drawing people to that particular print of mine.
click here to view the listing for this print.

Right now all of my art prints are on SALE!

Original price: $7
Grab them now for the Holidays for only $5
They come sealed in a crystal clear plastic sleeve to keep them safe. My prints are made on archival canson artist card paper( has a similar feel to watercolor paper). Makes a wonderful card, gift or decoration.
....So thats the featured SALE item for today!
Sale will be running through this month so please feel free to take advtanage of the prices!

Much love and best wishes, always!
-Chelsea Rose
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Solo Gallery show UPDATE and new Watercolor paintings

I'm super excited to officially announce:



If you are in the area( Portland Oregon) come visit me on September 18th at T.Ruth Artspace and take part in my opening art gallery reception: there will be plenty of trippy psychedelic paintings to behold as you sip wine and enjoy these last moments of blissful summer. This will be my first solo gallery show ever....so support will be ever so much appreciated.

Danny designed this little flyer for my upcoming show using my painting "The Faery Guide". However the design was rejected by the local publications for the naked faerie breast. I guess In Portland naked bike rides are OK, but not naked faerie paintings. We are still going to print this flyer at home and do the some xeroxing and Guerrilla distribution. As for the official postcard flyer, we redesigned everything to a classic invitation layout and went with my "River Spirit" painting(3 eyed fish) for the image. From what i understand we should have the official postcard flyers all finished and printed this week, so i will scan the finished product and "show and tell" when all is ready!

...im still working like mad to produce a few more smaller pieces for the show. At the moment i will have about 9 of my larger pieces showing and about 6+ smaller pieces in between. The gallery is a bit snug, but super charming- so i think i have plenty of material to pack the joint. cant wait to see how it all turns out! And for those of you who can not make it, no worries- i will take some photos ; )

In other news, I finally bought some more water color paper so i was inspired to brake out the paints! Its been a very long time since i have dabbled with water color- i almost forgot how much fun this medium is. Its been a wonderful thing, being able to play with WC after working with acrylic for so long- a much needed change.

Here are some of my WC experiments:

In Full Bloom
9"x12" Original watercolor painting
by Chelsea Rose


Evening Gown
9"x12" original watercolor painting
by Chelsea Rose

- Both of these were done on the same day. On a recent Saturday morning i was woken up at 6:20 sharp by my faithful-super obnoxious and fuzzy alarm - my cat, Sushi. I went into the living room, put on a movie and was getting ready to doze back asleep curled up on the couch when i remembered something exciting. A few days ago I had purchased some watercolor paper and have been forced to ignore it because of all the other projects i have to get done. I was certainly swept up in a good bit of reverie as i hurriedly hunted for my watercolor paint storage box. It took some digging to find it, and then i spent the rest of the morning in complete meditation: myself and my watercolor.

The next day i painted this one:


Sweet Water Gem
9"x12" original watercolor painting
by Chelsea Rose

I started it out with a quick pencil sketch to get the outlines down. I then did a wash for the background from blue to green( sprinkled some salt for a tad bit of texture)- once that was dry i began going into the eyes and the scales. Slowly adding shadow and more and more color.
The last thing i did was use my new super fat Faber castell india ink brush pens( compliment of Mr. Wonder Randy Tooth for my birthday. thank you!) to go and do some black outlining of the main shapes of the piece.

I got some positive feedback on these pieces when i put them up on my flickr page which was encouraging since these were certainly experimental and rough since i have been away from the medium for so long. In my watercolor storage bin i have a couple different brands of tube watercolors-some super fine quality ones that i purchased on sale when i was working for Art Supply Warehouse, but strangely enough i totally bypassed those tubes and went straight for my dirty old Prang watercolor set( do you remember prang? its what they used to give us in public school to use.) And i was pleasantly surprised with how vibrant the Prang paint ended up being. It just goes to show its really not that important how fancy and nice your materials are- as long as your able to express yourself and produce work from the heart!

In other news-
Yesterday Danny and I went to go see Karah, an artist friend of mine, at a place called The Manor of Art, Milepost 5 where she had participated in a huge art show featuring 100 artists- but with an interesting twist: They had taken over a yet to be renovated old folks home( built in the early 20s and has been used for many different purposed over the years)- every artist was assigned a room and aloud to make it into one big piece of artwork. As danny and i walked around this trippy(slightly spooky) building- we were awed as we journeyed the three floors and wandered in and out of all 100 rooms that really felt more like mini parallel universe. karahs room was super wonderful- she had taken large square cuts of green grass and tiled them in the room to create an rather earthy carpet. She displayed her pottery pieces( interesting plant holders that remind me of honey combs and mushrooms at the same time) while a friend of hers did elaborate hypnotic pen and ink drawings + fabric and flower creations on the walls.

It would be impossible to accurately describe the various scenes we walked into last evening but i can try- there was one room where someone had built up a wooden shooting gallery( like the ones you see at carnivals) where he crudely arranged pictures of Bush, Obama, Cheney, Micheal Jackson and more + beer bottles, cans- there was a Bebe gun wired to the booth- which you used to take shots at it all. it was wondrous fun. This art show is so hard to describe because it was sooo far out there. I loved it to death and went home bursting full of inspiration.

Whats also very interesting about The Manor of Art, Milepost 5 - they will be turning all of those rooms, once renovated, into super cheap/affordable artist studios. Right now they already have a live on/art studio thing going on made specially for the starving artist, or art student. There are some rooms that are fully equipped with room, sink, shower and all- others are simply rooms and down the halls are community bathrooms. They have a community kitchen, a wonderful courtyard with stage and more.

Im so glad Karah invited me to come and behold such a trippy/super awe inspiring art project. Im also very happy to know about The Manor of Art- it warms the heart to know that places like this do infact exist.

So thats all the latest news. Stay tuned- there is more to come.

Much love to all,
-Chelsea Rose
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