Saturday 21 Oct was Bloomington Open Studios Tour and I spent an invigorating couple of hours visiting three local artists (painters). I was especially impressed by Dawn Adams www.DawnAdamsPaintings.com and Meg Lagodzki www.meglagodzki-art.com

It was inspiring to see their working spaces, to talk to them about their history, processes and results.

Dawn Adams uses multiple thin layers of oil paint to acheive marvelously luminous landscapes and seascapes. That was very interesting to me, as I’m currently reading Glazing by Michael Wilcox

which I have on interlibrary loan. This method takes a long time and a lot of patience. I wonder what effects I could obtain with transparent acrylics?

Meg Lagodzki also paints in oils and had a very interesting series on local quarries, which seemed to me an unlikely subject, but she had created many beautiful paintings with fascinating shapes and colors, reinforcing the idea to me that beauty can be found in unlikely areas if you know how to look at it and interpret it.