anika mari

It’s always hot in Saipan, but the past few days have been incredibly so. I think it’s because of all the rain we had last week. It cooled the island off while it was raining, but now the humidity is as thick as lentil soup. It makes it hard to get a lot of work done, but I’ve been making progress, if a lot slower than usual. I was thinking about starting to work more at night, but the bugs come out, and swarm all around when there’s light to attract them. There’s nothing more annoying that working carefully on the details of a painting or drawing when termites start landing on my arms or ankles.

That said, I finished a print of an all-over texture that I created using a large-nubbed sea urchin shell fragment.

I kind of love it, and it kind of creeps me out a bit. I’m not sure why, but I have the strong desire to cut it up into little circles and make a collage. Maybe to make the impact of the pattern a less intense. Somehow that seems like faulty logic, but that’s what I’m feeling about it.

Perhaps I should try the technique again. The reason I find the print a little unsettling could be that it seems a bit unbalanced and a somewhat overwrought. I’m not sure it is strong enough as a standalone piece of art. I’m having a hard time imagining my signature at the bottom and a mat and frame around the edge.

I created another “byproduct” painting when I applied the watercolor to the sea urchin piece as it rested on another sheet of watercolor paper. It wasn’t very interesting, so I got a little experimental with it. I applied a wash of water over the sharp, jagged little brush strokes. The water took up some of the pigment and created a really pretty light turquoise color. There was an excess of liquid pooling on the paper, so I had the idea to let it drip down the empty side of the paper. It made a mess of the floor, but the effect is pretty neat.

The final painting reminds me of a squashed caterpillar. This unsettles me a lot less than the above sea urchin print. Go figure.