Inks and Buttery Oils - by North Carolina Painter, Sue Scoggins

The creativity thing is such a mind game.  There are days when there is not a single spark of creative thought going on in my head.  Busy-ness, chit chat, and the like can fill the hours. I get energy from being around people.  But I get creative thought when alone.  Then the urge to paint comes!  It's like the brushes are screaming for me to pick them up and a vibrant color is begging to be spread on a canvas.

This painting began weeks ago with the spreading of transparent acrylic ink on white canvas.  Process magenta ink was carefully poured and spread with a palate knife.  The color is so intense yet so transparent that the white canvas shows through.  Oh such a gorgeous color!  Most all of my paintings begin this way.  The same was done with other colors some of them overlapping the other.  That was all that was done.  Here were basically three swathes of color across the canvas and I had no idea what to do with it.  So the canvas sat in a corner for weeks.

My studio is off of my living, so everyday whether painting or not, I walk by.  Unfinished paintings lean on the walls, some begging, some dormant, some wanting to be finished.  Yes...paintings are alive. (I promise, I'm not too crazy...really.)  But this one in particular had been begging for attention.
The other night, while sitting on my sofa, with this canvas silently calling me, I saw a color.  It screamed out at me.  So, I went in and put some indian yellow, pthalo blue, and white on my palet.  Mixed a chartreuse green and just started dancing it across the dark. I loved that green on that dark blue.  Thus the dance began.