Monday, December 3, 2018

Auction Art - 4 works inspired by Rex Ray and the Hummel Concerto


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Auction Art – 4 works inspired by Rex Ray and the Hummel Concerto

Continuing the descriptions of art that is up for online auction until Dec 6, 2018

In 2008, I bought two plane tickets for myself and Guy Few, and we flew to San Francisco to edit our second concerto album, Romanza.

We spent 4 days in the studio of recording engineer David Bowles of Swineshead Productions LLC in Berkley, CA. When the editing was completed, we headed into SF to eat things, buy stupid hats and look at art.

I was really inspired by the art of Rex Ray which was on exhibit. I bought a book about him and a big pack of postcards.  I pored over the book and created two large paintings in one of my favourite elongated narrow shapes (2 feet x 6 feet).

LOT 137
One was called The Sun’s Letter to the Moon (I love you) and sold in 2014 to flutist Leslie Newman. The second, Othello and Desdemona, is available in the current online auction until December 6.  It is acrylic on canvas, with portions of the painting collaged onto the main canvas.  I also used multi-media acrylic polymer to give it a gritty texture in places.  If it doesn’t sell, I will pull it off the stretcher, roll it up and use the stretcher frame to continue another series I am currently working on.


 Othello and Desdemona, 24" x 72", acrylic on canvas, original art by Nadina Mackie Jackson

LOTS 129 AND 130

And I carried the postcards for 9 years, through 3 house sales and moves, one divorce, the death of both my parents and a several more recording projects.  When sorting out boxes when I moved to the church studio in Drayton, I found that fabulous postcards and made two very long, double-sided mobiles.

The first one is my basic motif of a flying bird. I used very strong, thin nylon string that I had inherited from my father who had used it for creating fish nets (for catching food, not for making stockings) when he was sailing to Hawaii on a boat he built himself. Yes, his story might be more interesting.

For the cut out birds (Fly Free), I cut birds from two postcards and glued them one at a time, always referring to a hanging point to make sure they were level.  The cardstock is good quality, but all papers need to be heavily weighted to dry straight and true, so I did one bird at a time, allowing a minimum of 12 hours to dry for each. In the end, there were 11 birds spaced on the string, and when hung, they turn slowly in different directions. In the daytime, they catch the sun and briefly flash; at night, they cast poetic shadows. 

I used the remaining postcards to make PictureThis (Fly Free), which is another, shorter mobile (ca. 7 feet).  This mobile uses two parallel support strings which are attached to a carved willow twig at the top.  To create this mobile, I put equidistant pins into each end of the work table, then secured them for the duration of the creation process.  I alternated the flying direction of each bird on the totemic mobile and spaced them evenly.  There are 10 images on the mobile.



all photos by Dawn McLeod










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