Getting back to my happy place

In the summer I enjoy painting outdoors, but in the winter I paint from photographs that I’ve taken during my travels. I travel to California often and I started taking pictures of bird of paradise flowers on one of my trips to Los Angeles. The following Spring I started painting from those photographs.

©May2017, Francesca Bandino, Bird of Paradise Blue. Acrylic on Canvas, 10x10x1.5 inches

The Bird of Paradise Flower series was my first body of work based on the study of a single subject matter. Although the first one I painted was very simple, the more paintings I created, the more details I explored. I also found myself experimenting with backgrounds and color choices. In the first part of the series I completed 9 bird of paradise flower paintings. Then I had other ideas percolating in my head and I moved onto other projects.

The following winter I had some issues in my studio including flooding (don’t worry, nothing was ruined). I took this as an opportunity to move into a shared studio space with other artists. I had been working on my own for a long time, so it was nice to be surrounded by creatives. However, the artist side of my brain didn’t seem to agree with the social part of it. 

For the first month I found myself making less than interesting work. I experimented with a few subject matters, but everything seemed completely out of my style. Even the flower paintings I made were not up to par with my other flower paintings. I was creatively lost. I was having a hard time connecting to my work in this new space.

A Bright Soul in progress on my easel

In my despair I printed out the pictures I had taken of the bird of paradise flowers in Los Angeles. I was hesitant to start. What if I had forgotten how to paint these majestic flowers? What if they didn’t look like the ones I had previously made?

However, I did what I usually do. I pushed my fears aside for the love of painting. I slowly started to feel myself sink into my happy place. My art companions were amazed at what I was creating. This was working. I wasn’t trying to create something unique or meaningful. I was simply creating a subject that speaks to me with colors that I love. I had shut out everything else around me and created something beautiful. The painting was A Bright Soul. I was creating something familiar but in a new way. It gave me the momentum to make paintings that I loved again.

“Radiant Plenitude” is my solo exhibition of bright and bold paintings which was on display at the Ocean City Arts Center in March 2019. Among the paintings in the collection is the Bird of Paradise Flower series. Each piece and each body of work carries its own significance. When I look at the Bird of Paradise Flower paintings I’m reminded of courage, comfort and the happiness they bring. 

From left to right: Blue Flight, Orange Rose, Bird of Paradise Blue, Voluptuous Blues, Dual Complexity

Colorful Clouds

After I’ve completed a series or finished a project, I take time to begin researching and experimenting with new subjects, styles, and color palettes. If I’m lucky I happen upon something right away and am able to develop my next series of paintings. Other times, I pick up from a one-off creation that I completed in the middle of a different series and didn’t continue. I let that painting speak to me and tell me a story. Then I let that story guide me through a new body of work. 

The first draft of “Remnants” that I created.

I wasn’t as lucky when I started Remnants. I had just completed a series and I was looking for where to go next. While in my studio looking for pictures that I could take inspiration from, I settled on one I had taken while hiking in Washington State. The mist over the mountains felt so relaxing that I thought it would be a great way to start a new project. After putting down a bit of grey and white clouds on a blue background, I wasn’t convinced that this was the direction I wanted to go. An artist friend suggested that I needed to add more layers. Even though I knew she was right, I also knew that it would no longer look like mist. I wasn’t ready to continue. I was afraid to continue. So I left it alone and moved onto another series. I wouldn’t revisit it again for a long time. 

©August 2018, Francesca Bandino, Sun in the Storm. Acrylic on Canvas, 40x40x1.5 inches, $1,060.00

In July 2018 I traveled to Virginia. The environment was very different from what I was accustomed to. In my many attempts to search for new subjects to paint, I settled on something magical - the clouds. Clouds in Virginia were large and full, they felt so close I thought I could touch them, and they had beautiful rays of color shining through. Before approaching my large 40x40 inch canvas, I did two small studies on 4x4 inch canvases. I didn’t want a repeat of my Remnants failure. To my surprise, I was happy with what I created and I had the confidence to tackle the large painting. I waved my brush across the canvas, creating colorful, rolling clouds. I could feel that Sun in the Storm would be the start of a new series. 

©August 2018, Francesca Bandino, Wind and Clouds. Acrylic on Canvas, 30x30x1.5 inches, $805.00

I took advantage of my momentum to create my next cloud painting on a 30x30 inch canvas. Clouds move quickly, so I had to start my painting from yet another picture. This one was from a road trip between New Jersey and Virginia. Each cloud became heavenly as I painted them full and weightless. An image came to me and so I added strong blue brush strokes around the clouds creating a wind-like atmosphere. Wind and Clouds became the next painting in my Clouds and Landscapes series. 

©September 2018, Francesca Bandino, Remnants. Acrylic on Canvas, 12x16 inches, $380.00

After that I was finally ready to approach Remnants once again. I needed to be true to my style of painting and the grey mist was too dull. Instead, I added layers upon colorful layers, creating fluffy orange and peach-colored clouds, each fitting like a puzzle piece into the next.

I chose to hang these paintings at the Hanover Township Town Hall for my winter 2019 solo exhibition, “Nature Reimagined: A solo exhibition of select paintings by Francesca Bandino.” Alongside them you’ll also find select paintings from Clouds and Landscapes, Apples and Temptation, and Flowers in the Garden. For each of these paintings I spotted a colorful reflection, a hidden light, or a generally muted color and intensified it to match the feelings of the day. I consider it a brighter way to view the world. After all, colors can be found in the most unlikely of places if we’re willing to see them. 

Exhibition at the Hanover Township Town Hall
From left to right: Head in the Clouds, Remnants, Mystification, Sun in the Storm, Hydrangeas in the Garden

I Think in Color

“What is your inspiration?” 

This is probably the most difficult question for me to answer. The initial thought that leads to my art isn’t ever linear. It’s more like an accumulation of what I see, what I imagine, what makes my heart beat a little faster, and what I’ve created before. However,  there is one bit of inspiration that’s at the root of my paintings — color.  

Work in progress for Protection ©2018, Francesca Bandino

Are you surprised? I imagine that once you consider my color palette, and in some cases are shocked by it, you’re probably not surprised at all. Most of us see in color with our eyes open, but I see color when my eyes are closed. I haven’t always been aware of it, but once I realized it, I was able to work through it and use it. 

Most of the time the images I see make no sense. They move too quickly and look like shots of purple bursting into the air, orange coming at me, then disappearing and turning into yellow or vanishing into black. 

The start of Open Fascination ©2018, Francesca Bandino

Other times I’ll remember a scene but I’ll remember only a few colorful items while everything else falls away. 

Maybe we all think in this way, but not everyone chooses to pay attention to these thoughts. Sometimes we only want to understand what makes sense. Yet, I choose to make sense of what I see through my work. Actually, I take that back. I don’t choose to. It’s as though my body reminds me in every instance of those flashes of color and it won’t stop until I can get it all out onto my canvas. If I can’t paint in that moment, the thought will overcome me until I can. When I finally get it out, the thought vanishes and my brush does the rest of the work.

As Dreams Merge was one of those flashes that I saw. From left to right: As Dreams Merge, An Empty City, Stay in Line. ©Francesca Bandino

When I’m working on a painting or a series, I see flashes of the painting just when I’m about to fall asleep. This happened to me when creating my Squareism pieces. I see them in different colors, full and bright, creating something that may not exist. Though sometimes I contemplate the changes I need to make to a painting, other times I see the image come and go in my mind and I know what I must do. It’s happened to me before and it has happened to me since. 

This is what it’s like to think in color. 

Why I Take Breaks from Flowers

Flowers are often the theme in my paintings. When given a meaning, I get lost in the flowers as I paint them and recreate them. However, from time to time I have to take a break from them. My 2018 flower paintings are mystical, vibrant, and very popular, but a few things happened in the matter of a few months. 

©February2018, Francesca Bandino, The Heads of Roses. Acrylic on Stretched Canvas, 24x30x.8 inches

My story starts in May and June of 2018. I had a solo exhibition at the Park Ridge Public Library in New Jersey called “Flowers and Their Meanings.” Obviously, the exhibition was filled with my paintings of flowers - 17 to be exact. Some were paintings I had created in 2017, but others were paintings I had created in the months before the exhibition in 2018. Because I was so concentrated on creating flowers, my mind had little opportunity to venture elsewhere. I create best when I work in a series with a clear objective, so even though I did create a few non-floral pieces, they weren’t quite so successful. I truly enjoyed creating these for my show, but I found myself craving something new. 

Also in May the New York Times published an article about an exhibition happening at the New York Botanical Garden - “Georgia O’Keeffe: Visions of Hawaiʻi,” an exhibition of Georgia O’Keeffe’s unknown paintings. Two days later I was exhibiting in Washington Square Park and among my paintings were select pieces from my Bird of Paradise collection. I was compared to O’Keeffe by passers-by all weekend long. Even though I had heard an Artsy podcast about these pieces months before, I had no idea that the exhibition would start around that time or that it was going to be featured in the New York Times. I plan out which pieces I’l bring to each outdoor show at least a week before so that I can create a price list, pack the pieces, and remove them from my online store and my Saatchi store. In that week, I barely go on social media or read the news, so I was pretty oblivious to what was happening. 

©April2018, Francesca Bandino, A Bright Soul. Acrylic on Canvas, 24x24x.8 inches

I have always had an independent spirit, a need to be different and unique. Back in my school days, Georgia O’Keeffe was one of the first modern artists whose names I had memorized and whose work I admired. That being said, I’ve never allowed her work to directly influence my own. She may have inspired me to the extent that I felt confident creating close-ups of flowers, but for as much as I admire her, I don’t want to be seen as a replica of her.

In July 2018 I went to the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum (fortuitously adjacent to one another) in Washington, DC. In one of the exhibitions I was attracted to two bold paintings, one of abstract buildings and the other of an abstract landscape. I was shocked to discover that Georgia O’Keeffe had painted both of them! I knew that she wasn’t just a painter of flowers, but I had fallen into the trap of associating her only to those paintings.

In my tent and with my paintings at the Boardwalk Art Show

A few weeks later, in August 2018, I showed my work for the second time at the Boardwalk Art Show in Ocean City, NJ. My largest painting was a 40x40 painting of orange wind chime roses called Open Fascination. Although my tent also featured paintings from the Canna Tropicanna Black series and the Apples and Temptation series, I was starting to be known as the flower lady. For the record, I once again was compared by a few people to Georgia O’Keeffe. 

While I’m not actually passionate about flowers, I do love being outside and getting that breathless feeling you get when you witness something that can only happen in nature. Flowers are part of that magic, but so are plants, trees and clouds; bodies of water, vast hills, and snow falling to the ground. Sometimes I like to contrast nature with city buildings and fashion figures. Most of all, I want to discover new ways of seeing what’s around me and how they’ll influence my imagination.

©April2017, Francesca Bandino, Tree in Via Roma. Acrylic on Canvas, 30x40x.8 inches, $930.00

Fear in the Yellow Cloud

My Moto for the last two years has been “have courage.” I realized that whether you have a fear of success or of failure, what’s at the root of both is the fear of change and of the unknown. Will things really be better? What if they get worse? This fear sometimes creeps up when I paint. Any mistake can lead to a painting being absolutely horrid or completely wonderful, and that fear can be paralyzing if I let it take over. 

In May and June of 2018 I had a solo exhibition called “Flowers and Their Meanings” at the Park Ridge Public Library in New Jersey. This featured paintings from my series “Flowers in the Garden.” Hands down, Roses in a Yellow Cloud was the star of the show. The vibrant yellow and red against the dark stems and leaves certainly made heads turn. Although bright colors tend to activate our minds, there’s something soothing and soft about this painting. When I started this piece I didn’t intend to go in this direction, but it happened because I didn’t let fear get the best of me. 

What the roses looked like before the yellow. ©Francesca Bandino

The Inspiration

Many years ago I read a book that has left a long-lasting impression in my mind. In it there’s a dictionary of flowers and their meanings in Victorian times. In this era, each flower, plant or fruit was used to send secret messages among the aristocracy. For example, a red rose was sent as a symbol of love while a petunia said “your presence soothes me.” I’ve never been one to really enjoy flowers, but when given a meaning, I have a different appreciation for them. So I started the process of painting a series of flowers that would express feelings and meanings through the flowers, their colors, and the colors that would surround them. 

 

 

 

The Process

Experimenting with the yellow cloud. ©Francesca Bandino

You see, I’m not really one to fully mix my colors on my palette. I mix my colors when my intention is to make something very specific and precise. Most of the time, however, I want my paintings to flow and for my colors to be as close to spontaneous as possible. I set the colors out that I would normally need for a specific color. Rather than mixing them, I just dip my brush into the different paints and then move my brush into the shapes, shadows, and highlights I create. I continue to layer, dark where I need dark, light where I need light, and out come these shapes with multiple colors. If you look at the roses from afar, they just look like red roses, but up-close you can see every single color that has come together to create each shadow and curvature. 

The Final Touches

Adding in the leaves. Still wasn't sure if to bring the yellow all the way to the roses. ©Francesca Bandino

The original background was a pink and purple. As always, my background came from paints left over while creating other paintings. The flowers I  originally intended to make were yellow in order to contrast the background. What I ended up with was this kind of red that I just didn’t want to let go of. I had to make a choice between my roses and my background. With every painting there’s always a little bit of fear that any change I make may ruin the painting forever. I can’t predict the future, but I can imagine what it could be like. I knew that my indecision was keeping me from painting, so I went for it and chose to change the background. I had never made such a drastic change to a painting I liked. The more I studied the painting, I knew something wasn’t right and so I had to go with my intuition. I created many shades of yellow, constantly changing the amount of each paint that was on my palette without any precise reason for the amount I had of each. It was an intentional spontaneity. 

What if I hadn’t taken a risk and ignored my fear? Roses in a Yellow Cloud wouldn’t be what it is. I now have a technique I’m able to and have been able to use in other successful paintings. I’m not sure if I feared failure or success. What’s important is that I took a risk, followed my intuition, and made the change I needed to make. “Have courage" continues to be my moto because overcoming fear is something I work on regularly. Maybe you do, too.

©March 2018, Francesca Bandino, Roses in a Yellow Cloud. Acrylic on Stretched Canvas, 30x20x.8 inches