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Monday, January 25, 2021

Listen, Dream, Seek... Beautiful Minds Inspiration Collaboration


Hello friends! Today I am participating in a NEW project hosted by Tina Walker called the "Beautiful Minds Inspiration Collaboration" -- where a group of creatives use StencilGirl® Stencils to create works inspired by and honoring another artist.


My box of StencilGirl stencils is a myriad of graphic patterns, floral & fauna and a beautiful face by Andrea Matus DeMeng. I spread them all out and was immediately taken back to an artist who inspired me in high school -- James Rosenquist


James Rosenquist's wall-size paintings resemble collage - combining painting with photographic imagery. The fragmented compositions are mysterious and bold. I had the pleasure of meeting him in 1988 at an exhibition of his work at the FSU Gallery & Museum.

I was in high school at the time and as a blossoming artist his works really spoke to me. 
The artist James Rosenquist passed away a few years ago. I have a program book from the exhibit which I pulled out then and have been revisiting from time to time lately. Looking back, and learning more about him, I have found a lot of interesting parallels as to why this artist has intrigued my creative mind.


With this new collab challenge upon me, his painting "Pistil Packin' Ladies" has inspired my art journal page... of course it has purple! But honestly so many of his works in this fragmented series are so amazing, modern and a bit surreal.



Pistil Packin' Ladies, 1984. Oil on canvas. 
66" x 78" (167.6 x 198.1 cm). 
Art Enterprises, Ltd., courtesy of McCormick Gallery, Chicago.


My art journal has black pages. I coated the paper first with black gesso, then I built up layers starting with my darkest blue acrylic paint, building each layer up with a lighter color up to purples. This is about 6 or seven layers. It's hard to capture how the sheen of each color layer shows the depth and creates interest with faces peeking out here and there. None of the colors are pastel, though the light reflecting off paper makes it look that way.


Next I add in the florals on top with lighter colors of acrylic paint.


To make the color "POP" I pounced in colors of PanPastel. I love the contrast these have on top of the flat acrylic paint. I built up the richness of color by applying several layers of color.


I used blue to accent the words peeking out of the layers of foilage.


Continued to build up floral layers and color.


On a blank white cardstock, I smooshed some acrylic paint to make a quick background to use as base for stenciling a POP Art version of a ladies face. I added lips, eyes and remaining layers with PanPastel before slicing the image in the style of Rosenquist. 


I came back to stencil these three words on top with acrylic paint; 
outlined and accented with Jelly Roll glaze pens.


I used some 3M spray adhesive to mount lady to the book page -- 
piecing the wedges back together in a staggered fashion.

"Listen, Dream, Seek"



I really enjoyed how freeing it was to slice up the pieces and layer onto another work to give an abstract and fragmented look. CLICK HERE to jump over to see more of the creations made for the Beautiful Minds Inspiration StencilGirl® Collaboration.

Thanks for dropping by! What artist inspires you to create? xo Sb

•  •  •  •  •  •

StencilGirl® Products used:

Cat Kerr:

Cecilia Swatton:



Andrea Matus DeMeng:

Kae Pea:

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