E Komo Mai! Welcome to my blog.

I'm delighted that you dropped in! E Komo Mai: WELCOME! This blog is basically an online visual journal is modeled after a concept I learned of in psychology 101... waaaaaaay back in college. That concept was somewhere in the chapter on The Significance of Dreams, where it mentioned someone's theory on dreaming about a house usually means that the house represents you. So I have used my actual house (Mauna Lea Manor) to structure my blog. In different rooms you will find different aspects of my life; different interests I like to blog about. This is a way to bring a little organization into my life and thoughts for myself... (dreams are in The Bedroom, Family updates are in The Living room, etc.)
This also, I would imagine, make reading this blog more convenient for you as well. If you are a grandparent interested in seeing photos and hearing stories about my boys, but maybe not so interested in my bellydancing obsession: you can just read what goes on in The Playground. But if you are an Art Collector more interested in my latest work and information on collecting, but not especially interested in my personal life: you'd enjoy The Office. Mauna Lea Manor is sort of the foyer to all the other rooms. If you would like to tour my online portfolio, please visit: www.stephaniebolton.com.
I hope you enjoy your time here ;) & continue to stop by!



Saturday, September 18, 2010

Portrait of a Flamenco Dancer...


This is a portrait of Rubina Carmona: Flamenco Dancer & Festera

I always admire painters who can make a painter come alive with realism.  The paintings where you can almost reach into the painting and touch something that is cold and hard shiny metal or soft silky fabric.
Those are the paintings that can fool you into wondering "what am I looking at? A photograph? Or a painting?"
But when I consider the paintings that I enjoy the most- they are paintings that look like paintings.  I really love especially giving near realism attention to one detail in the painting and then leaving the rest rough and painterly.  Perhaps this style annoys the perfectionist in some, because  to them, the painting looks unfinished.  But to me, it is the privilege of the painter- to be able to do something that does not exist in nature.  This is the sort of artwork that a photographer couldn't do... not without graphic special effects at least.  To pick and choose the level of detail to reveal and to do so liberally, is one of the advantages of working with paint.
In this painting I am revealing two things- one being the obvious: my subject, Rubina materializing out of a swirl of thick chaotic color...
but the other is my medium: by working thickly with them in the ways in which I can use them- thin, watery washes, clumpy juicy textural globs, .... I am revealing their nature and their potential.
So you see my idea and my means to express it- even in the photograph I think it easy to recognize the three dimensional characteristics of the medium.
What is harder to see in the photograph is the silky iridescence of the silk scarf.  Using Metallics underneath a thin wash of burgundy, I was able to achieve that sparkle one sees when you walk past something silk that catches the light.
If you want to experience that special detail, you'll have to join me at


This painting of Rubina (along with all the other dancer portraits I have been doing) will be on display for the first time at this art exhibition and night market.
OCTOBER 1st FRIDAY 5- 10pm
at the CHINATOWN COURTYARD
in DOWNTOWN HONOLULU

I do hope you'll join us!
RSVP to the official invite here

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