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Well here it is. I nearly abandoned it. My friend and mentor, Karen, says there a phase with her work when she just knows it's "done." I tend to THINK mine are done before they really are, so I kept her words in mind and before you knew it, this painting was OVERdone. Still, I persevered, and took it to show several friends, including Karen. They nursed me through my doubts.

As a technique study, it served its purpose. I wanted to work bigger, and I certainly learned a few things there. Although I did sketch this piece out with deliberate attention to the rules of composition, it still looks like several small pieces put together. Great lesson learned for the first venture into this scale.

Having said that about the piece as a whole, I will say that I love each of the small areas, and am very pleased with the acrylic texture techniques I learned. Next time, I won't be SO excited about each technique that I feel I have to use ALL of them in one piece.

Here is how the ephemera worked out, including the picture of Buckskin Charlie, for whom the piece is named. You'll notice that I did not end up using the veneer panel collage. It was too cramped. I will finish that as a stand-alone piece, because I think it has great potential. I had several copies of the faces, in various sizes, and I chose two larger ones, plus a picture of a movie theater, which you can't see in this shot.

The theme is the Ute legacy in my city of origin. The actual HUMAN BEINGS were disregarded, marginalized or even brutalized, but their images show up as noble savages on architectural elements and their culture is memorialized in the names of buildings and highways.

Here is a closer view of some of the copper mesh. I ended up using a patina solution on it.

Here is the little polymer clay panel from the top right corner. I think adhering this was the beginning of my problems. It's so dark that in order to balance it, I had to keep going darker and darker in the other areas. I glued it on directly with acrylic paint, and it was NOT going to come off without a fight. So I left it on.

And in other news, I attended the opening of the "Blue Show" which accepted a couple of small collages and also accepted a piece that features some of Rose's painting. Not, I hasten to add, some of her really good art, which tends to be more structural in nature. However, my intentions were to have somebody besides her mother start calling her an artist. No reason not to add that to her self-concept.