​It's interesting when I come to a place of reserved panic, for example what to take with me in my car when leaving home or work, with hope that all will remain, and undamaged the next time I show up . I left my studio early today because smoke from the Sonoma County fires was building up in that area. My studio is near the Walbridge Fire. This is the third damaging fire for 3 consecutive years in a row in close proximity to me, so I'm a little uncomfortable when I smell smoke, and is now engrained in my psyche to "get the hell out of Dodge" when I do. As I was packing up,  I asked myself, "Wait! I should take something with me!"

I took the same thing that I chose last year - my color charts, the ones I made 12 years ago after losing my first born, full-term grandchild due to a cordal accident. I created 13 color charts after that unimaginable experience, because I wasn't able to paint anything else.

Going over that auspicious time, I know that creating these color charts was the thing that grounded me. That must be the reason I grabbed them. They simply let me know that I will make it through this, too.

"EVACUATION" - a photo taken from our car early in the morning as we passed through the countryside near Petaluma along with over 150,000 others who evacuated during the Kencade fire in late October. We were away for four days. I am still hearing other people's stories, and can see the effect that it made on our community. We are sensitive, and we are survivors.
The artwork for my current exhibit, "Atmospheric & Over the Edge", was moved a number of times due to the interruption of the possible danger from the fire and the evacuations. I installed the show at Fulton Crossing the morning after we returned from the evacuation, and felt a dazed out, Herculean effort that I pulled off with some sort of nonchalance, as we all did during that time.
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The exhibit will remain in the featured artist gallery through December 29 at Fulton Crossing. We still have our 3rd Friday Open Studio the evening of December 20th as well. I invite you to join me there!!

Last year I was gifted a narrow art-filled calendar that hung on a tiny nail near my desk. I loved using it and found that it much more easy to glance over to my right to reference a date, say, Tuesday the 19th, to see what day of the week it fell on. 

This year I decided to design my own narrow art-filled calendar for 2020 and share it with the public for purchase. It also seemed like a good idea to use it promotionally and give a calendar to my art collectors, and gallerists, and all who have supported and encouraged me over time, especially during the past year.

I am not a graphics designer, but I do edit photos in photoshop and create layouts for postcards, newsletters and marketing pieces in inDesign. For the most part I have always enjoyed the process. 

So, it's official. The coming year, 2020, has birthed a new calendar that contains twelve months of pages in contemporary style colorations from images of original oil paintings that I have created this year. I wanted the content to invoke optimism with each passing page, to brighten up a space and help a fellow human being stay present and organized.

It's fun to find what lies behind each calendar page, what will the next month look like? Will I like July as well as June? That's what I wanted to create, the particular pleasure of turning the calendar page and seeing a new delight.

I have studied color for twenty-five years, and utilize its power to express the beauty of being alive. How perfect it is to inspire others in the form of a calendar.

Share the joy of now, of color, and of connection with friends and family with Jill Keller Peters’ Art Filled 2020 Calendar.

7.75” x 3.5”, fastened at the top with a magnetic metal clip.

Part 1: Synergy was not planned. It just happened.
The underpainting for Synergy was a personal painting that I quietly titled Smoke and Ash (below). Meaning, it was never meant to be seen or exhibited, because it was too tender and a very personal painting. It is my memory of the Tubbs fire, standing out in the street with my neighbors in a fog of swirling smoke and ash that left my legs feeling weak. 

I created this painting a couple weeks after the fire and felt myself lost in the fog.

I worked horizontally and intuitively on the painting with an intent to paint the reds in a way that they would move spatially on the plane of the canvas. Although I had an intimate memory of painting the underpainting I didn't really think about the previous content of the smoke and ash at the time, but more that it was making a very interesting background in the artwork, and that I wanted to include it into the composition.

The Reds came began to describe a new strength, new curiosity and an unstoppable energy. I didn't do it, not out of consciousness, but out of my interaction to the paint.

Eventually I switched to working vertically, filling in shapes of various sizes and hues to create interest and space, sometimes regretting losing the under layer.

Epoch - Marking a place in time, a division of time. 
Synergy - Cooperative interaction.

lyrical and intuitive. I don't lay out a design, but have an idea of movement in my head and pull tape across the canvas in a shape that I respond to. I paint the first curve shape and continue from there. The trick is that I cannot paint an adjacent shape until the first is completely dry, and since I paint in oil, it is often at least three days before I can proceed.

Marimba is about the sixth painting that I have created in this approach. I love it's sensual movement and and rhythms. I particularly enjoy the subtle tonal differences between the white and off-white curves at top center. I can see many color palettes and individual wavy shapes that could be painted in this languid ambiguous style.

Marimba is currently exhibiting at Fulton Crossing Gallery November 1 through December 29 and is available through the gallery.

For me, moving paint around on a surface is an exercise of an intuitive, intimate relationship with oil paint, color and my painting knife. It is similar to sitting in my oversized and out-of-date stuffed chair where I journal and meditate, and where my cat sits near my head on the back of the chair, purring. Yeah, painting is like purring.
 
I think about all of the various aspects of my life while I am painting, a series of  lovely, annoying, gritty, fabulous and regrettable episodes that are part of my collective existence, while I simultaneously critically consider color, line, space, harmony and balance. “Life” sits on the back burner in a big stew pot sharing space with my psyche, the painting process, and all the classical decisions and comparisons that create a piece of art.
 
Today I’m pondering about how much the elements in the stew pot have to do with the final outcome of a painting, how “life” might become mashed up into the paint, and how the essence the life of an artist could perhaps reside forever, interlinked within the layers of paint, gesso and substrate of an artwork. Speaking for myself, I am painting the stew pot of  L I F E.  And it’s all about love.

Jill Keller Peters ​

​Found Beauty on the I-5, 1, 2, 3, and 4 - Oil on canvas, 6" x 12"
The painting is extended around the sides of each canvas. 
Available at La Crema Estate at Saralee's Vineyard. Each sold separately.

On a previous post that I sent out in March, I wrote about the spark of creativity. The small works in the suite displayed above are inspired from a drive I took to Palm Springs in February along the bemoaned and boring Interstate 5.

​This drive was anything but boring, and I saw scene after scene of serene beauty lying in swaths of green, blue and white. In this series, I painted one literal impressionist painting of the land, sky and an almond orchard. The remaining three canvases were painted with the same color palette, but in varying expressions of richness and chroma, blended together or pulled apart. It was both challenging and fun. The small works are included in the paintings at my show at Fulton Crossing.

These works are available.