Gordon & Alta Solomon Exhibition via wixshoutout.com 

What do artist do in their free time?

That could have a million different answers, but the upcoming show for couple Gordon & Alta Solomon takes a brief peep into a private moment during their “parental break” in the summer of 2016; while still living in Grand Cayman.

After a long day – a long week – a mellow sunset and time to unwind together, without their two children who had left 2 weeks earlier for summer vacation in Cayman Brac, made way for a creative weekend session for the two artists.

“Dear Diary…” a series of artwork; painted by both, opens September 9th at Solomon Studio in Cayman Brac. What began as a simple journal entry written by Alta entitled “The best summer ever” propagated into works of art in the following days.

“Alta and I were talking and she said she felt like painting, something she hadn’t really done since high school. I had a roll of canvas, so we unrolled two 22 feet strips in our living room and just started to apply any colour she pulled from my paints onto the yellow primed surface; that was the beginning of our 14 oil on canvas paintings.”

“We weren’t sure what we were going to do with them afterwards, but it gave Alta joy to paint and have creative freedom; blending one colour into the next to make a hypnotic back drop for what might come next. Once we had completely covered the stretched canvas I divided it into 26″ x 26″ areas which were then assigned a portion of Alta’s journal entry. First I did a sketch of the 14 ideas that came to mind as she read it, I then applied with a ‘drip finish’ the subject matter.”

The self portraits and images in the paintings look like “wired people/subjects” – they actually represent a disconnection from the world, from technology, work, worries, responsibilities – “things to do”.

Resuscitating the “human factor” of life, relationships and being human, and respite of the “haste aspect” of life are really the concept within these collective work of art/journal.

“We welcome you to our intimate musings and hope that we can share our humanness, our awakening with you. We want you to just enjoy and hopefully connect with each other through my writing and our paintings.”

“Dear Diary, on Saturday 9th of September Gordon & I will be opening the doors of Solomon Studio at 7pm to our Brac community; visitors, friends and family – young and old – what a humbling thing to share our life and talents with them.  I’m excited and nervous (as always) but truly grateful for the gifts we have. Now it’s time to  finished up this day, get the children to bed, relax a bit and fall into slumber land. Hello night, good bye day.” – Alta