Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Scratching a Living Out of the Earth

The way I've been painting of late feels like scratching a living out of the earth.

I stake a claim and then give myself over to the pure concentrated wholehearted all-in satisfying rhythms of making shelter, working the ground to yield nourishment, pausing every now and then to take long deep drinks of cold water, and sleeping like the earth itself at night.

---

Before, during, after:

from this 8x10" start,



to this 4x5" quadrant,



to this coverup,



to a completed painting.

A Simplicity of Sun and Earth and Lake and Pine
4x5"; acrylic, ink, china marker, collage, and pastels on paper
abstract
2017
[gift]

10 comments:

Lola (Jen Jovan) said...

WOW! You are slaying this art beast. It is under your complete control. You are the ART DOMINATOR!

dotty seiter: now playing said...

THANK YOU, dear art mentor and friend! Such an engaging adventure to find my way in creating this piece. To paraphrase Arthur via Monty Python a bit, this new learning in my art amazes me, Lady Jen. The call and response in the painting process fascinates me. I am grateful for your robust cheerleading and for all that I learn from your paintings and writing.

Janet Bradish said...

WOW! Dotty this is a great piece. You are growing, growing, growing in your art.

Simone said...

As I said so many times before: you are a painter AND a poet ;-)

dotty seiter: now playing said...

Janet, so grateful for your feedback and encouragement. Your input touches me because I so respect and enjoy your art.

dotty seiter: now playing said...

Thank you once again, Simone. With one of Leslie Saeta's 30in30 challenges in progress (even though without me), I am mindful of and SO GLAD all over again for having participated two years ago for the first time and meeting you. There is no way to measure how much my connection with you has fostered my art!

I've been thinking about my painting/writing interconnectivity a bunch recently. We need to talk!

carol edan said...

You are the expert. You are so daring,it's as if the image show you what it wants and you follow the instructions of how to get there! Thanks for the progressive images!

dotty seiter: now playing said...

Carol, thank you, thank you. The process still feels new and elusive to me more often than not, so I am grateful for your affirmation. I really had to work hard to pay attention and sit with this one so as to see through the underbrush to finishing touches. Looking back, especially with your words in mind, I can see how the image showed me what it wanted but, believe me!, it wasn't straightforward when I was in the thick of it.

One thing that fascinates me is that had I started with the same 4x5" quadrant shown above but on a different day, a different painting would now sit in front of us. "Simplicity" was informed strongly by my being at camp and, not just at camp, but at camp on Wednesday 23 August 2017.

Sheila said...

I magnified, and clicked between the last two images over and over. I thought it was wonderful before. Perfectly wonderful. But you always amaze me Dotty. And I don't say that lightly. The additional marks, the greys, the shape of your puzzle piece sun. I love it all, and now I can see, that yes, there was more to be done. Love that sun Dotty. Love it all!!

dotty seiter: now playing said...

Sheila, thank you for your feedback with its helpful and encouraging specificity. I feel as though I'm doing some watershed painting of late, and the responses I'm getting feed that feeling.

The engagement and challenge with this piece were powerful. I'd have a vague feeling of its needing something, but not know what. So I'd breathe with not knowing, and eventually something would bubble up. I found myself enjoying a delicious interplay of intuition and conscious application of experience/knowledge.

The sun was great fun. You can trace it back to my 8x10 start and then move forward again to see how it was still in evidence at the coverup stage … but too centered and half-baked to add much to the overall composition. So solving those problems became my challenge.

I began by adding hand-painted collage paper (sandwich paper lying around my studio with offloaded paint) to the left hand side of the existing sun. In turn that generated the idea of the 'puzzle piece' aspect, and so on until the piece said, yup, you're done.

THANK YOU for your ongoing support and faithful commenting. You play a big part in my painting adventure.

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