Exploring, 4

What I brought with me on vacation: a sheet of collage paper I'd handpainted with a green I'd mixed. No idea how long ago, no idea where the pieces I apparently cut from it were used as collage. Ignoring the irregular shape of the page, I began exploring with ink scribbles and one fully inscribed circle touched by four partially inscribed externally tangent circles:

What unfolded in between outdoor explorations and infusions of sea and salt and salmon and scallops and susurrations and sunlight and scents and stillness and strolls and strides and surprises and sweets and star-studded-skies:

untitled until I decide if this will remain a quirky-shaped single piece 
or become several smaller found compositions
roughly 6 x 9"; acrylic, watercolor, gouache, ink, and oil pastel on paper
 neurographic abstract
2022

Exploring, 3

I've read Cynthia Voigt's A Solitary Blue more than once—in fact, four times since 1989. I was reading it yet again, this time as an audiobook, when the following passage—a passage I've quoted more than once in this blog—filled my ears last week while I vacationed in downeast Maine. 

This had been the pattern

of his days 

on the back creek:

he would move the boat out

until he felt more frightened

than he had the courage to match;

then he would anchor

and wait.

—Cynthia Voigt, A Solitary Blue

The words offer such a fitting metaphor for my typical way of painting. The moving-anchoring-waiting-gathering-courage-moving-again pattern is exactly what was playing out when Voigt's words came my way as I was painting last week. 

The piece I was working on already had a considerable history of moving-anchoring-waiting when I'd set it aside as a finished (or so I thought) painting in 2016. 

After a six-year(!) wait period, I'd pulled anchor and included this piece in what I packed for vacation, thinking I might use it as the backdrop for a new neurographic exploration. 

Use it I did. I added neurographic linework and, for good measure, also threw in a semi-blind contour drawing of trees seen out my cottage window.

I totally lost myself in the joy of process—created messes, anchored, waited, let my courage and investigative energy recover, ventured forth again, resolved one mess and inevitably created a new one, anchored again, waited again, gathered courage again, moved forward to resolution again, created yet another puzzle, and so on. 

Loved every moment.

A Greatness of Air
8 x 8"; collage, acrylic, gouache, watercolor, ink, and
oil pastel on watercolor paper
abstract landscape
2022

History:

'completed' piece from 2016
that became a start last week
for the new work above

Exploring, 2

What I brought on vacation with me (I forgot to photograph the start I packed, so look through the preliminary neurographic linework here to the mauve and lavender paint to get a feel for where this exploration actually began):

work in progress on a start from who knows when

As I painted: tide ebbing and flowing, ebbing and flowing; osprey incubating their eggs; rocks and roots underfoot on every Downeast trail we hike; balsam fir sweetening the air; lobstermen checking their traps; the thrum of lobster boats.

What unfolded:

Nothing Need Be Done But Simple Observation
7 x 9"; acrylic, gouache, watercolor, and ink on book page
neurographic abstract
2022

Exploring, 1

What I brought with me on vacation:

a start from some time ago

As I painted: the dance of light on Gouldsboro Bay sending sparks up to my perch on an upstairs deck outside the bedroom, the tiniest whisper of water kissing rocky shore, the smell of gurry, steady cool air brushing my skin.

What unfolded:

Purity of Attention to the Immediate
6 x 7"; acrylic, ink, and collage on paper
abstract
2022

Whole New Kettle of Fish

Unexpected adventure today—a departure from the neurographic series I've been painting for several weeks. Thank you, Amanda Evanston! She offered a free sample class for kids online. I forwarded the info to granddaughter Emmy. 

Yes. yes. yes. I would definitely like to do that! 

Me, too!

So we each called on our inner Claude Monet and painted us some water lilies, I tell you what!

The class was short and high speed, 78 rpm to my 33 ⅓—I opted to watch and listen while it was live. Once the class ended, I turned myself loose to PLAY. 

So. Much. Fun.

Painted up a green chaos layer. Let it dry.

Used tape to mask off some would-be lily pads, painted up a blue chaos layer on top of the green. Pulled off the tape.

work in progress … will return to this tomorrow

Amanda has a gift for tapping the child in me for sure; little Dotty was giddy with delight with paper, paint, brush, and an 'unfussy' role model leading the way.

Upset > All Set!

I leave off yesterday heading I don't know where, entirely content not knowing. 

Hahaha! Good thing I don't know!  

Yesterday, in mere seconds, I shift from a demanding to-do list to totally happy art-play. 

Today, I sit with pen in hand and, in mere seconds, create a mess totally not to my liking.

Noooooooo!

Lived experience reminds me I've rescued almost every mess I've ever painted myself into, but still I suspect I'll most likely pitch this one and call it a day.

Eventually, though, I think to call on my trusty paper cutter to isolate a found composition, and I set to work with tweaks and tiny touches of magic. Fascinating process, I gotta say!

The Day Was Still Warming Up 4 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, ink, oil pastel, and collage, mounted on card stock abstract 2022

Late Afternoon Reset

I keep a steady, focused, get-things-done pace doing the work that is mine to do on this feels-like-summer day in June. Late afternoon finds me a little rough around the edges, the needle on my energy supply getting low, and my mind offering little by way of initiative or self-discipline.

But!

I take myself into my studio. 

In mere seconds the work of the day falls away, and little sparks of timelessness and joy ignite as I rummage through a stash of sandwich paper enlivened by off-loaded paint, open a brand new package of what Jane Davies refers to affectionately as cheap drawing paper, select a beat-up paint brush, and dive into a jar of Utrecht Acrylic Matte Medium. I lose myself in color, in texture, in using my hands to create, in process—heading I don't know where, entirely content not knowing.

work in progress

Washed to a Sparkle by Saltwater

The sea has always whispered to me, 

all down my life it’s been there. 

And with that endless restlessness 

come other sounds -- 

seagulls shrieking 

and mast wires clinking as boats shift; 

pebbles turning 

and waves tapping sea-worn rocks.

                —Jules Hardy, Altered Land

Washed to a Sparkle by Saltwater
4.75 x 8"; acrylic and oil pastel on a book page
abstract
2022

---

humble beginnings

Alchemy

Artist Jacqui Beck's thoughts about a series she's painting called Inside Outside accompany me as I begin working on a new painting. She articulates the following in a short video:

As an artist I bring my inside outside,

Who I am gets expressed into the work.

How I think about the world,

How I encounter the world,

How I experience the world

Coming inside me,

Getting churned around,

And then coming out in my work.

At the tail end of a(nother!) day filled with more cyber challenges than I can handle with any grace, let alone savvy, I am called strongly to play with line and color. I am pulled to paint on a page torn from a copy of Little Women given to my daughter by my mother, a book that ends up becoming, decades down the road, a comforting art journal for me during a dark time. One of the pages has paint on it from two years ago, an expression of my inside manifesting itself outside in that place at that time. And, of course, whatever is inside has been forged by many outside encounters and experiences. 

I grab a paint pen now and begin drawing lines around patches of paint to create shapes. 

The outside that influences and impacts the inside churns around unceasingly and, as an artist, that who-I-am gets expressed into my work every single time I paint.

The alchemy amazes and sustains me.

work in progress

Basket Case

Those of you who are My Fair Lady aficionados might be familiar with Hymn to Him, the lyrics of which never failed to get active appreciation from my dad. The words from one line bubble up to capture the way I'm feeling in this moment—not for the first time this year, I might add, and not for the first time when posting here, my head is stuffed with cotton, hay, and rags. 

I am worn to a frazzle, at risk of becoming nothing but [an] exasperating, irritating, vacillating, calculating, agitating, maddening and infuriating hag! 

And that is all I have to say about my response to challenges today. 

---

About the art: I sat down yesterday and plonked out this part-blind-contour part-neurographic drawing exercise and felt all the better for its wonkinesses.

Be Curious but Not Invested or Hellbent
5 x 6"; ink, watercolor, acrylic, and oil pastel on card stock
floral
2022

Human Design

I am a constellation of energy centers, often soaring high, with several centers designed to generate consistency from within, and others designed to be sensitive to outer energetics and influences.

Each day I wake and fly and navigate the fullness of life.

The navigation plays out up-close-and-personal when I paint. Here, the journey from a few lines to a resolved composition was one of constant interplay between inner constancies and outer impacts, a call-and-response (and-response-and-response-and-call-and-response-and-call) of some duration, much questioning, and considerable perceived ugliness en route, all brought in time to balance.

Deep in Inner Space, Extraordinary Knowing
3.5 x 8"; acrylic and oil pastel on drawing paper, 
mounted on card stock
abstract
2022

Poetry Hidden in Prose

You know the quotations I sometimes include in my posts? Here's the story:

Several decades ago I began the practice of copying lines from whatever I was reading, mostly from fiction—lines that resonated with an emotion, spoke to lived experience, captured my ear with their lyricism, made me laugh, brought tears to my eyes. 

For many years, those jottings landed on anything at hand—the back of an envelope, a receipt, a fragment torn from a paper bag.

By and by, I started a business called art❤️warmers, featuring small pieces of art and whimsy I created from found materials into which I'd incorporate selected lines.

Eventually, because I'd amassed so many unwieldy snippets, and because I was making such frequent use of the collection, I typed the quotations into an indexed database I use to this day.

Still later, I came to have a blog in which I sometimes gave space to one of those quotations.

Because those words felt like poetry hidden in prose, I began formatting the quotations as poems rather than as continuous text.

For example, instead of this:

This is what an artist is, she thought. This is the temperament you need to spend a whole day tinkering with a sentence, making sure both the meaning and the music are right; to spend three or seven or ten years working on a book,

this:

This is what an artist is, 

she thought. 

This is the temperament you need 

to spend a whole day 

tinkering 

with a sentence, 

making sure 

both the meaning 

and the music 

are right; 

to spend three 

or seven 

or ten years 

working on a book. 

    —Brian Morton, Starting Out in the Evening

Tinkering With a Sentence for Ten Years
4 x 8.5"; acrylic, ink, and oil pastel on drawing paper
abstract
2022