Faces 21

Good thing Jen Jovan posts on her blog regularly, so as to blow life into me when I've lost my blogging steam. Today she reminds me, via poet Mary Oliver, to stand still and learn to be astonished.

I am so in need of this reminder, this reminder to practice.

Every moment is a moment to stand still and be astonished.

In one such moment I notice the village vicar in a novel set in post-World War I English countryside. He refers to his work as being called to hatch, match, and dispatch.

Delight and astonishment! Hatch, match, dispatch!

The Friend Who Teaches Me How to Knot Thread
9 x 12"; acrylic, ink, pastel, and collage on drawing paper
abstract face
2021
$70

back story:
chaos layers, blind contour drawing,
and tissue collage

Faces 20

 I'm all hesitation I-don't-know-where-to-start this morning. Again.

Then, a Jen Jovan blog post arrives in my inbox. With these words from a poem by David Whyte:

start with the first

thing

close in,

the step

you don't want to take.

Ok, ok, ok.

work in progress

Faces 19

For the past few days, woven into the spaces between daily activities—making the bed, taking walks in the great outdoors, chopping vegetables, tutoring, reading, paying bills, shopping for groceries, resolving a glitch with an online order—I've had chances to hang out with this guy, often chatting companionably, sometimes lost in our separate thoughts, periodically venturing into artistic tomfoolery, and more than once exploring differences of opinion. 

He has strong integrity, a clear way of being in the world, a reliable compass guiding him. 

The Friend Who Isn't Afraid to Hold a Fierce Optnion
and Later Change His Mind
9 x 12"; acrylic and pastels on drawing paper
abstract face
2021
$70

Faces 18

Today, I just want to create in my visual diary an in-process record of the mark-and-response going on with a new abstract face. 

My attention to illumination and shadow as part of the Rembrandt lighting exploration has led somehow with this particular face to a more highly representational mode than with other faces recently. My inner guide is telling me to get my need for a somewhat photographically-faithful rendering out of my system first. 

Then, let's see what else I might want to do. Or not. 

I'm thinking more playful and pranky and improbable is a distinct possibility.

Faces 17

When I'm ten years old, my family moves to the Netherlands for two years as part of my dad's job. More than once we drive to Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam to pick up family or friends who come to visit. On at least one of those occasions, when a flight is significantly delayed, my folks opt to visit the Rijksmuseum to fill the interim before we return to Schiphol. This might be my first visit to an art museum. 

What a place to begin! I have vivid memories of the paintings of the Dutch masters whose works hang in the galleries there, dark dark backgrounds but with strong light illuminating faces and other details. I remember being drawn in to those paintings to explore them.

Now, all these years later, I am taking an Amanda Evanston art-of-abstract-faces course, and lesson 2 turns attention to what has become known as "Rembrandt lighting." 

Way cool idea, but I study my chaos-layer-plus-blind-contour-drawing-start and think, Rembrandt?, really?

I can't imagine how I will complete this painting.

chaos-layer-plus-blind-contour-drawing-start

But I don't need to imagine its completion. I need to make a mark. So I do. I let it inform my eye, then make another mark, and another, and then—awesome!—I'm totally in flow.

The Friend Who Takes the Bus from NYC
to Surprise Me With a Visit in College
9 x 12"; acrylic, ink, and oil pastel on drawing paper
abstract face
2021
$70

I'm guessing Rembrandt had to start by making marks of some sort also.

Heart and Art, Unlimited

Live on FaceBook on New Year's Eve, Amanda Evanston offered an end-of-2020 activity which I watched even though I was away from home and not able to participate.

But this week I cut a heart shape from cardboard, painted it, tore some strips of colored paper, wrote words of gratitude, folded the strips, wrapped the heart with string and ribbon, tucked in my gratitude and more, and now I have a little magpie nest of love and gratitude, so much gratitude that it cannot be contained! It is popping out in all directions, boundless!

painted cardboard heart

strips of colored paper
inscribed with words of gratitude

folded strips 

Tying My Laces and Walking Out of Myself
Into This Sunny Winter Day
7 x 7"; acrylic, paper, ribbon, cord, and cardboard
in shadow box
mixed media Valentine
2021

detail

detail: side view of gratitude
popping out in all directions

Faces 16

Two more new friends in the making. 

I'm setting up four starts for the second lesson in the self-paced The Art of Abstract Faces course I'm adventuring through with artist/instructor Amanda Evanston blazing the way. She's doing her darnedest to move me past my hesitations, my tightnesses, my discomforts. 

Working on multiple pieces at once or in a series is such a good idea. Grateful to have Amanda encouraging me to do so.

face in progress

face in progress

Faces 15

So funny to observe the hesitation, the nervousness, the maybe-I-need-to-do-something-in-the-kitchen-first angst that can—and does—often precede my undertaking a next step in my studio. Today, it was picking up a marker and doing some new blind contour drawings that had me feeling unduly timid.

Eventually took the plunge:

face in progress
(this guy is making me look relaxed!)

face in progress
(can you see the stalker in the background?!)

More Sweet Chaos

Activating Canvases

This, then, just before five a.m.—

Like confectioner's sugar

sifted lightly on gingerbread,

a dusting of snow on the ground.

I am the first 

to walk my street.

Well, the first in shoes.

Unobserved earlier, a rabbit

has tracked up the gessoed canvas

of our driveway to

pass between the corner

of the garage and the corner

of the back deck.

Another left the safety

of Dale's leafless raspberry canes

to dart across Prospect Street

for the safety 

of the leafless canes 

of our red-twig dogwood shrub.

So, too, no one observed 

the cluster of deer who

ignored social distancing

guidelines to walk flank to flank

up and down the length 

of our hushed street 

before I stepped outdoors

into the velvet dark of predawn

to make my own Thursday morning story

with quiet marks.

---

Later the same day I head to my studio for some indoor mark-making using paint, ink, and collage. Four new chaos layers ready to play with.

Faces—Blind Date!

Between winter snow flurries I've witnessed a flurry of a different sort. A short while back, a collector purchased The Friend Who Writes Letters Longhand. When Longhand found out she'd be moving to new digs at the end of February she was very excited!

Then a few weeks later, the same collector expressed interest in purchasing The Friend Who Uses an Enameled Spoon as a Postcard and inquired as to whether I thought Longhand and Enameled Spoon would "go together" well. 

Omg! Matchmaking!

We both agree they'll make an adorable couple. Plus, they have in common their inclination to correspond in ways other than standard social media. Really, what are the chances?

Well! Longhand got all in a dither when she found out Enamaled Spoon would also be moving to the same new digs at the end of February! She immediately pulled off the years-old,  insubstantial tired shirt she had on and spent much of Saturday ratting through her closet looking for something to wear on moving day—she tried on this, tried on that, tossed stuff on the bed, discarded items on the floor, preened in front of a mirror, and tested touches of makeup before she finally settled on a look that showed off her features to alluring advantage without being over the top. 

She's a little more relaxed now, but she is counting the days till moving day.

Faces 14

I have a fierce urge to shove this guy out in high winds to rough up that mop on his head—he is in desperate need of a hair out of place!

I'm laughing to myself as I realize this is not the first time I've had an urge to take charge of someone else's hair. Years ago I tutored an engaging bright boy who was middle school age. For the two or three years I worked with him he sported a 'rattail' hairstyle, a style characterized by a long thin braid growing downward from the back of his head. Can't tell you how many times I fantasized pulling out a pair of shears and snipping off that 10" braid! It was just begging me to make mischief!

The Friend Who Signs Every Single Photo
of Himself in My Senior Yearbook
9 x 12"; acrylic, ink, oil pastel, pencil, and collage
on drawing paper
abstract face
2021
$45

messy middle flashback:

blind contour drawing 
on top of cool-colors chaos layer

Faces 13

Years ago—maybe as many as 30? is that possible?!—I jotted a postcard to my friend Stu, whom I'd met at Takodah family camp in NH at least 10 years prior to jotting said postcard, to ask what kind of pen he'd been using at camp that August to doodle in his pocket sketch book.

A week or 10 days later, I found an empty water bottle in my mailbox and wondered who'd picked up street litter and placed it in with my mail. 

But, ha! This was no litter. It was an 'envelope' inside of which sat a small bit of paper with the pen info I'd requested from Stu.

Even though "OMG" was not yet in the common vernacular, my internal reaction was, O.M.G! My immediate next thought was, Two can play at this game!

And I was off and running, viewing correspondence by mail in a whole new light. WAY fun.

The Friend Who Uses an Enamaled Spoon
as a Postcard
9 x 12"; acrylic, ink, and pastel on drawing paper
abstract face
$45
sold

Faces 12

Is there a genetic marker related to political interest, intelligence, and aptitude? If so, I am missing that gene. 

I am just not, by nature, a political creature. Never have been.

The Friend Who Gives Me a Crash Course
on Current Events at Lunch So I Can Pass 
My Sixth Period Honors History Quiz
9 x 12"; acrylic, ink, and collage on drawing paper
abstract face
2021
$45

(Parenthetical Project) 11

Now there were even more threads to gather up and spin onto bobbins.

This idiom, previously unknown to me, charms me as I hear it expressed in a lovely and distinct British accent in the audio recording of a novel set in post-WWI Depression-era London. 

Is that a delicious little sentence or what?

Even more threads to gather up.

And spin onto bobbins.

Yes! Gather up those threads! Spin them onto bobbins! Everything in order! Everything in its place!

I say it aloud more than once as I move through my day—it is such an eminently usable assertion.

…

Have you seen my bobbins anywhere?

Even More Threads to Gather Up
4 x 5.5" postcard, acrylic, ink, and collage
abstract
2021