I'm dialing way back to play with design elements.
First, line.
Black only.
On white paper canvas.
The idea: to play freely without intention to do other than get a mess of lines on paper.
So what do I do? I make a few lines, freely and joyfully, and then, in next to no time, I feel attached.
I freeze up.
hahahahaha!
Well, let's see where this all goes.
For now, just adding bits as I am able.
Another addition to my three-finger floral series inspired by a free class offered by Amanda Evanston some weeks back.
Nothin' like having a fresh flower arrangement to create some dynamic energy in the otherwise barely-noticed landscape of everyday clutter passing as decor!
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A Splash of Noise and Cheerful Garishness 4 x 5.5"; acrylic, ink, oil pastel, and collage on paper canvas mounted on card stock abstract floral 2022 |
If pressed, I'd probably say I carry the word tension in my mind with a negative connotation.
And yet, the exquisite tension intrinsic to the creative process of painting is precisely what pulls me back over and over again to my studio. That tension lives in a place between pain and pleasure that is compelling. Positive.
I'm grateful to have kept experimenting with this particular painting.
I'm grateful for the physical properties that allow for surface tension on water and the gift of autumn leaves that perform a delicate dance on the stage of a pond.
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Humming a Ditty 5.5 x 8"; acrylic, ink, watercolor pencil, oil pastel, and collage on heavy card stock abstract landscape 2022 |
Scribbling my way to wherever this painting may take me.
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scribbles in progress |
Experiment.
My eyes land on a sheet of sandwich paper onto which I've recently blotted some diluted white paint from another piece. The sandwich paper has dried to a somewhat lacy effect. I affix it to my current what-if exploration.
!
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work in progress 5.5 x 8.25"; acrylic, ink, oil pastel, and collage on textured heavy card stock |
I neglected to take a photo of the start for this piece. It was soft swirls of pale blue and lavender that came from cleaning my brush after painting one afternoon while talking on the phone with long-time friend and artist Sylvia.
I picked up the start yesterday with mark-making as my game plan. After quickly throwing scribbles, lines, dots, and dashes into place over the course of a few minutes, here's where I ended up.
Nothing about it calls to me.
It's no more than 5 x 7". It served a purpose as a vehicle for transporting me into flow for awhile, and I could easily pitch it now, move on, and probably forget it altogether.
Or I could stash it with other pieces I've abandoned, pieces that do often come to life in some unexpected way days, months, or years later.
But I've been surprised way more than once when I've been able to turn a piece that offends my eye into something that I end up liking. A lot.
I'm going to fiddle with this one a little more to see what might emerge, and I'll try to remember to document the process.
I have to say, though, right now, the trash seems like a perfectly reasonable option.
Scratching and groping. Scrabbling for some ineffable something. Scribbling as a way of getting there.
Marrying sketchbook, scribbles, and neurographic skittering takes me right to sparks of discovery and the embrace of serendipitous serenity—a welcome antidote to hours spent earlier in whirling dervish internet nonsense, a cure for what had been ailing my artistic heart.
I brush aside the pesky temptation to keep playing with this piece.
Let that play take place with another piece on another day.
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Just Enough Gleanable Information to Provide Clues and Permit Guesses 7 x 10.5"; acrylic and ink on sketchbook paper neurographic scribble 2022 |
My mom's friend Lida tells me, sometime after my mom's death, the story of sharing some of her whimsical colorful art with my mom who responds with, "But that's just scribbles," or something along those lines.
Well, Yes, Mom! Scribbles! Art doesn't get any better!
Artist Jane Davies writes a blog post about scribbling yesterday. Her scribbles and her post are compelling, and off I go to my studio this afternoon realizing I might be able to make use of some painted scribbles that hadn't worked for a project I had in mind. Maybe I could capitalize on them now.
To my surprise I have a little trouble finding my groove but soon enough I am totally in flow. Off to the races with heart-opening scribbles. Hot damn!
I want a stretch knit sheath dress with a little sheen and exquisite drape created with this scribble as its print.
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The Best Conversation She's Overheard Since She Started Waitressing 3.5 x 5"; acrylic, ink, charcoal, and charcoal pencil on canvas paper abstract/scribbles 2022 |
Frozen is the word that's coming to mind. I knew I wasn't broken but I sure wasn't flowing.
At all.
There were externals that kept me from moving forward with the stuck-ugly painting in my studio—tasks having to do with settling my dad's estate, appointments to fulfill, our wallpaper guy here working on our stairway which meant no access to the upstairs for three days—but, really, were externals the holdup? I think not.
I know not.
But, boy oh boy, I couldn't punch my way out of a paper bag any which way.
I can't claim to be calm or at ease under these conditions—at least not yet nor consistently, but I am coming to know, bit by bit and more and more deeply, that the mind-created bag in which I thrash will eventually fall away of its own accord when I least expect it, the internal ice will melt, the pitiful mixed metaphors will evaporate.
This morning, suddenly, with no obvious rhyme nor reason I could detect, I felt expansive and open, walked into my studio, and started playing again.
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| Sorta Cock-Eyed and Shaky and Grateful to Be All in One Piece 4.75 x 6"; acrylic, ink, oil pastel and collage on paper, mounted on card stock abstract floral 2022 |
Just spent I don't know how long reviewing, printing, highlighting, annotating, and reconciling legal brouhaha related to my father's estate. Comin' down the home stretch but, omg, really? My head feels as though it is stuffed with cotton to the point of near bursting.
Enough already of that.
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| Still Crazy in Love After All These Years 3.5 x 5"; acrylic, ink, oil pastel, and collage on paper, mounted on card stock abstract floral 2022 |
