Jumble

Jumble bells, jumble bells, jumble all the way.

Or something like that.

So much calling out for my attention, daylight hours diminishing by the day, tasks started but not completed, plans leapfrogging other plans, studio time disjointed—jumble all the way, I tell ya!

Apropos of nothing, and with unfinished paintings to the left of me, unfinished paintings to the right of me, here's what I started painting today, letting my inner jumble out onto a large sheet of paper.

marks, scribbles

leftover paint from previous projects

work in progress

Leaving a Trail

Hansel and Gretel left a trail behind themselves so they could retrace their steps to the safety of home. In the past few weeks I left a knee-deep, tangled, piled-on-top-of-itself trail in my home such that home is the last place I want to be!

However, today I relocated work-in-progress started November 23rd and posted on the 29th. Plus, I remembered photos I took that show how I developed the piece a bit further sometime between the 29th and today.

Itchy to get going again.

Scattered

I am going in multiple directions mentally and physically.

I am writing this post the day after Thanksgiving. It probably won't see the light of day at my blog until late next week.

I am grateful that I choose to paint, grateful for the moments of wordless expression, for the physicality of brush strokes, for the centering.

detail, new work in progress

detail, new work in progress

Lake Champlain, Day 8

[entry drafted at Lake Champlain 6/15/18]

Sweet sweet summer day, slipping now into evening's hush as I write from the porch of our vacation cottage with our car mostly packed for our return home tomorrow.

3rd Lake Champlain work-in-progress,
18x24"; mixed media
fifth layer,
paint marker shapes, stencils, ink doodles

final layer for now,
ink and paint-marker doodles, oil pastels, veiling, print collage

detail

detail

detail

Lake Champlain, Day 7

[entry drafted at Lake Champlain 6/14/18]

The days of our vacation layer one on top of the other, each day distinct in its textures, shapes, nuances, saturations, and hues, and all of them together more than any one.

I start a third painting in my vacation series, laying down one idea at a time—before breakfast, after a hike beside a bog where we talk with wildlife management folks installing a beaver baffle, between a trip to the St. Albans Historical Museum and a lakeside walk, after indulging in the guilty pleasure of Island Ice Cream.

first layer,
India ink applied with new calligraphy pen and then a calligraphy brush

first layer,
India ink,
detail

second layer,
oil pastels
detail

second layer,
oil pastels
detail

third layer,
latex paint dripped and manipulated with the handle end of a paintbrush,
detail

third layer,
latex paint dripped and manipulated with the handle end of a paintbrush,
detail

third layer,
latex paint dripped and manipulated with the handle end of a paintbrush,
detail

fourth layer,
gelli plate monoprints,
detail

Lake Champlain, Day 6

[entry drafted at Lake Champlain 6/13/18]

Huh. 

This painting has surprised me more than once as I've worked on it at our little vacation cottage on this little island at the north end of not-so-little Lake Champlain.

Today, still a work in progress but 'finished' for now, it surprises me again when I step back to photograph it: I’ve painted a little self-contained island!

work in progress
18x24"; mixed media on drawing paper

detail

Lake Champlain, Day 5

[entry drafted at Lake Champlain 6/12/18]

We sleep all night with the French doors in the bedroom open to the attached screened porch overlooking Lake Champlain. A Mary-Poppins-like wind blasts the day in with vigor.

I let the fresh-off-the-lake bluster gust through me all day. Love its cleansing, invigorating energy, the intense feeling of charged weather.

collage and neutrals added to work in progress

more shapes, more neutrals

detail

detail

Lake Champlain, Day 4

[entry drafted at Lake Champlain 6/11/18]

I pull out a new sheet of 18x14" Canson 90 pound classic cream drawing paper this morning and begin playing, playing, playing.

an amalgam of art viewed earlier in the week and an imagined super-magnification of Bryozoa
(the phylum of aquatic invertebrate animals referenced in yesterday's post)

spiral-shaped gastropod fossils

a few delicate fern-like leaf patterns (detail)

Lake Champlain, Day 3

[entry drafted at Lake Champlain 6/10/18]

We visit Fisk Quarry and Goodsell Ridge on Isle la Motte, a few miles from our vacation cottage, where we see 480 million-year-old fossils. I still can't quite wrap my mind around the following information from a Lake Champlain Committee article (boldface mine):

Imagine sitting in a lounge chair with your feet in the water looking out over a tropical sea. The sun blazes away and the reefs around you teem with life. There was a time, nearly half a billion years ago, when the area we now call Lake Champlain hosted such an environment. This was before life existed on land, before the bedrock of the region had even formed.

At the time, the continental plate upon which Lake Champlain sits today was located in the lower latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere. Carbon dioxide levels exceeded today’s levels by 14 to 16 percent, and the earth was so warm that practically no ice existed.  As a result, sea levels were much higher and the continental shelf was covered by a shallow arm of the Iapetus Ocean. In this arm, some of the world’s earliest reefs developed.  

Today, most biotic reefs are formed by coral, but at the time of the original reefs, corals had not yet evolved. The first reef builders were instead small branching organisms called bryozoans. Later in time, large cabbage-like stromatoporoids (related to present-day sea sponges) dominated. Over time, other organisms came to occupy the reefs along with the stromatoporoids including the first corals, though corals never dominated these early reefs.  “These structures represent a pivotal moment in the evolution of life on earth, because they are the oldest known, multi-organism constructions on the planet.”

For three days I have been playing with collage, paint markers, acrylics, stencils, pencils, and more, enjoying what I think of as mark-making—until now when I realize I have been layering small branching bryozoans and large cabbage-like stromatoporoids, building an older-than-time reef right here on a piece of drawing paper on a picnic table in front of a cottage in Vermont near the border of Canada.

work in progress
18x24"; mixed media on drawing paper

detail

detail

detail

Lake Champlain, Day 2

[entry drafted at Lake Champlain 6/9/18]

Improv.

I notice the surface pattern on a duvet in our vacation cottage, play with elements of it on my big piece of drawing paper.

Lines seen in stained glass window art at a local gallery travel through a paint marker onto my drawing paper.

A wildflower leaf pattern transplants itself into the lush tangle of mark-making growing in front of me.

As the day unfolds, I ad lib in short little snippets of three minutes here, ten minutes there, creating without preparation from whatever I have available: I press a few pieces of collage into place, spread some paint with my finger and spritz it with a spray bottle to trigger drips, draw angular lines with a China marker against a metal straight-edge tool, use a brayer to veil.

work in progress
18x24"; mixed media on drawing paper

detail

Lake Champlain, Day 1

[entry drafted at Lake Champlain 6/8/18]

I paint today in a sweet little vacation cottage, with windows and screened porches in abundance, all of them wide open to magically warm June daytime air and the perfection of cool deep-sleep nights. A bit of the huge expanse of Lake Champlain laps the edge of our front lawn, and Vermont mountains trace the horizon.

I grab the pad of Canson classic cream 18x24" 90 pound drawing paper I have with me and begin playing.

Blacks, whites, China marker, print collage, latex paint, architect tracing paper, matte medium.

Messing about.

work in progress
18x24"; mixed media on drawing paper