On My Nightstand, On My Easel 3/30/23

On my nightstand:

It is not that suffering will end. As far as I can tell, the one thing we can count on is that everything we are counting on is going to fall through under us. I will never welcome the feeling of falling through the floor. But I believe we are falling through into God or something—but not nothing.

—Polly Berrien Berends, Coming to Life

On my easel:

OMG, I am so well practiced in suffering! 

But I know the reason I paint is that painting offers me practice in finding ways to go along with this process of falling through into God.

I get considerable practice.

I need considerably more.

Not Nothing
1.5 x 6" bookmark; acrylic, ink, and Stabilo pencil
on watercolor paper
abstract
2023

On My Nightstand, On My Easel 3/28/23

On my nightstand:

To look for the good in some other circumstance than the one in which we find ourselves is to trash the only happiness we will ever have: now. Whether it pleases us or not, each moment is a gift. No matter how unpleasant the wrapping, inside is something wonderful that life wants to give us. If we let it pass without opening it, we have missed something priceless.

—Polly Berrien Berends, Coming to Life

On my easel:

A second bookmark, another visual poem, emerges from the Bo's Arts starts created last week. I use Stabilo pencils for the first time. I try my hand at asemic writing of a sort I bumped into somewhere on Instagram, writing that may in part be actual language. Gifts abound: energy! play! invention!

In Your Life Just as It Is Happening Right Now
1.5 x 6" bookmark; acrylic, ink, and Stabilo pencil
on watercolor paper
abstract
2023

Poems: One. At. A. Time.

I can fly through a 400-page novel in a matter of a few days.

Poems, on the other hand, need to be surrounded by time. They need to be framed with long, slow, deep breaths. Absorbed and received in an entirely different and more spacious way than story.*

So it is with visual poems as well.

I present you with the first in a series.

An Invitation to Walk Through Some of Your Doors
1.5 x 6" bookmark; acrylic, ink, and Stabilo pencil
on watercolor paper
abstract
2023

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*And, yes, since you ask, it might take me over a year to read 400 poems!

Joke's on Me!

When I last posted this piece, it was still a work in progress and I ended by saying, I don't think I'm done yet.

I was not.

I had the feeling of wanting a surprise, of wanting to do something more, something bold.

Well, the surprise was that no matter what my thinks-with-words brain was saying about bold, my art heart evidently had the final say, with subtle I-spy-with-my-little-eye eye-openers.

                                                                  

Let's Twist Nervous Systems Around One Another
And Construct a Place That Wasn't There Before
5 x 5.5"; acrylic, ink, and collage on card stock
abstract seascape
2023

Leaning Into Limits

My Dutch artist friend Simone Nijboer recently wrote an art newsletter about her love of color and the palette that has become her personal color signature. 

The sparks of her thoughts landed in my thoughts and lit me up with inspiration. My own recent experience of working with a limited palette over a series of eight paintings shook hands with Simone's color signature, and off I went to my studio! 

I have fiddled with grand contentment and engagement over the past few days in a creative inquiry, using a close approximation of Simone's signature palette as my base colors. I explored and experimented, fascinated by the color mixing I could do with Amsterdam turquoise green, Amsterdam quinacridone rose, Golden quinacridone nickel azo gold, and Amsterdam oxide black and Liquitex white gesso as sidekicks.

Way fun.

Painting, created by Dotty, using Simone's signature colors.

There Is No Cure for Curiosity
5.5 x 5.5"; acrylic, ink, and collage on card stock
abstract
2023

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Painting, created by Simone, using Simone's signature colors!

Plus and Minus

I set out a few weeks ago to practice addition and subtraction while painting.

And that is precisely what I've been doing of late.

In the process I've discovered with new awareness that visual subtraction often takes place, ironically, by means of addition. Though much may be obscured from view, nothing actually gets taken away. Though I repeatedly have to let go, nothing is ever truly lost.

A bit of the history of this piece:

Look Behind, Underneath, In the Corners, Off the Page

4.75 x 5.5"; acrylic, ink, and oil pastel on paper

abstract

2022

Faces 11

“Knucklehead.”

He said the word out loud

and saw a young boy

on the wharf close by

turn to look at him, startled.

This meant he was an old man

who was talking to himself

on a wharf in Portland, Maine,

and he could not—

Jack Kennison, 

with his two PhDs—

he could not

figure out 

how this had happened.

—Elizabeth Strout, Olive, Again 

The Friend Who Is an Exquisite Wordsmith
9 x 12"; acrylic, ink, and pastel on drawing paper
abstract face
2021
$45

Word(s) of the Day (9)

task buddy

gumption

why not? asks Linda

 

detail, work in progress
adding ink and oil pastel to 30 x 30" canvas

Word(s) of the Day (7)

physical therapy

taupe

flow

journaling

work in progress
paint, paint markers, 'krink', 30 x 30" canvas

Changing Course

I thought I was painting a field of wildflowers.

Work-in-Progress said, Nope.

I mixed up more greens and grays, covered the pops of wildflower color, added texture with gel medium, used India ink to introduce asemic writing, waited for my next operating instructions.

detail; greens and grays

detail; texture

detail; asemic writing

work in progress

Maker

The maker in me is lively of late.

Yay!

An Anecdote Crafted Out of Nothing
4x6" postcard; acrylic, ink, pastel, and collage on drawing paper,
mounted on card stock
abstract
2019

Stu-Art

Today's piece is the child of a parent piece painted last August as I prepared some starts in happy anticipation of attending Takodah family camp where I would spend a bit of time painting each morning.

Parent:


Parent dressed in finery:


First child:


Second child:


Third child:


Fourth child:


Speaking of anticipation, as I did above, twenty-four years ago I had the great honor to be one of the people supporting my sister Lauren while she was in labor before delivering her second son. Those were hours of great anticipation followed by the great excitement of welcoming Stuart to the world.

And, speaking of welcoming new life, as I just did, let me announce the birth of the fifth child of the parent piece I created last August—a bookmark I painted for Stuart for his birthday this year!

Happy birthday, Stuart!

Squinting Into the Darkened Pine-Scented Interior
5x1.75"; acrylic, ink, collage, and pastels on card stock
abstract
2018
[gift]

Decluttering

I'm pressing pause in the development of my current Core Values patch to tell a side story.

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Earlier this year, I went through an internal tug-of-war with decisions related to clearing my house of items I no longer need or use, often feeling emotional pangs that were at odds with practical wishes to lighten the load and make space. What to do with the aerial photo of our house that I purchased for Dave 27 years ago, the 1000s of Lego pieces, the archives of a former entrepreneurial business of mine, the delightful lid to the now-broken-and-long-gone sugar bowl that was part of our wedding china?

Concurrent with my decluttering, I happened to be reading the historical novel This Road We Traveled by Jane Kirkpatrick about an extended family that sets out on the Oregon Trail during westward expansion in the United States in the 1800s to travel roughly 2000 miles in covered wagons pulled by oxen. I was particularly attentive to the many decisions this family has to make.

While loading their wagons before departure: What to bring? What to leave behind? Far along the trail, with scarce food and declining strength in both humans and animals, and miles and mountains yet to traverse: What to continue conveying? What to leave beside the trail? Something as small as a Bible, or smaller, might need to be discarded because the cumulative weight of even thimbles and sentimentally-cherished letter openers exceeds the ability to transport.

This story comes to mind again as one of my friends prepares to put her house on the market this summer and move to a smaller home. What might I give her for her birthday that won't feel like one more thing to pack, one more thing that will take up space in her new place?

Two answers:
• the gift of a beach walk and cup of coffee on a sunny blue-skied spring morning in May, and
• two handpainted bookmarks : )

Whistlings, Warblings, Wildness, and Joy
5x1.75"; acrylics, ink, and oil pastel on card stock
abstract
2018
[gift]

Pull at the Quill Pen, Tip the Ink Bottle
5x1.75"; acrylics, ink, and watercolor pastel on card stock
abstract
2018
[gift]

My Village

I am deeply grateful for my painting village—for the new friends I've made in the past four years through Leslie Saeta's Thirty Paintings in Thirty Days challenges, through Instagram, through my blog, and through the internet at large; and for my family and longtime friends—all of whom support, cheer, encourage, ask questions, give feedback, make suggestions, point me in directions, share links of interest, purchase my paintings, follow my blog, laugh with me, give me hugs, help me solve problems, and act as patrons of my art with various gifts.

They are my teachers.

I draw nourishment from them again and again.

Hard to imagine where I'd be without them—and why try? I know where I am with them and I am grateful day after day after day.

Especially when my internal world feels like a crazy wilderness.

Here's where my current tri-patch went today:

rotated my canvas, painted over yesterday

did some therapeutic journaling

let Hans Christian Anderson put in his 2¢ via collage

The Shortest Distance

I got to reflecting on how today's paintings came to be, and found myself thinking about the idea that "the shortest distance between two points is a straight line" which in turn led me to the internet where I was entertained by the following as part of an evaluation of the shortest-distance-straight-line theorem:

I(y)=∫x2x11+(y′)2‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾√dx, $$I(y)={\int }_{x_1}^{x_2}\sqrt{1+(y^{\prime }{)}^2}dx,$$

at which point I promptly jumped ship on Euclidian proofs and math altogether.

I painted postcards today. My starting point was actually an exploration I did in December 2015. At that time, my first pass on paper took me here:

.

About a week after that, and after playing with the piece further, I cut my exploration into quadrants, one of which I cut into many smaller bits that became this piscine portrait,

,

and the other three of which fell by the wayside until I rediscovered them with delight last weekend while looking for something else. In the past few days I played with them until they became a series of postcards.

Straight line?

Short distance?

Whatever!

The Freedom to Ask Questions
4x5", acrylic and pastels on paper,
mounted on manila stock
abstract
2017
[gift]

The Freedom to Sing
4x5", acrylic, pastels, collage, and ink on paper,
mounted on manila stock
abstract
2017
[gift]

The Freedom to Talk to Yourself

4x5", acrylic, pastels, collage, and ink on paper,

mounted on manila stock

abstract

2017
[gift]

Inexplicable

I just finished reading a fascinating and compelling book by Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer entitled Extraordinary Knowing: Science, Skepticism, and the Inexplicable Powers of the Human Mind.

In a paragraph just pages from the end, Mayer introduces a concept called 'series position effect' that I won't even attempt to explain, and applies it to her own work as a psychoanalyst. I offer that as her context, which isn't mine.

Oh, but it is!

Mayer writes: The work stumbles along—sometimes remarkable, sometimes unremarkable—and your meetings approach a baseline pace that heads in a positive direction. You're perpetually reminded that trying hard doesn't get you there, and that you both get there best when you somehow manage a state of trying and not trying, knowing and not knowing, certainty and uncertainty all at once. Every time you think you've hit on a less paradoxical formula, you're humbled again.

Yup.

Yup, yup, and yup.

And yup again.

inner july landscape is no longer a work in progress. It has become a postcard.

They Cut the Day up into Little Scraps
4x5"; acrylic, ink, collage, and pastels on paper
mounted on manila stock
abstract
2017
[gift]

Visual Diary

Two months ago, activated a 9x12" piece of drawing paper, willy nilly:



Till I looked back just now, had totally forgotten this out-of-the-starting-gate iteration.

At that time, took it from its start to this next stopping place, playing with house paint samples:



After which, still in May, cut the start into pieces. A few days ago, picked up what had been the bottom right quadrant in the original start and played with it till it became this:



Now today, some India ink doodling and asemic writing bring it here:

work in progress;
working title: inner july landscape
4.5x6"

For years and years and years I kept written diaries, emotional outpourings scribbled onto paper in word after word after diary after diary.

Now a visual diary pours from places deep inside. Such a different outward manifestation.

In Opposition

I could tell a story about creating this painting, and—believe me—I've been in opposition with myself and telling a grouchy story for days, mostly about fussy/overthought vs. loose/intuitive. Every story needs a good conflict, ya know?

But it would just be a story.*

Instead, I'm going to take a step back, turn this little painting upside down, and practice noticing artistic elements that oppose each other visually.

A Story of Contrasts, by Dotty Seiter

• red vs. its complement

• straight edges vs. curved

• sharp edges vs. soft

• physically flat surfaces vs. textured/dimensional

• thin lines vs. thicker

• busy areas vs. quiet

• bright colors vs. dull

• dark hues vs. light

• veiled lines vs. bold.

The end!

In the Morning We Would Wake and There Would Be Coffee
4.4 x 6"; acrylic, ink, collage, and oil pastel on paper
abstract floral
2017

*I did, in fact, tell my internal grouchy story via asemic writing that shows up palimpsestically in the veiled background behind the blossoms here—I let my conflicted mood rip and move on outta me!

All This

• A little unincorporated fishing village on a harbor in New Brunswick, Canada;

• a tiny post office and maybe two dozen homes surrounding the harbor in the village center;

• a church up on a hill;

• a bunch of lobster boats and a few big well boats used in the salmon aquaculture industry;

• no grocery store, no gas station, no laundromat, no coffee shop, no shops at all; 

• neighbor Paula, whom we met at Scotiabank on arrival day when we stopped in St. George to exchange money, driving by on her way to work, waving and calling out brightly, "Good morning!";

• the refreshment of pure fir-tree-filtered air filling my lungs;

• a Canadian flag snapping in the wind;

• dry, clear breezes dancing on my bare arms as the sun warms me; and

• a dazzling pas de milles performance of sparkles on the textured surface of the water.

… All this finds its way through sensory synapses 

and then embodies itself in my painting 

(along with a sheet of waxed sandwich paper 

saved from lunch in St. George on Friday!).

work in progress, working title: Musquash Marsh & Marks

12/24", Day 5

Vulnerable.

Feeling a heaviness in my chest about making art, showing art, selling art.

When I can remember, I let myself feel the feelings.

I look them in the eye—name them, greet them, resist fighting them, let go of the urge to push them away. In fact, as you might be able to glean in the lower detail photo, I eventually elected to write some of the feelings out asemically on my canvas.

12/24" #1, work in progress

12/24" #1, work in progress, detail

12/24" #1, work in progress, detail