Change of Direction

Was poking around looking at art online a few nights ago, bumped into a piece at DailyPaintWorks by an artist named Mary Ellis, and just had to change direction from my current exploration of b&w linework to try my hand at an appropriation. I'd earlier bumped into a stack of 6x6" canvas board paintings on which I'd painted over the original works with chaos layers, and I'd been hankering to do some negative space painting using those chaos layers, and suddenly here was inspiration! Thank you for waking me up to explore something new, Mary!

Ready, set, go!

Same Place, Different Day
6/12/2016

chaos layers painted on top of
Same Place, Different Day
October 2020 (I think)

This Holy Instant
6 x 6"; acrylic, ink, and oil pastel on canvas board
figurative
2022
appropriation, after Mary Ellis, DailyPaintWorks.com,
thank you!

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.

Masks and Masking

Remember when masks were something you wore for Hallowe'en, and not something of which you had multiples in your possession so you'd always have one at hand for daily use in one setting or another?

The setting today was my studio. The masks were created from painter's tape.

detail, work in progress
36 x 36" canvas

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 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.

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 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

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

Faces 7

Praise the low January morning sunlight painting a textured illuminated stripe across the chair I picked up for free in front of what used to be a schoolhouse way back in the day and is now a home beside what next became the schoolhouse and is now an American Legion Hall.

Praise the air blowing from the heating ducts with a rushing sound, inciting the spathophylum leaves on a table above one duct to dance and warming me as I putter in the early minutes of a new day, preparing food, reading email, putting away silverware waiting for me on a towel on the counter beside a bowl of bright yellow lemons.

Praise the clutter on my yard-sale-table desk—the open poetry book napping with its spine up in the air, the gift card with notes scribbled all over it from a phone call, the nail clipper, the Posca paint markers, the jar of pencils acquired one by one from hair appointments at Locksmyth's, the partially finished painting, the kitchen timer that counts up and down, the magnet displaying the poison control phone number, the three-ring binder of lesson plans, the Gold Bond Ultimate Skin Therapy Cream.

 

The Friend Who Starts It All
9 x 12"; acrylic, ink, and pastel on drawing paper
abstract face
2021
$45

Chaos, Sweet Chaos

I spent yesterday painting base chaos layers to get energy flowing and activate sheets of drawing paper—starts for twelve separate paintings, ten of which are featured here.

Chaos, sweet chaos!

Steering True

In this new year, may my heart be open enough to stay curious, strong enough to face pain, and brave enough to feel joy (thanks, Brené Brown, for words that identify my compass points). May I let go so as to let in.

Hello, chaos and exploration and experimentation and inquiry! Let 'er rip!

A Poem Biting My Toes
6 x 6"; acrylic, pencil, and pastel on canvas panel
abstract landscape
2021
$75