Eleventh Hour Studio Fun

Yesterday was a busy day, with several metaphorical brush fires popping up requiring my attention.

A number of intentions fell by the wayside, and I thought painting might also get postponed. Then, unexpectedly, a little pocket of spaciousness opened up as the day was coming to a close.

In the process of looking through my studio supplies to see if I had any watercolor paper, I bumped into an 18 x 24" sheet of high quality drawing paper which I'd covered several years ago with a monochromatic 'chaos layer' of greens. Evidently, I tucked it back into the pad of paper from which I'd extricated it, so I could find it and play with it yesterday!

I forgot to photograph before chopping it up but here's an after-the-fact photo.

In short order, I did a bit of veiling

and then got down to the business of neurographic doodling. SO calming and engaging. The dimensions of this piece are very satisfying to me, as is the piece as a whole. Nonetheless, I'm thinking I'll continue to play with it, to experiment with the neurographia in new-to-me ways. 

Stay tuned.

work in progress
4 x 8.5"; acrylic and ink on drawing paper

Coming to Life (8)

How wonderful to recognize the presence

of a mistaken idea as a mistaken idea!

Such notions have power

only if they are believed in

and only as long as the belief lasts.

Even before truth is realized,

guilt, blame, and bitterness 

begin to die, and inspired ideas

get born as we begin to see

what questionable ideas

we are living around.

—Polly Berrien Berends, Coming to Life

Before:

After:

Give Up Your Part in the Melodrama

3.5 x 5.5" postcard; acrylic, ink, and collage on cardstock
abstract
2020

Coming to Life (7)

Since most problems are by-products 
of erroneous survival-seeking thoughts,
it is very hard to give them up.
We dare not give them up for good
until we see that they are not necessary.
The secret is to give them up
for just one moment.
Just for one moment.

Polly Berends, Coming to Life


Before:

After:  

Try This: Sit Down, Get Still, Remember God
3.5 x 5.5" postcard; acrylic, ink, and collage on cardstock
abstract
2020

Coming to Life (6)

We tell each other stories,

baffling little anecdotes

from firsthand experience,

and then we look at them

in a spiritual light.

We try to see what ideas

are running our lives.

Then we look for truer,

spiritual ideas and consider

how to let them

take charge of us.

—Polly Berrien Berends, Coming to Life

Before:

After:

The Suspicion That We Aren't Seeing Straight
3.5 x 5.5" postcard; acrylic, ink, and collage on cardstock
abstract
2020

Coming to Life (5)

Every now and then, feeling along the wall,

one of us comes to a corner and discovers

another wall, feels along that wall,

comes to a door, opens it, and is confronted

by a much larger, brighter space

where he finds that he can see. The rest of us

see the light on him. When he steps outside,

we wonder where he has gone. 

Now by the light shining through 

the empty doorway we find our way as well.

Others have gone through the door for us.

Each of us goes through the door for others.

     —Polly Berrien Berends, Coming to Life

Before:

After:

The Whole World Wakes Up a Little
3.5 x 5.5" postcard; acrylic, ink, and collage on cardstock
abstract
2020

Coming to Life (4)

If something is going badly,

there are two possibilities:

Either we are going about the right idea

in the wrong way, or else

it is simply a wrong idea in the first place—

in which case

there is no right way to go about it.

—Polly Berrien Berends, Coming to Life

Before:

After:

To Discover What Is and What Isn't
3.5 x 5.5" postcard; acrylic, ink, and oil pastel on card stock
abstract
2020

Coming to Life (3)

So for now

travel with me

on this journey

by train of thought.

Look out the window of your soul

and see for yourself

how the light strikes the ground—

from your particular vantage point,

at this now and that here.

I wish you a pleasant journey,

 a bon voyage,

a good seeing.

Polly Berends, Coming to Life

Before:

After:

Begin to Notice What Is Uppermost in Your Mind
3.5 x 5.5" postcard; acrylic, ink, and collage on cardstock
abstract
2020

Coming to Life (2)

The idea is 
to lose our life
to find it 
by losing our mind
to find it. 
For just this one moment,
live by and rely on the sufficiency
of the immediately available truth
as if you knew it was reliable.
That's when,
not before,
we feel this force beneath us.
We cannot feel its force
until we are relying on it utterly.

Polly Berrien Berends, Coming to Life


Before:

After:

God Is as Reliable as I Am Reliant
3.5 x 5.5" postcard; acrylic, ink, and collage on cardstock
abstract
2020

-----

Really had fun painting with collage here. The intuitive unfettered free-play exercised when creating the original sketch gave way to the satisfyingly focused detail-oriented color-matching and finishing I did just now, two years later. 

Coming to Life (1)

This is indeed the day

that the Lord hath made;

let us be glad 

and rejoice in it!

We have to start sometime.

Now!

We have to start somehow.

See!

We have to start somewhere.

Here!

Polly Berrien Berends, Coming to Life

Before:

After:

Holy Humdrum and Holy Hardship
3.5 x 5.5" postcard; acrylic, ink, and collage on cardstock
abstract
2020

Coming to Life: Prologue

Back in mid-August, I had an itch to generate another series of postcards. Truth to tell, it wasn't even fully an itch; it was more like a barely perceptible sensation that perhaps a stray hair had glanced across my skin and then blown away.

Nonetheless, I brought a hand to the sensation and gave it a quick light scratch.

You know how that goes!

Next thing I knew I was at my paper cutter with a painting exercise I'd done two summers ago.

Here's what had sat in a drawer for two years untouched:

August 2018 painting sketch
11 x 14"; acrylic and ink on card stock (calendar poster)

Here's what I have at hand now:

Scratch scratch scratch …

Postcard Quilt Squares

I took pleasure in riffling through accumulated exercises and paintings done on paper (yet again) to select a piece to which I could give new life as a postcard, a postcard that will, in fact, travel farther from the four walls of the drawer in which it has lived for several years than I will have traveled from the four walls in which I live in the past ten weeks!

Mind you, this is a piece that took somewhat of a wild ride in my studio before it ever paused to land softly in a drawer in the company of other such voyagers; see the backstory that runs from 8/12/16 to 8/21/16.

Grateful to give it wings, to release it into a larger world.

A Perfect Breeze of Innocent Confusion
4 x 5" postcard; graphite, acrylic, pencil, and pastels
on canvas paper mounted on magazine paper and card stock
abstract
2020

The Latin Root "Cise"

Over the course of a few days, my work in progress made it clear that we were moving from wildflower field

wildflower field

to salt marsh—

salt marsh

—a work-in-progress salt marsh that was asking me to make decisions.

The Latin of the word decision literally means to cut off. Making a decision is about cutting off choices; it is to cut yourself off from some other course of action than the one you choose to make.

Even more literally, in this case, I understood that it might mean cutting this work in progress in half, thereby cutting myself off from developing it in its 18 x 24" size and, instead, developing two 12 x 18" pieces.

I began to entertain the possibility.

Making the Cut

I do love my paper cutter.

work in progress

I Could Have

I've taken the first bookmark of my series-in-progress and I've started developing it.

Perhaps I could have stopped right here, with these bits of print collage and nuances of paint added.

bookmark in progress

But, as those of you who know me might guess, I did not.

Wandering Down a Trail

Off on a new path today.

Same bookmark arboretum as previously, perhaps, but a different trail, with blazes of a different color.

So content to be following my muse and my paint brush.

started by journaling on a piece of watercolor paper

used a brayer and titan buff

added print collage;
mixed monochromatic colors with liquitex turquoise deep as a base;
used stencils and palette knife

resting place for today

Twenty-Nine Years

Buildings could burn 

right next to us in the car, 

and 

if we were in the middle 

of a kiss 

we wouldn't notice. 

–Jane Hamilton, The Book of Ruth

Hey, L&J, buildings are burning! Right next to you!

Happy anniversary : )

In the Middle of a Kiss
4x5"; acrylic and oil pastel on paper, mounted on cardstock
abstract
2018
[gift]

Yin and Yang

I have been fighting the good fight this summer, muscling both ends of a thick rope in a big ol' game of tug-o'-war: (a) wanting my home to be tidy, spare, spacious, and free from clutter, and (b) wanting to hang onto this and that—this magazine page, that painting experiment, this report card from when Scott started kindergarten, that report card from when *I* started kindergarten.

Today, though, I do not see opposing forces but forces that are complementary, interconnected, and interdependent; I see how they give rise to each other as they interrelate.

I snip a found composition from a 2016 painting exercise, pull out a bright fuschia envelope in which my friend Bo (follow the link!) sent me a note months ago (she found the envelope in her basement where she keeps things), and locate in my scraps box a letter from a high school friend typed on pale green stationery.

These forces come together along with today's sunshine and summer air to become an anniversary card that will leave my house—more space!—to transport love, color, and beauty 600 miles down the road to celebrate Meg and Michael.

What Can Happen When You Take a Chance
4x5"; acrylic, India ink, and oil pastel on card stock
abstract
2018
[gift]

Could Not Be More Content

Sunshine.

Dry air.

Exquisite temperature.

A painting exercise from an online workshop.

My paper trimmer.

Glue, brush, cardstock.

Bookmark.

Nephew.

Birthday.

Envelope.

Stamp.

Mailbox.

Celebration.

The Grass Rustled, the Creek Perpetually Murmured
1.75x6"; acrylic and India ink on card stock
abstract
2018
[gift]

Beauty Is Only Skin Deep

I love transparent acrylic skins: when I make them, I scribble freely and intuitively, and when I put them to use in a painting—often months later, and usually as a finishing detail—that carefree energy plays out all over again.

I could have scribbled today in real time on my nearly finished painting but I know I would have felt tentative and tight at that point in the process. Instead, I pulled out three pieces of acrylic skin and had the freedom to try them in various positions without having to commit or feel tight or run the risk of "messing up."

When I found a fit that felt right, I glued them in place. Done!

The Swishing Whisper of Brocade
4x6"; acrylic, India ink, collage, oil and waterbased pastels
abstract
2018

Kapiti!

We used to have a mischievous and thoroughly endearing parakeet named Kapiti, one of whose habits was to nibble the edges of paper. In order to protect papers I needed in plain sight, I purchased a piece of clear acrylic 'glass' under which to place them.

Kapiti died many years ago and I lost track of that sheet of acrylic … until I did a round of deep decluttering a few weeks ago and rediscovered it! I had a grand time today using it as my palette to mix a color for the negative painting of this work in progress.

Oh my gosh, if Kapiti were alive now he would have an absolute field day in my studio—sitting on the ends of brushes for wild rides, walking across what I was painting, and chasing and pecking at brush bristles, all while narrating his activities in a chipper stream-of-consciousness monologue as I worked!

work in progress
new layer: acrylic on paper