The Glorious Impossible

Handpainted paper, scissors, mod podge, and a new day.

Exquisite tension.

The glorious impossible.

The Glorious Impossible
playing with handpainted collage paper on a book page
abstract
2020

Collage Paper?

I like engaging in what I think of as the 'exquisite tension' of working a crossword puzzle or writing a haiku, accepting and embracing the limits and working within them assiduously to bring into bloom what the constraints call for—a six-letter word for prehistoric monument, fourth letter m, for example, or using five + seven + five syllables to express a thought or feeling with tight precision.

Here at Lyme Camp:
• limits—plentiful
• assiduous effort—plentiful
• tension—plentiful
• exquisite—less plentiful, since exquisite is in direct one-to-one correspondence with my acceptance (or lack thereof) of limits!

Two days ago, I worked within the begrudgingly-tolerated limits—cursing them more than once—of a few minutes, a few tubes of paint, an old book, and my finger as a paintbrush.

Collage paper?

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Gratitude/simple pleasures:
• shoveling snow—purposeful, productive, practical exercise! fresh air! beauty every which way!;
• two surprise packages for me in the mail; and
• the grace of Meg's and my laughing in surrender last evening at the day's messy mix of foibles and accomplishments and rough edges and tendernesses and wooziness and failed efforts and vats of soup and indecision and tears and hugs.

Inexquisite Tension
playing with acrylic on a book page
abstract
2020

Lyme Camp

You might remember that I went to Takodah Family Camp in August 2015, 2016, and 2017 with my daughter Meg and her family. Now, unexpectedly I have taken up residence with them again, this time at their home in Virginia, for what we are calling Lyme Camp in recognition of Meg's recent diagnosis.

Takodah Family Camp runs for a week. My participation at Lyme Camp began mid-December and doesn't have a set end date. I didn't think Lyme Camp was going to have any kind of arts program but it must have had one in the past because, in poking around, I discovered some basic supplies and materials. I also found an ember of creative energy eager to be fanned.

Gratitude/simple pleasures:

• an unexpected few moments in which to move paint onto a book page with my fingers, in which to grab a cray-pas and a charcoal pencil and a marker to make a few scribbles;

• cubing beef; chopping onions, celery, and carrots; and gathering garlic, thyme, and parsley for an instant-pot stew; and

• a prolonged all-family belly laugh as we lingered at the dinner table last evening.

Whether I Can Unlock the Door Remains to Be Seen
playing with acrylic, marker, charcoal pencil, and cray-pas on a book page
abstract
2020

Here and Now 1 January 2020

Here and now.

Michelle Gives Me a Starting Place
playing with acrylic and pastel on a book page
abstract
2020

Positive Negative

Took a start from a few weeks ago, part of which I'd previously used to make a postcard using negative-space painting.

Decided to use negative space differently this time. Embellished my start from June to my liking first. Loved the process, love the product.

In fact, I think I need to get a job painting collage paper. Wouldn't that be so cool?

But I digress.

Next, painted a sheet of canvas paper to be my negative space, so to speak. Again, loved the process, love the end result. It was hard to photograph to satisfaction, but the subtleties here delight me.

Started putting the two together. A perfectly positive 'negative' experience!

work in progress

Simple and Magical

Lewis Noble's approach to painting captivates me.

I head to my studio today eager to tear up the postcard on which I made a quick paint sketch yesterday, in order to collage bits of it to the quick paint sketch I made on the Core Values patch I'm revising.

Looks so simple and magical when Lewis Noble tears up one sketch and collages it to another sketch, all to visually compelling and delightful effect.

Ha ha ha!

I just have to laugh when I feel nervous before I even make the first tear!

I hesitate.

I hem and haw.

What am I so afraid of?

Eventually, I commit one piece of collage paper to my Core Values patch with glue.

And then freeze.

Again.

I spend forever moving pieces of collage this way and that, hugely indecisive, not seeing placements that sing to me.

Simple and magical???

Not so much.

But, such a fascinating puzzle to work out.

newest patch

new patch in bigger picture
work in progress
working title: Core Values

Didn't Like It

Here's a patch that I completed back in March as part of my Core Values project.

Didn't like it then.

Don't like it now.

Time to do something about that. I brush gesso over the patch in uneven thicknesses with a beat-up foam brush.

Then, with Lewis Noble as my inspiration, I start playing around with a quick sketch-like approach, making marks, painting, scratching scribbles into the paint—first on the Core Values patch and then on the back of a postcard, same colors on both.

Core Values patch moving in a new direction
with marks, paint, and scribbles

postcard with paint marker marks

postcard with collage, paint, and scribbles added

Furnishing

I recently read an exquisitely written memoir by David Giffels entitled Furnishing Eternity.

When I paint, I think I furnish not eternity but right-now. At least sometimes. Often enough, in any case, to bring me back to my studio day after day.

Giffels, telling the story of using a router outfitted with a tongue-in-groove bit to shape the edge of a long pine board, gives words to what I think of as the now of painting: An hour passed, then another. Eventually, I became one with the process, a transformation I've always savored. First one enters the work, then the work enters oneself.

First I enter the work, then the work enters me. I am grateful each and every time the work enters me.

There has already been much back and forth with my patch in progress below. I enter the work, the work enters me, I enter the work, the work enters me.

Gonna let it "chill" overnight and see what I think tomorrow.

 

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History thus far:

    


     

        

          

Working

Twenty years ago, I read Studs Terkel's' sizable book, Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do.

I've had a lifelong curiosity about what people do all day and how they feel about what they do.

Here's what I've done so far today: exercise in my Strongboard class at the Y; prepare food; post and comment on Instagram; prepare billing for clients; plan meals for the coming week and write a grocery list; respond to comments at my blog; prepare lessons for tutees; try and fail to order postage stamps on line (didn't know my password and had no success with the process of establishing a new one); meet with a friend for a coffee date during which we sat outdoors; meditate, also outdoors; write a postcard to my dad; partially clean up my email inbox; research local sustainable sources for nutritious meat; read an article about bone health; read several chapters in a young adult novel; and paint.

I moved yesterday's mark-making forward—selected a limited palette, painted with my fingers, blended colors directly on the canvas. While I painted I was all in, nothing else going on but the exquisite choreography of hand/eye/canvas/paint.

Next up: meeting with tutees.

Tomorrow: more interaction with this patch-in-progress.

Something that Grew

Yesterday's something continued to unfold today.

My favorite parts during the unfolding:

• the see-saw process of making marks, painting over them, making marks, painting over them, making marks, painting over them, and
• painting mostly with my fingers.


What I like about what ended up unfolding:

• the delicacy, unfussiness, and scribbliness of the lines.


My current wonderings:

• done? or
• maybe needing some bold lines for contrast?

newest patch;
done?

newest patch, in the big picture;
working title: Core Values

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newest patch, with a test piece of acrylic skin resting on the surface …

Finger Painting

Had a whole bunch of ideas in mind when I headed for Core Values today. Most of 'em never saw the light of day.

But I had a good time working out the 'problems' that showed up in front of me. 

Did most of my color mixing right on the foam core, squeezing directly from paint tubes. Jumped ship on brushes just minutes in. Loved using my fingers instead to mix, blend, create soft transitions between values, push, dab, and spread.

taped off a double patch that had
some drips and collage in place from weeks ago,
did some mark-making with a black paint marker

started finger painting with reds and black

played with analogous colors,
scratched through to earlier layers with a metal skewer

added collage,
brought in some pastel line work,
got some interesting textural stuff going in the green-blue area
(but, really! what is it doing there?)

ta da!
newest (double) patch painted onto grid-format work-in-progress

detail from new patch

new patch in big picture,
working title: Core Values

Still in Giddy-Up Mode

Climbed back up on my Virgina weekend horse and gave it free rein again.

Romped over hills, ducked under branches, felt wind whipping my hair back.

weekend canvas, work in progress

Hunkered In

It's rare that the word susurration finds its way into my life. I've never used it.

But I might.

We've got a "powerful bomb cyclone" winter storm underway today (bomb cyclone??). Hour after hour, snow piles up outdoors.

Indoors I am cozy. Dry. Warm.

The wind has not been ferocious (nor perceptibly cyclonic) here but a steady background sussuration—a whispering, murmuring, and rustling—of winter wind keeps me company. A susurration and the intermittent thunk-and-scrape of snow plows. A January concert.

In my studio, I play again with yesterday's canvas because I don't like the wrapped edges painted black after all. In deference to my headache (now that's a bomb cyclone!), the main symptom of which currently is that I can't tolerate the discomfort of wearing my glasses, I work for only a short time and half-blind. I mix up some titanium white and bright aqua green and spread it over all the edges with my finger. Then I transform one edge with oil pastels.

Thunk, scrape, whisper.

Aaaaahhh.

edge detail

edge detail

edge detail