Continuous Loop

idea, trial
error trial nope trial*
oh! resolution

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*repeat as indicated

Through the Heaven-Reaching Evergreens
12 x 12"; acrylic, ink, and pastel on masonite panel
abstract landscape
2019

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history:

free already-painted masonite panel
acquired at neighborhood yard sale

my first layers on the panel;
acrylic over black gesso

multiple layers later, 
over another coat of black gesso

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detail photographs, showcasing accident and blessing, layering and scraping, mixing and remixing, tapping lived experience and flying blind, trying one thing after another and responding to my inner compass moment by moment:

Whispers on the Wind

yes no maybe so
walking changing step by step
here there letting go

Holding Fast in Rising Wind
12x12"; acrylic, ink, and pastels on masonite panel
abstract
2019

Listening to Whispers

put on your hiking
shoes, could be mud. nourishing
unexpected walk.

Whispers of the Heart
12 x 12"; acrylic on masonite board
abstract
2019

Painting

benjamin moore's full
moon in bathroom; payne's gray and
blue in studio

detail, work in progress
12 x 12"; acrylic on masonite panel

Plumbers Both

Dan the bathroom man
plumbs the master bath, while I
plumb sea, salt, sky, swell.

work in progress
16 x 20", acrylic on canvas

Up from Below the Surface

When inner sub-marine currents started nudging, I pulled out a painted canvas previously featured on September 4, 2017 and October 17, 22, and 23 of 2018.

Covered it with black gesso, grabbed a ceramic tile for a starting color reference, mixed up colors, and let an expression of salty seawater and phytoplankton make itself known.

work in progress
16 x 20'; acrylic on canvas

Complete vs. Completed

I see this piece as an outward manifestation of a burst of inward tumult. It is not a completed painting. That would be something different. It is what I'd call a complete self-expression.

The inward tumult has passed through, as inward tumults do. It is complete. It has, however, left a vapor trail, traces of having blown past.

Most likely I will pick up this scrappy, rough, hand-me-down canvas again sometime and do something else with it. For now, perched on my dresser, it provides refreshing 'visual cacophony' in my bedroom.

The Cacophony of Birds at Dawn
16 x 20"; acrylic, latex, ink, collage, and oil pastel on canvas
abstract
2018

Grateful to be Tugged

The canvas I worked on last Wednesday, a free canvas already painted previously by someone else and set out for grabs in their yard about a year ago, tugged at me off and on over the past few days. I let myself be tugged.

'tug in progress'
detail

An October Wednesday

Today unfolded as a string of embodied engaged moments of presence for which I feel tremendous gratitude. Today was a day out of time, a day of grace.

Late in the afternoon, the urge to paint beckoned me for the first time in days and days.

My lived experience of this Wednesday in October expressed itself in color-mixing and mark-making and brushstrokes.

work in progress,
16 x 20"; acrylic on canvas

Repartée

Another day with a few minutes in my studio and further interaction with free canvas #3.

I set the canvas in front of me.

Give it time to speak to me in some way.

Several pockets of neutral make a little noise that catches my attention. Develop them a bit and, once I set paint and palette knife in motion, the conversation picks up for a short, rapid, playful back-and-forth that includes bright pops of oil pastels and bold marks from a black paint marker.

The canvas now sits on the landing at the top of the stairs near my studio. We exchange greetings in passing. Intermittentlythroughout the day I take in its color, composition, linework, and layers.

Will continue to do so till sometime next week.

free canvas #3
work in progress

Wildflowers in My Hair

1967. Babysitting. Canoe Brook Parkway, Summit, NJ.

What I don't remember:
• who the family was,
• who the kids were,
• how I knew them, or
• how I landed the babysitting job.


What I do remember:
• modern architecture and furnishings,
• 50¢ per hour,
• a stereo turntable, and
• Judy Collins's Wildflowers record album.

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Six or seven weeks ago, I sat in the Cabot Theater in Beverly, MA, as part of a full-to-capacity audience whose average age was roughly 67 and who may or may not have worn flowers in their hair and smoked a little weed during the "Summer of Love" in '67—all of us gathered fifty years down the road from the Summer of Love on a cold almost-winter night while Judy Collins offered up a transcendent concert that transported us with her timeless voice right back to our youth.

There is a whole lotta magic in this world.

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I dipped into a different then and now today. Picked up another one of the free canvases I acquired over the summer and started noodling with it.

Back in the then of last summer the canvas looked like this:

free canvas #3, as picked up from a neighbor's collection of pass-alongs

Now, I've performed just the littlest bit of black magic (ha ha!) by covering the whole surface with black interior semi-gloss enamel latex house paint and letting myself indulge in free play with various paints, brushes, texture sheets, crayons, and mark-making tools—roughing up this canvas for who knows what next.

Amusingly, the black background, with these colors on it, evokes strong sensory memories of the fabric of a sassy swishy dress I wore in 1967!

free canvas #3
18x24"
work in progress

Curiouser and Curiouser

Curiosity was the name of the game with this originally-Pepto-Bismol-pink canvas.

What if?

What if?

What if?

I don't know what to think about where I've landed after today's time in my studio. The words of Lewis Carroll's Alice keep coming to mind: "Curiouser and curiouser!"

Here's my current what if—what if I prop this piece in a snow bank, snap a photo in late afternoon January sunshine, entitle it Without Wondering Where the Bottom Will Turn out to Be, and let it be complete in this moment?

Without Wondering Where the Bottom Will Turn out to Be
8x10"; acrylic, latex, ink, and pastels on canvas
abstract
2018

When I Paint, I Come Home to Myself

A patch of winter sunlight coming through the window.

The scritch and friction of an old brush I haven't used for over a year.

Visual surprises on my canvas.

Drips of ink.

The tactile satisfaction of smoothing a piece of collage in place.

The patterns my body traces in space as I move through my studio while painting—an ephemeral companion piece to the one on canvas.

The sanctuary and solitude.

The collaboration of mystery and magic.

free canvas #2
8x10"work in progress

To Unfold Exactly

Deep inside, almost from day one, I've trusted my art to unfold exactly as it will unfold. 

My shallow outside, however, gets a little antsy and doubting at times, wanting to direct and control more than trust. Wanting to hurry things along or achieve a particular result. But for the most part, it is also surprisingly trusting. 

Really, what else can my art do but unfold exactly as it will unfold?

Jane Davies recently wrote about painting studies she'd done, saying: To me, it is important that these "studies" have no pressure on them to BE anything other than the result of a process. If they went directly into the wood stove now, it would be fine; their purpose has been served. I've made them, and I've looked at them.

Those words stopped me in my tracks. I might trust my art to unfold as it will unfold, but I do get attached to outcome.

I would LOVE to experience what Jane describes, to engage wholeheartedly and fully in studies that need be nothing other than the result of a process, to generate pieces that could go directly into a wood stove having served their purpose, with no backward glance from me, no pang of indecision, no grasping. 

My first impulse? Make it happen! do it! set it as a goal! start now! …

Oh.

Yeah.

Trust.

That experience will either unfold in my life or it won't.

Today I painted happily and freely, wonderfully open to intuition and play and experimentation. I was so content in quiet timeless flow in my teeny studio in my little house in the deep cold of winter.

free canvas #2
8x10"
work in progress

That's How We Roll

Please laugh with me. 

We just finished up holiday breaks—public schools had ten days off, private schools as many as 18, those in the workforce a good handful. 

After which, kids went back to school, adults back to work. 

After one or two days of that … everything closed down for a good old-fashioned S*N*O*W D*A*Y!

Actually, two. 

Might as well get a long weekend out of the snow because, ya know, we won't have any days off again until … the three-day Martin Luther King Jr. weekend one week from now.

That's how we roll here in New England!

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In my studio today I continued working on the edges of 'free canvas #1' and then picked up another free canvas from my stash to use as a repository for a small bit of paint left on my palette.

 free canvas #2,
8x10",
as already primed with hot pink
when I acquired it from a free yard 'sale'

first marks on free canvas #2

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

Making Hay

Years ago, I copied out the following lines from Agnes Rossi's novel Houseguest—"pardon my French" for quoting some profane language here, but the profanity is essential to the impact:

     There are difficulties and there are difficulties. It’s one thing to be moving along a sidewalk in winter all but overwhelmed by grief for a beloved wife recently dead. It’s something else entirely to be faced with the prospect of getting a large suitcase without a working handle halfway across town. 
     “Son of a bitch,” Edward said. “Jesus goddamn Christ.” 

The lines came to mind this morning.

I've had a headache for four weeks now, but it 'was something else entirely' to be taking on the tiniest of tasks in my studio, painting the edges of a canvas I started several months ago, and to knock my water container over all over everything. 

What Edward said!

Anyway, headache and spilled water notwithstanding, we have a mega-blizzard forecast for tomorrow, with EVEN COLDER temps than the past couple of weeks predicted to follow. I decided to make hay while the sun shines—to finish the edges of this painting, take a photo outdoors, and then set it on my dresser as a nod to the new year.

Might be finished. Might not. Doesn't matter.

Bring on the blizzard.

free canvas #1
16x20"
work in progress

Uncle Dotty

In the early stages of acquiring language, and relationship terminology in particular, my nephew Bud referred to all aunts and uncles as uncles, and I became Uncle Dotty.

Awesome!

I'm still Uncle Dotty to my now adult nephews Bud and younger brother Stuart.

Awesome!

They recently flew to the east coast from Colorado and Ohio respectively and popped in for a brief visit which included their being in the car with me as I lived up to the quirkiness of my name by screeching to a halt to investigate a bunch of canvases set outside in a neighbor's yard with a cardboard sign—FREE.

The canvases were already painted, and ugly.

PERFECT.

Bud and Stuart helped me load up the car.

I have no attachment whatsoever to what's on those canvases.

What could be better for practicing veiling and layering and obscuring and revealing and transforming?

Pulled one out and started playing today.

free canvas #1
16x20"
work in progress