Composed

I don't always feel composed.

But a post by Jane Davies grabs my attention, lights me up, and gives me new fodder with which to think about composition.

“Throughout my process of painting, I am engaged in the act of composing. The visual elements and their relationships to one another change many times during the course of creating a painting. The composition is in constant flux until it isn’t. The composition of the finished painting (if it finishes, which not all my paintings do), is an unknown until it reveals itself through the process of composing.”

Life makes a mark; I respond. Throughout the process of living each day I am engaged in the act of composing, engaged in call-and-response, always in flux.

I don't always feel composed.

I am always composing. 

Yes.

The Friend Who Asks to Paint with You and
Drags You into Your Studio
4 x 5.25" postcard; acrylic, ink, oil pastel, and collage on card stock
abstract 2021

(Parenthetical Project) 11

Now there were even more threads to gather up and spin onto bobbins.

This idiom, previously unknown to me, charms me as I hear it expressed in a lovely and distinct British accent in the audio recording of a novel set in post-WWI Depression-era London. 

Is that a delicious little sentence or what?

Even more threads to gather up.

And spin onto bobbins.

Yes! Gather up those threads! Spin them onto bobbins! Everything in order! Everything in its place!

I say it aloud more than once as I move through my day—it is such an eminently usable assertion.

…

Have you seen my bobbins anywhere?

Even More Threads to Gather Up
4 x 5.5" postcard, acrylic, ink, and collage
abstract
2021

(Parenthetical Project) 10

I find myself reflecting on the art of correspondence as I engage in the art of creating a postcard this morning, on the sacred and enduring place that written co-respondence with others holds in my life.

Two sentences embedded in Jane McCafferty’s novel One Heart catch my one heart and my notice. I parse them into a smile of a poem.

And I like checking 

the mail each day 

because it turns out 

Gladys is a letter writer. 

She doesn’t write so often, 

but the letters she does write, 

it’s worth the wait, 

if you can read the penmanship.

Clean and Sharp as Pepper
4 x 5.5" postcard, acrylic, ink, and collage
abstract
2021

(Parenthetical Project) 9

Each morning

a walking meditation

before dawn.

A mind-viewing

a moon-viewing

a sniffing of washed air.

A tasting of sharp wind-refreshment

a trickle of whisper in a storm drain

a stretching of calf muscles 

an aligning of spine

a striking of foot on street.

An attunement, 

an opening,

a flow.

Before the Agitations of the Day
4 x 5" postcard; acrylic, ink, and collage
abstract
2021

 

(Parenthetical Project) 8

Here's my Inauguration Day story. 

We have Dan the Man, a trusty tile guy (same guy who did a bathroom renovation for us), installing tile in our mudroom which directly abuts the kitchen where I usually eat. Because I want to watch/hear inauguration proceedings without tile-installation noise, I set up my lunch on a tray and take it to my study. 

I place the tray on the table there and start to reach for my laptop to get it set for inauguration viewing. The tray slides off whatever I perched it on, and almost everything on the tray slides off the tray, making more cacophony than any tile installation. 

Homemade soup (broccoli, chicken, kale, carrots, olive oil, bone broth, snow peas, and spinach) in a 20-ounce handpainted bowl; half an avocado; a serving of homemade cole slaw on a favorite ceramic plate; a small bowl of dried pumpkin seeds; a 16-ounce glass of water.

Onto a fabric-covered chair, an open heating grate, a pine floor with spaces between boards, and a decorative metal bowl filled with river stones and three votive candles.

Soup bowl loses a big fragment; plate breaks into pieces.

A peaceful transition of power. Go, Joe! Go, Kamala!

No Other World but This One
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, ink, and collage
abstract
2021

Turn Me Into Song, Sing Me Awake
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, ink, and collage
abstract
2021

(Parenthetical Project) 7

It can be, and often is, tremendously difficult for me to get past my own defenses to discover, identify, and fully own what I'm thinking, and then to let go as indicated of either resistance or clinging.

How is it that this difficulty, this resistance, this clinging can still surprise me?

How is it that I can still hide from myself so capably?

I Hear the Children in the Yard
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, ink, and collage
abstract
2021

(Parenthetical Project) 6

Coming up empty today—nothing to write.

Let go. 

Let in.

Downy Woodpecker Percusses an Improv Solo
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, ink, and collage
abstract
2021

 

After Flinging My Coat on a Chair
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, ink, and collage
abstract
2021

(Parenthetical Project) 5

I cut snippets from an acrylic skin I created several years ago. The skin consists of free-form scribbles made with fabric paint, dried thoroughly, over which I spread gloss gel medium, also left to dry thoroughly, thereby creating a plastic sheet or 'skin.' 

sample acrylic skins

I cut my snippets without knowing how or if they'll bring cohesion to my starts but, magically, they do. The random bits of scribble offer up something different from what I'd ever think to—or be able to—draw in context, and I can move them around first without having to commit. Win, win.

Though Not the Way You Planned It
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, ink, and collage
abstract
2021

(Parenthetical Project) 4

Saturday evening I collapse into several minutes of wholehearted full-bodied therapeutic cathartic tears-streaming laughter in response to the closing scene of Episode 10, Season 1, of Ted Lasso.

Grace on a day otherwise grouchy.

The Most Ancient Language
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, ink, and collage
abstract
2021

Close Both Eyes to See With the Other
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, ink, and collage
abstract
2021

(Parenthetical Project) 3

This, then.

The unmistakable beat

of beak on bark,

riveting me in place

to search out

the compelling provider of percussion,

my eyes and ears collaborating

in a pas-de-deux

until I locate

the whole world

in a downy woodpecker.

Where the Best Poems Grow
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, ink, and collage on paper
abstract
2021

(Parenthetical Project) 1

“And you? What are you going to be when you grow up?”

In kindergarten, when the teacher asked this question,

Warren had answered with his plans for that afternoon—

the afternoon being as far into the future

as his five-year-old mind could imagine. Since then,

“What are you going to be when you grow up?”

had been Mia's and his way of asking about plans for the day.

Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

Warren! 

My hero!

What, you ask, do I want to be when I grow up? I want to be the artist who, this afternoon, interrupts her Abstract Faces series/class progress to start a parenthetical project of a different sort. 

How's that for grown up!

(parenthetical project),
twelve 4.5 x 6"starts, acrylic on drawing paper

Books and Bookmarks (3)

Re books:

Joe picked up the book, 

weighed it in his hands. 

“I could tell you this story, 

in a hundred words or less, 

and you’d forget it by bedtime.” 

He leaned toward Rusty 

and lowered his voice, 

as if he had secrets to share. 

“Or you could read a couple hundred 

thousand words instead 

and never forget the story 

as long as you live.”

—Lauren Wolk, Those Who Favor Fire 

Re bookmarks:

Hand-painted bookmarks dazzle me with their intrinsic freshness factor!

Someone like Malcolm Gladwell might know what the frequency/infrequency calculus is regarding what keeps a piece of art fresh and new and impactful when you see it repeatedly. I do not, but I do know experientially that hand-painted bookmarks stay fresh and impactful for me. When any given bookmark is doing its job, it catches my wonder each time I open a book-in-progress to read. Then it catches my eye again as I mark the place between later pages when I stop reading. It never becomes over-familiar. I love that freshness factor! 

No One Else, Anywhere, Anytime,
Has Ever Read This Book
2 x 6" bookmark; acrylic and oil pastel on paper
abstract
2020
sold

Books and Bookmarks (1)

Re books:

The library will only let Sidda and me 

check out two books at a time, 

which drives us nuts. We live in the country, 

I tell the librarian, 

we need more than two books to last us! 

My daughter and I are fast readers, 

we are avid. 

But the old bat behind the counter says, 

Two books a patron, 

that’s our limit, 

no matter where you live. 

Sometimes I watch my daughter smuggle 

an extra book out,

and even though I know I should, 

I just cannot bring myself to stop her. 

Sometimes you just have to reach out 

and grab what you want, 

even when they tell you not to.

—Rebecca Wells, Little Altars Everywhere

Re bookmarks:

How did I get started painting bookmarks? 

I don't recall. 

Maybe I took a painting I'd made that I didn't like and cut it into pieces? Or perhaps a narrow strip I'd trimmed from a larger painting caught my eye? 

No matter. What's not in question is that I began painting bookmarks.

One appeal of painting bookmarks is that they are what is referred to as tiny art. I love both elements of that descriptor equally: (1) the tiny amount of real estate in a bookmark and the resulting relatively tiny amount of time required to paint it make for satisfying short-order gratification, and (2) a 2 x 6-inch bookmark is no more and no less art than a 2 x 6-foot painting or a 2 x 6-yard mural; each is a self-contained world that knows no boundaries.

She Lived Inside that Book for Days
2 x 6"; acrylic, ink, and pastel on paper
abstract
2020
sold

On My Nightstand, on My Easel (20)

 On my nightstand

If my nose were cut off 

I would have no memories. 

When I have lain awake all night 

and my eyes are finally closing 

I’ll get a whiff of something far off, 

from another year, 

another county ...

Sometimes there are only smells: 

the smell of chickens; 

the smell of Miss Finch’s stale breath 

and the hard candies by her bed, 

peppermint, 

all stuck together with the heat of her house; 

the smell of Matt’s math books 

where you crack the bindings, they’re so new; 

the smell of May in the kitchen 

frying the onions.

Jane Hamilton, The Book of Ruth

On my wall!

The Smell of Freshly Cut Grass Itching at My Nose
24 x 48"; acrylic, charcoal, pencil, oil pastel, and collage on canvas
abstract landscape
2020

On My Nightstand, on My Easel (16)

On my nightstand

She took careful steps 

across the floor, 

as if moving too fast 

might set something in motion 

that hadn’t yet begun.

Anita Shreve, The Pilot's Wife

On my easel

something in motion!
detail, work in progress, 36 days in, 5/24/20
24 x 48" canvas

Marblehead

I live on the North Shore of Boston not far from the picturesque coastal New England town of Marblehead, Massachusetts.

A regional expression we use as a way to acknowledge the sudden realization of something obvious:

Dawn breaks over Marblehead!

I pause this morning to evaluate the day-after-day frustration of trying to get decent photos of book pages I've painted, pages that I leave bound in the book, pages that curl up, won't lie flat, have shadows near the binding, and so forth.

Dawn breaks over my hard stony head: I can step back and let go of perfect!

To Wake When All Is Possible
Before the Agitations of the Day Grip You
7 x 9"; acrylic and hand-painted collage
abstract
2020

Unseen Forces

So many forces at work that we are not able to see with the naked eye.

Harnessing My Belief That Something Wonderful Is About to Happen
7 x 9"; acrylic, pencil, oil pastel, and collage on a book page
abstract
2020