Hidden in Plain Sight

Some might look at today's outcome from my time in my studio and see a scribble. My mom, for example, were she alive, would probably see just that and wonder why I consider it art.

After a considerable stretch of discomfort with my art in recent weeks, I reveled in a totally satisfying free-flow of expressive creative energy today, and, when I look, here's what I see hidden in plain sight on the page:

• I'm missing my dad today. Again. Still. Piercingly.

• Jane Davies has been exploring an inquiry related to scribbling for which I am grateful.

• My studio is a mess.

• I have been feeling bunched up, aimless, dissatisfied with recent paintings I've started.

• I miss making postcards for my dad.

• We're having a gentle snow day here in my neck of the woods.

• Sylvia and I have been talking tons about all manner of topics tied to art and to our own personal art.

• I'm wearing the chickens-and-chicken-wire pattern sweater my mom knit for me decades ago.

• I picked up a new book at the library this afternoon and have an engaging audiobook in progress also.

• Dave and I watched a fascinating webinar last evening about elements of musical genius in the songs of the Beatles.

Can you see it all?

Pain Pushes Until Vision Pulls
4.5 x 6"; acrylic paint marker and water-soluble pastel 
on a book page
abstract
2023

Attunement

I attune to an inner whisper today that keeps saying, mpjkenyon.

Jane Kenyon is a Canadian artist whose work I discovered through Instagram @mpjkenyon some months ago.

mpj, thank you for knocking on my door with mark making that is all-in carefree, careless, reckless, uninhibited, haphazard, playful, intuitive, childlike, and uncensored. Every time I see your art, I feel resonance.

Well, that would be the tame way of putting it.

Let's get down to brass tacks.

Every time I see your art, you smack me upside the head and bark in my face, This is what you yearn to do. DO IT. Crack open your safe shell.

OK, OK!

And, thank you.

I played with this kind of mark making a few days ago but then lost it to subsequent layers. Today I wanted to stay immersed in—and stop while still immersed in—pure mark making, mark making from—to use your words—somewhere inside my body other than my conscious self.

√.

newest patch

detail

new patch in the bigger picture;
working title: Core Values