Poetry Hidden in Prose

You know the quotations I sometimes include in my posts? Here's the story:

Several decades ago I began the practice of copying lines from whatever I was reading, mostly from fiction—lines that resonated with an emotion, spoke to lived experience, captured my ear with their lyricism, made me laugh, brought tears to my eyes. 

For many years, those jottings landed on anything at hand—the back of an envelope, a receipt, a fragment torn from a paper bag.

By and by, I started a business called art❤️warmers, featuring small pieces of art and whimsy I created from found materials into which I'd incorporate selected lines.

Eventually, because I'd amassed so many unwieldy snippets, and because I was making such frequent use of the collection, I typed the quotations into an indexed database I use to this day.

Still later, I came to have a blog in which I sometimes gave space to one of those quotations.

Because those words felt like poetry hidden in prose, I began formatting the quotations as poems rather than as continuous text.

For example, instead of this:

This is what an artist is, she thought. This is the temperament you need to spend a whole day tinkering with a sentence, making sure both the meaning and the music are right; to spend three or seven or ten years working on a book,

this:

This is what an artist is, 

she thought. 

This is the temperament you need 

to spend a whole day 

tinkering 

with a sentence, 

making sure 

both the meaning 

and the music 

are right; 

to spend three 

or seven 

or ten years 

working on a book. 

    —Brian Morton, Starting Out in the Evening

Tinkering With a Sentence for Ten Years
4 x 8.5"; acrylic, ink, and oil pastel on drawing paper
abstract
2022

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

On the Fly

I was really hankering to settle in with some linework and rounding of corners Wednesday afternoon but I was on the fly, prepping for a day trip to Maine the following day.

I circled back to the idea of wanting to try my hand at a neurographic painting on a neutral atmospheric background, an idea that had caught my attention a few weeks ago.

Only got as far as the neutral atmospheric background. 

a start

 

Streetable #10

You know how good-byes feel. 
How the air gets excited 
when all its ions 
and electrical charges 
are disrupted, 
first by the intent to leave 
and after by the leaving itself. 
Then, when the bodies move 
away through space, 
they create empty pockets 
where feelings get caught 
and eddy around in the vacuum, 
creating little vortices 
of relief 
or sadness 
or confusion. 
That’s the way it felt 
on the day the Seeds left town.

Ruth Ozeki, All Over Creation

Perhaps If She Acts as Though Things Are Normal
4 x 6" postcard; acrylic and ink
abstract
2020

before primping

Is There a Purpose?

Artist Jane Davies recently posted a conversation in response to a question that came her way about the value of art if it isn't practical or doesn't make a salable piece—if, for example, as Jane had done, one was making small simplified works on paper with self-created 'rules' just to get ideas moving by keeping hands and eyes doing something in the studio. The question behind the question was: what to do with all those impractical unsalable pieces of art?

So many thoughts and ideas I have in response to that question but, for today, only this:

Keep them! Keep them all! You never know what might become of one of those pieces! Or when!

Part of the fun of this postcard, made before Jane posted the aforementioned conversation at her blog, is that the pieces come from exercises I did several years ago while taking an online class from Jane! What if I had pitched them because they weren't 'practical' or 'salable'? No thank you!

Deep Inner Space, Extraordinary Knowing
4 x 6" postcard; acrylic and pencil on drawing paper, mounted on cardboard
abstract
2020

Noticing #4

noticing:

• the music of rain drumming on our cottage roof
• grouchiness at the discomfort in my painting process this morning
• joy in purchasing real food at the local farmer's market
• how I come alive when I engage in curiosity
• internal arguments running round and round my mind

Spinning Around on a Ball of Dirt

How crazy is it to be spinning around on a huge ball of dirt within a vast illimitable universe? And, if the universe is illimitable, then how come it is believed to have a 'measurement' of a diameter of at least 10 billion light years?

Further, if it is ceaselessly expanding, as is also believed, then there must be 'room' for it to do so. There must be some bigger something in which it resides … yes? Does that something have a limit, an 'end'? How can it? How can it not?

Pretty soon my brain can make no sense of any of it.

I remember the first time I contemplated infinitude. I was falling asleep one night in Cranford, NJ, at about age seven.

I couldn't make sense of illimitability then either.

But I digress.

I painted today. Some of the abundant energy of the universe flowed in and out of me in a steady stream.

Heaven!

She Doodled With a Fine-Tip
1.75 x 6"; acrylic and ink on drawing paper,
mounted on card stock
abstract
2018
[sold]

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

Lake Champlain, Day 8

[entry drafted at Lake Champlain 6/15/18]

Sweet sweet summer day, slipping now into evening's hush as I write from the porch of our vacation cottage with our car mostly packed for our return home tomorrow.

3rd Lake Champlain work-in-progress,
18x24"; mixed media
fifth layer,
paint marker shapes, stencils, ink doodles

final layer for now,
ink and paint-marker doodles, oil pastels, veiling, print collage

detail

detail

detail

This Is the Day!

This is the day the Lord has made;

let us rejoice and be glad in it.

                                     Psalm 118:24

newest patch

detail

No Man's Land

I'm in such an awkward place with this patch in my Core Values project. A no man's land. Although I trust that the layers I've built have the potential to go somewhere awesome, I don't particularly like what I see now, nor do I have any idea how to proceed.

I can detect some of what is needed.

But, I can't yet imagine how to create what is needed.

Artist Marion Hedger recently wrote about the phases of creating a painting, referencing an interview by Nicholas Wilton of Mark Eanes in which Eanes talks about three phases each painting moves through and how each phase has three phases.

So far, the one or two times I've tried in the moment to identify where I am in the process? No clue.

Today, when I stopped for the day, I thought, I am smack in the middle of the middle.

But maybe not. I may be at the beginning of the middle.

Or, possibly, the middle of the end.

The one fact of which I am certain: you'll see this painting at least once more, and it will have changed.

patch in progress

Arthur's Weed Patch

I was living in the Netherlands when I first connected with Miss Peach comic strips. The reason I remember the character named Arthur and, more particularly, his weed patch* is that my youngest sister was born while we lived in the Netherlands and had hair that stood straight up from her head as an infant, hair that my parents referred to—with great affection—as Arthur's weed patch.

It was during those same two years of living in the Netherlands that a school friend and I, sixth graders at the time, spent a bunch of happy hours playing across the street from her house at a construction site after hours. As I've played with my current Core Values patch yesterday and today, memories have surfaced of the engaging pleasure of making something out of 'nothing' at that building site—arranging and rearranging cinder blocks, scraps of wood, bits of metal, and other stuff lying around in the gravel and weeds.

Here I am doing the same thing all these many years later.

added white shapes, scratched through layers

pasted tissue collage, extended color, added veiling

new patch, with final tweaks

detail

new patch in the bigger picture;
working title: core values

-------------

* I kinda shrugged off my homework yesterday, not persisting in searching for online evidence of Arthur's weed patch, but look what my friend Carolyn found:

Miss Peach is a really sweet and kind teacher but, still, I hope she doesn't find out Carolyn did my homework for me.

Invitation

Which universe to enter?

And, once there, will I be able to retrace my steps? Will I be able to return to the drawing board, so to speak, and explore another? 

Does it matter?

It's Hard to Pinpoint an Exact Moment
6x6", acrylic, collage, ink, and oil pastel on gessobord
abstract
2018

enlarged detail / one universe

Inspiration

Along with moseying back into painting and blogging this week, I've begun to mosey back into Instagram.

While scrolling through my IG feed, I took inspiration from artist Maz Hawes.

Literally.

I inhaled and then before I even had time to exhale, I took that inspiration, squeezed some white paint on free canvas #3, and spread it around with a palette knife.

Then I let my breath out.

Love that all-action-no-mind kind of painting—thank you, Maz!

free canvas #3
work in progress

detail

detail

Bringing a Year to a Close

In the spirit of tying up loose ends, giving a nod to the old, and making space for the new, I plan to bring closure to 2017 in my next few posts—one of which appears here today in my last blog entry of 2017, the rest of which will show up on the other side of the weekend at the beginning of 2018.

Janus, god of transitions, invites me to take a close look at the metamorphasis from this start—

collage on paper,
taped to a cafeteria tray

to this completed painting—

All Are Born Radiating Light

The dramatic change knocks my socks off and seems impossibly magical … even though I was its agent and witnessed the transformation firsthand as it unfolded moment by moment!

Slapstick 12/28/17

In recent weeks I've done some of my most exciting work, and some of my least satisfying.

What d'ya think—the two might go hand in hand, might go with taking more risks?

---

Funny story: I got going with an idea here that seemed doomed to irretrievable ugliness, glued its parts onto a handpainted scrap from my collage box, sandwiched the whole mess between two sheets of plastic with the weight of a few books on top, and wrote the opening two lines above while I waited for the glue to dry so I could assess the damages—sure I was writing about a total fail.

But no.

Complete surprise. I love this piece!

I'm still in shock. I actually achieved the effect I was aiming for but not at all in the way I'd set out to do so.

Golly!

Flight Behavior
4x5"; acrylic, India ink, and pastel on paper
abstract
2017
[gift]

Thankful

I read a novel by Jan Karon years ago in which Episcopalian minister Father Tim focuses one Sunday on a passage from the Bible whose message is to give thanks in all circumstances.

My memory of that part of the book may be wildly off the mark, but that's of no concern. The gift I received was the invitation to give thanks no matter what.

No matter what.

Really?

That is a radical idea.

I don't always remember to practice what Father Tim brought to my attention, but I inevitably enter a better space when I do.

My prayer of gratitude is this today: I am grateful—even if I don't know why (I don't), and even if I don't feel grateful (I don't)—for the struggle and the not-knowing and the self-questioning I experienced while engaged with this work in progress today.

work in progress
5x5"; canvas tiles and paper
working title: q&q cut-up #10b

Fast and Furious

You know how some folks do five-minute paintings?

Or 20-second paintings, for Pete's sake?

Those folks?

They would not be I.

---

Parallel play continues here: bathroom mess increases by the minute, studio is barely recognizable.

FEMA may be called in.

---

Before, during, after:

from this 8x10" start,



to this 4x5" quadrant,



to this coverup,



to a completed painting.

Allowing for Accident
4x5"; acrylic, pen, collage, pencil, and oil pastel on canvas paper
abstract
2017