Musical

Gigi, My Fair Lady, Kiss Me Kate, Pajama Game, Fiddler on the Roof. 

Many musicals have won their way into my heart over the years, starting when I was maybe nine years old.

The past few months have felt artistically musical to me. 

As in: muse-ical. 

I've been open to letting muses lead me where they will.

And they are leading me all over the place. To no place I would have thought of on my own.

To my delight.

Over the weekend we visited friends John and Mary in the magical bit of land they call home along the coast of Maine. I woke Saturday morning, early hours, when a muse invited me to do a down-and-dirty-done-in-five-minutes blind contour sketch of a chair and large potted floor plant in our sweet guest accommodations. This is the blindest blind contour of my recent work. Footloose and fancy free.

blind contour wonkiness and wonder

Basic sketch in place, I then began rounding all the corners where lines intersected. I am fascinated by the alchemy that comes from combining blind contour sketching and neurographic smoothing. 

blind contour neurographic alchemy

Back at home I added a few lines, tried something that felt like a mistake, introduced color to resolve the misstep, found myself humming show tunes. 

work in progress

Basket Case

Those of you who are My Fair Lady aficionados might be familiar with Hymn to Him, the lyrics of which never failed to get active appreciation from my dad. The words from one line bubble up to capture the way I'm feeling in this moment—not for the first time this year, I might add, and not for the first time when posting here, my head is stuffed with cotton, hay, and rags. 

I am worn to a frazzle, at risk of becoming nothing but [an] exasperating, irritating, vacillating, calculating, agitating, maddening and infuriating hag! 

And that is all I have to say about my response to challenges today. 

---

About the art: I sat down yesterday and plonked out this part-blind-contour part-neurographic drawing exercise and felt all the better for its wonkinesses.

Be Curious but Not Invested or Hellbent
5 x 6"; ink, watercolor, acrylic, and oil pastel on card stock
floral
2022