Late Afternoon Reset

I keep a steady, focused, get-things-done pace doing the work that is mine to do on this feels-like-summer day in June. Late afternoon finds me a little rough around the edges, the needle on my energy supply getting low, and my mind offering little by way of initiative or self-discipline.

But!

I take myself into my studio. 

In mere seconds the work of the day falls away, and little sparks of timelessness and joy ignite as I rummage through a stash of sandwich paper enlivened by off-loaded paint, open a brand new package of what Jane Davies refers to affectionately as cheap drawing paper, select a beat-up paint brush, and dive into a jar of Utrecht Acrylic Matte Medium. I lose myself in color, in texture, in using my hands to create, in process—heading I don't know where, entirely content not knowing.

work in progress

Washed to a Sparkle by Saltwater

The sea has always whispered to me, 

all down my life it’s been there. 

And with that endless restlessness 

come other sounds -- 

seagulls shrieking 

and mast wires clinking as boats shift; 

pebbles turning 

and waves tapping sea-worn rocks.

                —Jules Hardy, Altered Land

Washed to a Sparkle by Saltwater
4.75 x 8"; acrylic and oil pastel on a book page
abstract
2022

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humble beginnings

Alchemy

Artist Jacqui Beck's thoughts about a series she's painting called Inside Outside accompany me as I begin working on a new painting. She articulates the following in a short video:

As an artist I bring my inside outside,

Who I am gets expressed into the work.

How I think about the world,

How I encounter the world,

How I experience the world

Coming inside me,

Getting churned around,

And then coming out in my work.

At the tail end of a(nother!) day filled with more cyber challenges than I can handle with any grace, let alone savvy, I am called strongly to play with line and color. I am pulled to paint on a page torn from a copy of Little Women given to my daughter by my mother, a book that ends up becoming, decades down the road, a comforting art journal for me during a dark time. One of the pages has paint on it from two years ago, an expression of my inside manifesting itself outside in that place at that time. And, of course, whatever is inside has been forged by many outside encounters and experiences. 

I grab a paint pen now and begin drawing lines around patches of paint to create shapes. 

The outside that influences and impacts the inside churns around unceasingly and, as an artist, that who-I-am gets expressed into my work every single time I paint.

The alchemy amazes and sustains me.

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. 

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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

Human Design

I am a constellation of energy centers, often soaring high, with several centers designed to generate consistency from within, and others designed to be sensitive to outer energetics and influences.

Each day I wake and fly and navigate the fullness of life.

The navigation plays out up-close-and-personal when I paint. Here, the journey from a few lines to a resolved composition was one of constant interplay between inner constancies and outer impacts, a call-and-response (and-response-and-response-and-call-and-response-and-call) of some duration, much questioning, and considerable perceived ugliness en route, all brought in time to balance.

Deep in Inner Space, Extraordinary Knowing
3.5 x 8"; acrylic and oil pastel on drawing paper, 
mounted on card stock
abstract
2022

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