an unwanted blogging sabbatical

I had so hoped to post a couple of times a week back when I began in August. With my Fall schedule, I altered my goal intentionally to once per week. With more schedule additions, I am now hesitant to set a goal until after Thanksgiving. I am preparing for application to a graduate program --a process requiring forms and lots of writing and gathering of letters and on and on...

I am still painting. I am currently working on a commission for a floorcloth (look at the additions to my floorcloth page that I did last week).

As soon as I finish this rather large floorcloth--it's 3'x 5', I will post a picture.

world of detail

Bunter is an English Bulldog. He lives with me. It is late and I am sitting here at my laptop and he is busy digging into the kitchen cupboard that is home to my plastic storage containers. He is looking for a toy because he continually searches for playthings. 

Recently he was in the living room pouncing on some object of play near the window. The commotion was distracting, so I investigated and found that his “toy” was a bee. Bunter had killed it quicky without maiming (he’s much better at this than me) and was tossing it about the room.

I thanked him as I picked up the tiny insect body and added it to my collection of interesting things to draw and paint. I don’t mind working from field guides or photographs, but having the subject in hand generates an intimacy… a familiarity that is far superior to a flat photo. I ran a needle through the bee’s body and stuck it in a Pink Pearl eraser. Using a 10x magnifier with a light I began my study.

Study implies attention…absorption. Barbara and I were out walking last week and she told me how she really would like to take a year and really study just one author’s works. That would involve reading the books and the commentaries and then generating questions and feedback with others who have a similar focus. It would lend to a deep understanding of that author and the mind that birthed those literary creations. This same idea plays out well with paint and canvas….and a bee.

Under the lighted magnifier is a world of detail that is by and large valued by a marginal group of individuals like Henri Fabre and some friends (authors and fellow artists) who love to notice the underappreciated.

For several days I looked at the bee and recorded what I saw. I could not help but wonder if this fascination with my discoveries is much like the experiences of early naturalists like Fabre, Muir, and Audubon who studied and recorded the life around them. I think it is how we experienced life about us when we were toddlers.

Concentrating on a single subject…like a bee… to know it intimately and to record it well….not shifting to boredom…is a kind of contemplation or prayer that is transcendent.

I have loaded new pieces in several of the "pages" on the left.

ghosts in the studio

“Why is it that some children cannot joyfully dive in (to creating art)? There are a myriad of reasons, I’m sure, but the most common one I have seen in children and adults alike, is that they have become limited by being self-conscious of their abilities.”  Barbara Coleman

I like to think of myself as a person who is unburdened by others’ opinions. But frequently notice that I really do care and this concern is injurious to any vestige of creativity…in art, in writing, public speaking (or whatever form creativity takes). It all becomes stiff and lifeless. 

Putting my stuff “out there” is an exercise in humility, not a product of narcissism and ,hopefully, not too much a product of naiveté. (It is risky to the ego, but I am discovering value in a dose of ego mortification).

 I have been experimenting with a series of self-portraits born out of several  years  of private journaling…..some  of the drawings are imbedded in those very personal pages and I am redoing them as stand-alone images. I was sharing some of these recent paintings with a friend. He looked at them quizzically and then looked at me and said, “What are they for?...they don't even look like you." What a blow.

Crap. I really do care. He’s right I really don’t know what they’re for. I didn’t know they had to be FOR something when I play with them.

So, I stopped for a few days and cowered in fear. But quickly I resolved that I like these impressions. They are fairly good drawings. More than anything, the idea came from a good place in me. A friend on Facebook said they "are how you see you"(thank you, Laura). Without freedom of interior confidence there is no fearless originality. So, I am going ahead…..free of the encumbrance of that voice.

Barbara Coleman writes of “ghosts in the studio.” She says that those ghosts include her teachers, critics, friends, husband, gallery owners, favorite artists. I think those ghosts are ubiquitous in a much wider world than the studio. They have an almost physical presence.  So much so that it tightens muscles, knots the stomach, and constipates that needed “flow”  that  Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi proposes as “completely focused motivation.”

But, when I really paint—when I am kicking it in, the ghosts are gone. I think there may be no other way to get them gone except by proceeding as if they are not there at all. (a small glass of Merlot really does help…several of my non-alcoholic artist friends are firm believers in this)

I am proceeding with more of these (and other) drawings. I don’t know what they are for and am moving gradually to a place where it really does not matter at all….

I am going to start a new page "self-portraits" some time this coming week..