Fascinating Rhythms
March 30, 2009 by Janice · 4 Comments
We live in interesting times. Fascinating rhythms, just when we could have gotten real boring. As some things deconstruct on their own, others, we could actually take down ourselves. There’s real opportunity to put something else, or many something elses in their place.
Of course there always has been that opportunity. And some people do that all the time. It’s “how they roll”, as the saying goes.
Fascinating or no, artists tend to like rhythms and routines. Structure. We like to have the essentials of daily living down to a recognizable pattern. Surprising? Here’s why we do. It affords more latitude, more ”what if” attitude in the studio. Gives us that window of percolation that we have to have.
Why do you think I always come back to this Organizing Monday post on , um , Mondays? Strength of discipline. Sure. Organized brain. Sure. Tidy little work life? LOL…….
Okay…still chuckling.
It’s so my little artistic brain and heart won’t entirely explode and run off the tracks.
I am actually known for being organized among my colleagues. And in Santa Fe a whole new set of people/artists got to see me be prolific because of it. But right this minute. I NEED, not want, NEED this ritual of Mondays to keep my right brain from scampering away and leaving the left one in the dirt.
It has some textures, some lines, some experiments it wants to make. It has seen a window or two and is , oops just let me grab it…just a sec. And it wants to chuck all the very practical and income earning things the left brain is pointing to and just run free. Dance over paper and canvas.. construct even…tie paper in knots and paint it? What? Story board abstract little films? Who let it out again?
Here’s the real dirt…I have been looking around for awhile, and seeing the most amazing things. I put them all in to sift and filter a bit, stuff the ideas, the what if’s in a drawer or a notebook. Well, now some of them are patting out a rhythm. Calling out to me. Yes I know I set this up, asked for it. But I have fiscal goals too. I have to restore my income, find new collectors, new galleries. You know, earn a living?
So Mondays, are like deciding the difference between need and want. Sometimes they are remarkably similar. Sometimes one is the change that brings the other. Now figuring out which is which, there’s the trick. But my plan has room for both. So the plan is addressed on Mondays…but that right brain has already found a loophole. Its wriggle room/spot in the plan.
See I don’t forget you buddy, it’s right there see? And won’t that be fun. Listen. That rhythm you hear, well that’s my right brain tapping out anticipation.
Do you have a way that you channel yourself? Allow for the innovation to work right along with what you’re working on? I guess I am asking if you have scheduled innovation time in your plan? And if you don’t, why not?
And In This Corner
March 27, 2009 by Janice · 10 Comments
Indecision is a killer. This corner was bothering me. I was stuck, stuck, stuck. Yep, stuck. Rolled that around in my head for a while. Felt it. This corner had not revealed itself. Or had it?
So I made a mark. Then another. Those pine needle ones. The orange and browns. Warm. They are in another section of the painting just above this one and I like them. Walked over them for miles and miles in my life. So in they went. Then I put some of the brown into coyote fences to anchor the adobes that had asked to be there. Then that curl of blue at the end of a fence. Hm, they look like they are in snow now. And that made me smile.
I’ve now not only mixed perspectives. I have mixed seasons. So this can no longer be about one moment, but about time. Now that makes another smile. Do I leave that in? Leave that white of the snow?
I think so.
I had not planned that, but here was another window opening. I’ve talked before about bridges. Have I talked about windows? Sometimes things happen in paintings that allow another level to be explored. In fact, I have set this particular piece up hoping that would happen. And I think we have one here. A window. Not sure, but the goose bumps when I saw it might be a clue. “Toto we are not in Kansas anymore” was the message I received. Yippee.
I like that.
Because look at the flow. Look at the rhythms the marks are making. Look at the color combinations. We may actually be getting closer to a very deeply held dream of mine. Maybe a small step closer, but a step for sure. I have always dreamed of finding an abstracted style that was authentic to me. Not surface, not shallow, but truly felt, and authentically me, not some “ism.” But I have been such a realism based artist and photographer (Zone System) that I have only let loose in small bits in special sessions with mentors.
I love to play with color, and rhythms and forms. Line makes me unbelievably alive. But my best work, or shall I say my most collected work has been based in realism with hidden abstractions in those spaces between. Oh, more and more of that, but still pretty realistic. Dare I push further? Will there be collectors for these? Will I be able to convey the exuberance and excitement? Make the marks make sense that I am making? Will these be accepted?
I don’t know. But I know that I am not stuck anymore.
At least not on this piece. Let’s not even discuss that crazy idea I have of taking up running again. Now there’s another smile.
How do you deal with stuck? How much time do you give it? Any tricks you have to share? And couldn’t we all use a naughty margarita ? It is Friday after all.
Oranges Go Here
March 25, 2009 by Janice · 11 Comments
See those white spikes? Those. The ones in the blue. They are the perfect spot to put some oranges. I am very excited about that. Cause then we get some popping. Some color energizing. And it won’t take much orange at all. But it will change this little corner of shaded pebbles into a perceived oasis. Yep. Just a little bit of orange.
Like a spice.
After so many broad puddles and planes. These little areas begin to appear. Places where opportunity is just ripe. Places to make color come alive. Places to create some depth.
Why orange?
Because the blue is dormant. But eager to show its stuff. It’s nice blue, in fact it is several blues. And there is blue in the green. But it is blue. Not shimmery blue. It’s only partly blue. That’s why it needs some orange.
Orange will bring out its authentic blueness.
We have all heard of complementary colors right? Everyone has. Red /green, violet/ yellow, blue/ orange. You mix them you get grey. Put them side by side, they enliven each other. Well, did you know that your eye wants both of them present to believe what it is seeing? Huh, did you know that? Yep. You sometimes know something more by what it is not.
Knowing how to play with that in its degrees and nuances is a lot of what painting is about. Well, one of the things. The thing we are about today. And it is one of the things that makes me happy. Color. Simple huh? But more than that, it is what color can do.
So what you are looking at, those white spikes? Well, you are actually looking at anticipation. I paused right here for you. It’s that moment before. Before it all changes and becomes what it is to be. Here’s why I paused. Because I know the full richness of this moment. I am fairly abuzz with it.
Think about it. That moment just before. Before you snap that photo, write that phrase, or feel that perfect thing fall into place. The ones you know will make you shiver. That moment. Those are to be savored. Those are what we do. And fairly live to do again. This little spot of orange that I will place, means as much to me as the whole piece. More sometimes. Call it a sweet spot, call it crazy, but just let me keep doing it.
Setting up that resonance. For me, today, it is that little bit of orange. And I love it. Can’t wait to dip my brush into that color and put it just there. Because the spot will come alive.
Take a look at what you do. Do you have sweet spots like this? Are there parts of what you do that make you so glad you do them that to do anything else is not comprehensible?
Yes, today I am smiling over a silly bit of orange.
The Story Artist
March 23, 2009 by Janice · 10 Comments
Who knew writing was so social? I did not. I am an artist after all, what would I know about writing? Being an avid reader does not make me an accomplished writer, no matter how much I adore a beautiful flow of words. A character chiseled just right. Or a narrative puzzle to unravel. So how was I to know that writing was so social? And so rewarding.
Being adept at all things visual, knowing how to see, how could I not see this?
A friend has put it out there, this question that is: What have you learned about writing from your community? Joanna Young hosts Confident Writing and if you do not know her, you should. She’ll brighten your day. Make you think. Push you to be better. I have watched and read some of the other group writing projects, but felt “oh, those are for writers, they are not meant for me.” I am a painter after all.
That is until this one.
How are they going to know if I don’t tell them, how much I learn from them? I’ve mentioned to Joanna more than once about how art is a call and a response. All the visual tools are there to elicit resonance. To go after that heartbeat as I ‘ve said. And even though art is created mostly in solitude, it’s not meant to stay there. It’s meant to journey out, be seen, and responded to or so we hope. Art builds community. A community of resonance.
So does writing.
Think of words that linger, words that stay with you for a while, a thought, an idea, or someone’s response to a phrase that you have put out there. That place where it passes between us. There, that spot. That spot is packed with energy of heart and mind. That spot, that exchange, is where you know that good writing is taking place.
Because that’s what good art and good writing does, it engages. It sometimes makes us pause. And sometimes it changes everything, or tweaks what came before. Not for a moment is it just those words or those images. It is the choice behind them. The intent and desire behind them. The desire to take something to community and exchange it for something meaningful offered by community.
Think of it. When I write now, I think how is this of value to say Joanna, or to Karen, or anyone else who might need to know what is at the heart of the very thing that I am trying to convey. And why am I conveying it?
And here is a theory. It’s simple really. We all have this unquenchable desire to touch the face of the universe and say, hey, is it like that for you too? Or here, here’s some really good stuff I found, want some? Or, oh, this is what I have found is good for that. It is exchange. A quality of life exchange.
So what have I learned about writing from my community? That it is well worth every effort and every risk I take cobbling words together for the exchange they bring to me. This large page we are on, this entourage of our own, makes the world a better place because we share it.
So yes, here we are on another Organizing Monday thinking how you all have made me a better painter who writes. So thank you. Ahhh, this was at the top of my list for this week. Now on to the next. The artist smiles…and waves.
Oxen and Oysters
March 20, 2009 by Janice · 6 Comments
We have a first here. Sometimes I surprise even myself and sometimes I get surprised out of the blue. For the first time ever there are oxen in one of my paintings. Oxen. See those little grey shapes in front of the bulto of San Isidro the Laborer. Those are oxen, not sheep as I thought. He has a little angel too, a small one that will go into a spot nearby him. But here is the real surprise for me. I just this minute found out that San Isidro the Laborer, married another saint, Maria Torriba. So? She’s actually known as María de la Cabeza in Spain because her head (cabeza in Spanish) is often carried in procession, especially during droughts. They saved their son from his fall into a well, by making the water RISE so he would rise too. They are known for bringing the water in dry lands and for fertile fields.
I did not know this. Not a clue, or was there?
And just out of sight in the lower left corner, there are the beginnings of an oyster. Not the crab I thought it might be. The folds of the foothills seem enough like crab legs so this oyster asked to be there. Like some insistent character in a book.
I am no longer totally in charge of this piece. Or am I ?
Paths of inquiry brought me oxen and oysters and the patron saint of farming whose wife cures drought. Cactus blooms and sage brush, free flowing forms and puddles. Random what if’s. What if I just do this or that. Hm, let me toss this in. Does it have to go there, how about over here?
I was thinking it was getting to be one hot mess, but now I am kind of stunned.
Letting go. Just putting the questions out there. Feeling my way in the paint. And this so far is what I am getting? And now there is some purple-y grey wash that insists on joining these pebbles and pink swells together. Paths. Connectors. Wetness. In a desert. And that blue. Just clear, pure, blue.
The blue of possibilities.
I am shaking my head. These kinds of things used to happen in small parts of my large paintings, a cat shape would appear under a leaf, a masque near a cypress knee. Scott ( a mentor) told me I should explore these places in between even more. “Always go toward what you don’t know. That’s where the going gets good.” That’s how you keep it alive. That’s how you grow.
Hm, oxen and oysters. Who knew?
Does this happen to you in your work? Have you set out and arrived at surprise that just made you pause ? Now did you pursue it, or shuffle right back to familiar?
I think that I am going to push it. Go paint a slightly Naughty angel who plowed San Isidro’s fields while he practiced his faith. Cause I have no answers at the moment. Just questions.
Alluvian Landscape
March 18, 2009 by Janice · 9 Comments
Alluvian. A-lu-vi-an. Let it roll around on your tongue like water running over a stone. Here’s another. Riparian. It’s an ancient sounding word for that lush area adjacent to a river. And here’s another. Estuary. Where layers of life begin. Moving water, sediments, and organic growth. Hm, I seem to be painting them, but transported to New Mexico. This is what is coming from just letting my raw plan and my inclination meet up so far.
These are what my inner paint puddles are making.
I am smiling at them and just shaking my head. Cezanne once said that to paint the essence of an orange you paint several together. A bit from one, this part from another, and over here, this. What you get in total is its orange-ness. I am laughing at myself, because here in the middle of a painting about high dry country, I am finding its essential wetness. Adjacencies, sediments and openings of flow.
I am a wetlands painter.
Connectors, canopies, organic growth. Like some inner vocabulary that just has to come out. No matter what I am composing. A signature of self. That I thrill over that simple round of brown stone in the pink on the middle right, nearby some holdover pine needles, right near a prickly pear has me chagrined.
Steps away can lead us right back to ourselves.
This painting is a fantasy piece, but not really. Every part is as true as can be. Every part a part of me. Still guessing, still letting a simple idea lead, I follow. And what I am getting even with juxtapositions and unfamiliar ground…is me…but me trying to find meaning. Me tramping over new ground. But look there’s the water, there are those places in between, and there, there are flows and connectors. Hm, I think I will throw that shephard bulto in just to shake it up. And I see crab claws too in the foothills that roll into that sky.
I thought I was painting landscapes all this time, but I think I was painting me.
Now that sounds all kinds of narcissistic. But here’s how it isn’t. Voice. Developing voice, enriching voice, staying true, is best found when you befriend random. It has been my experience that the more you explore the edges, the more you experiment, the constant becomes you. And consistency, now there is a very good thing.
Yep. I think I ‘ll go see what a crab claw has to do with a desert. And a shepard to do with a cactus.
Have you pushed yourself outside your comfort zone in your work lately? Have you discovered anything fun?
Painting With Dynamite
March 16, 2009 by Janice · 4 Comments
Cai Guo-Qiang paints with dynamite, literally. And he floats stuffed tigers in the air above your head. Really. If you look him up, you can find him showing you how he plants the charges in between blanketed sheets of huge paper and sets them off in timed explosions. The traces become the piece. He does it in the sky as well. He brings you to an experience. I saw his show at SITE Santa Fe.
Miro’s sculptures were at Gerald Peters for a limited time. Glops of metal built into figures. Poetically abstract. I met Alexander Shundi at a friend’s party. He paints in narrative surrealism. Then there was Sharp and his Indians painted as they were before him. I woke up each morning to those.
Hm, painting with dynamite.
Then there was Jun Kaneko at Chiaoscuro. Japanese. Very Zen. My favorite of them all. Simple forms and drawings so compelling. So utterly complete. Like a circle truly felt as the mark is made is all you would ever need to know.
How can I paint like that?
As I stood before all these pieces from so many different art voices. I was caught, captured. I wondered. Just what was I responding to? How are they doing what they do? How are they touching me so deeply? So I walked. And looked. And took it all in. Tucked some ideas safely into some sketchbooks. I want in that conversation. So I kept these reminders with me. Let them sift and filter through.
Here we are on an Organizing Monday and my thoughts are of color and line and that circle … of my humble piece and how to plant those bits of “gunpowder” into each part of it. Infuse those bits with energy and yet still have room for sublime. Leave traces of MY moment in time. Resistance is there. Transitions are oddly fraught. But I think I would rather explode forward not back.
So I am thinking of Cai Guo-Qiang who paints with dynamite. And of those tigers romping through air.
Makes my simple puddles not so scary anymore.
How is it for you? How do you push yourself forward when you hit a wall of resistance?
Building Bridges
March 13, 2009 by Janice · 6 Comments
All paintings have access points. Places where we are invited in. It may be the thing you notice first. Or the part you like the best, or even the subject chosen. But all paintings have access points. Some are even hidden, but they are there. There has to be a bridge that builds engagement. That’s even true for the artist. Where do I enter the piece? How do I engage? Where do I start? We start by remembering that a painting is just as much about you as it is about me.
Good art happens in that space between you and me.
So we are about building bridges. Bridges from one heart and mind to another. Oh, don’t get me wrong. It has to resonate truly with me to even get done, but you, you are always in the picture. See the yellow in the photo? Those are the beginnings of some cactus blooms.
But they are the beginnings of that bridge between us.
Yes, in watercolor for example, we have to work light to dark because it is transparent. The medium dictates a certain order of things. Traditionalists build that way strictly. But I did not study with traditionalists. Oh, I studied Homer and Sargent and all the rest, their work is lovely in this medium, iconic even. But I worked with Forrester and Scott. They were about building rhythms.
Using color to build the bridges.
Like Kandinsky and Miro and Welliver, and Brady, setting up color and movement is more important. So when that blank piece of paper is staring me right in the face, I am looking for the major color actors, and the interactions I will set up. The foundations onto which I can build. And the flow that occurs between them.
That flow, that’s where that bridge leads.
The better I set that up, the more I think of how it works, the more the piece will extend itself, reach out, like an invitation. An invitation to come along. See something else. Look at something another way, to feel a little of what I feel, say, ah, yes, I get what you mean. I know that part, I feel that too. Yes. An invitation to engage.
Next time you look at a piece of art, look for the bridges, the parts that reach out to you. The ones that catch your eye. There was a person behind that trying to touch your heart.
I hope there is some Naughty in your plans for later on. Me? More puddling rain here in Texas today, more puddles to make with the paint. But Naughty is on my radar, says the artist with a smile.
A Very Raw Plan
March 11, 2009 by Janice · 7 Comments
Rain is pattering on the rooftop, urging me to be cozy, settle in. But I want some adventure. And lucky me, I made a map. Not a complete one, just one to get me started. One that has the bones of a piece with plenty of room for possibilities and play. Nope, nothing refined or finished about it. Except it has the impact, the desire, of destination already embedded within it.
Now desire is a very good thing.
Yes, even Buddha has to admit that the move to be totally present in the moment, is desire. Being IN the moment, that’s different. That’s alignment. So here’s how alignment is going to work in this piece. There’s a framework. There’s a strong impulse to create a piece that taps into color, line, form, texture just as much as, maybe even more than, it taps into story.
And there’s desire to touch something more sublime.
Strong, willful desire for nuance as much as boldness. For contrast as much as familiarity. For exploration of places that pierce my status quo. So perspective as I knew it, is off the table. Color needs to be pushed. And form, well it may have to take perspective’s place. Already my brush is hungry to trace some new paths across an expanse of white. Dip into magical water with pigment suspended, waiting to be spread. I like not knowing exactly. I like that I can feel my way through it.
Feel, is the operative word.
So within the structure, within the map, there is plenty of intuitive trust. Plenty of here, just let it happen, you actually know inside you what this is already. Let it out. Look what the forms are already suggesting. The shapes the lines trace. Sweet, sweet anticipation. Yes, it is a very raw plan. One designed for exposure. One that could very well fail.
But I’m thinking, it won’t.
If we can’t trust ourselves in our practice, then what are we about? Know what I mean?
Artistic License
March 9, 2009 by Janice · 11 Comments
I’m calling artistic license on the next painting. Which is code for, “I’m not sure what I am doing, but I want to push it even farther.” I was drawing ( doodling) last night and the schematic for the next piece appeared….with some odd “window” opportunities. Those spaces in between again. I have already been looking at some prickly pears and some yellow cactus blooms, I’ll do those sketches next, but several things in the paper and some thoughts on my mind reminded me of Murakami and his windows into …more.
That’s the fun of reading globally. Possibilities appear.
Putting a toe into surrealism is not enough for me, I think I want to wade farther in. After all, that’s what my world became. And I have always loved the Moderns. They looked for innovation by actually going back to basics, line , form , color , texture…but it was more about process. The process itself became the topic of their work. Let’s do this, and see that, and maybe … and what if… Those basics became the painting subjects that told a story. The story behind the strokes and movements and the what of the piece.
I like that a lot.
So I am calling dibs on artistic license. That way the part of me that is screaming, “but do what everyone has always loved. Do what you know, ” will be a little quieter. I am organizing a nice little reassuring spot for that part of me. I have shown it the paper I have in reserve just for it for later. I have talked to it about all the favorite colors we are still going to use. I am even leaving the blooms of a flower in so it will have an access point. But it has to sit back for awhile, cause this me… this me, has been restless to get out.
This is no time to be playing it safe. Could be a train wreck, but then again, it could be really cool. So Organizing Monday, yes…. but suddenly, I am so very excited about what possibilities might appear.
And that, is what it is all about, isn’t it?
Do you ever have to coax yourself, bribe yourself maybe, into taking a little chance? An alternate route? Or doing something you’ve a good possibility of failing at, but an equal chance you won’t?