Color Blocks
August 13, 2010 by Janice · 2 Comments
Sennelier Soft Pastels, Sennelier Pastel Paper, Somerset paper, Janice Cartier, August 2010
“Certain things are remnants and certain things are things I actually see everyday. “
Certain conversations make all the difference in the world to what we are doing. The color blocks you see are simple play from this week. An exercise in random. But I was talking with a trusted art friend on Monday afternoon and I casually used that phrase above in mentioning the color block groupings. She made me stop so she could write it down.
Brilliant.
They look like buildings.
Organic buildings?
We also talked a lot about sustaining intrigue, and how that really is our job after all as artists, creatives, teachers, writers… And that made me think…differently, just a bit.
Because it’s a funny thing when you put words to an idea.
Especially unguarded off the cuff words to another studio artist.
There’s a moment, a brink, a pause as the words sink in
And you realize…
you’ve actually arrived at a different place…
And all that came before was leading you right here.
Now that,
To me…
Is intriguing.
And I see the work now..as chapters in a mystery unfolding.
I couldn’t be more pleased or excited to not know…
to just do…
And then I’ll know.
Oh, I love this scribbles work.
I really do.
Process… in private studio.
Thank you Jeanie.
Now…it’s Friday…and I have a feeling that the only way to beat the heat is to head to the Dragon Room for a Naughty Margarita. Any takers?
Transparent
February 10, 2010 by Janice · 3 Comments
Pencil, Plastic, Paper and Ink, Janice Cartier, February 2010
“Ones for you to mark next”, says the note from an artist friend. A surprise group of drawings and some blank paper came in the mail this week .
I am to mark next on ones like this. That is her pencil drawing. And on the blank pages she sent, I am to start some marks for her as well and send the whole packet back.
It’s an experiment in collaborative art.
And letting go.
Engagement,
And random.
Back and forth across the miles.
We’ll play.
Respond.
To whatever comes next.
And what our impulse tells us to do.
It’s a simple game.
It’s a magnificent game.
To keep fluidity coursing.
And to see instinctual aspects of ones art.
It’s a call and response.
Like all art.
Artist to artist.
Artist to viewer.
Veiwers to each other…
It’s a simple game.
It’s a magnificent game.
It’s art.
In a private studio between friends.
Only, you know I ‘ll keep you posted.
Let you see how it progresses.
And that transparent box?…look at those shadows it makes upon the drawing…hm..hand me a pencil..or maybe…I’ll do that in soft colors??
There are several more organic drawings underneath…hm..how shall I respond??
One never knows do one?
But the game is on.
How about you? Do you play with friends with what you do? Workout with a buddy?
How Do We Find Our Way In?
January 13, 2010 by Janice · 5 Comments
Drawings and Journals, Janice Cartier, January 2010
Are journals a writer’s sketchbook? Are sketches, an artist’s journal? Does a software coder have a personal file somewhere where they work out the elegance of codes? Where do we begin our explorations?
I was in the map and staging room on the Pelican one afternoon at Chandeleur Island, and every scientist, biologist, even the fish guys, even the mappers in sync with the NASA satellite had some kind of notebook or field journal to match my sketchbooks. They all looked a bit different, some graphed, others not, some well worn, others fresh and new, but there I was with my sketchbooks and my field notes looking around the room finding that we all had to have that kind of place, that kind of thing in our daily work. Of course now we might have an iphone, or a droid or hint hint some sleek new tablet rumored to be coming out.
I prefer paper though. And a pencil or a pen. And if I am writing in one of my journals, I like to use the same pen throughout the whole journal.
And I like certain journals, certain kinds of sketchbooks, certain sizes, and certain brands.
Inside the galley on the Pelican on one trip, there was a hand typed manuscript that I was asked to read, the original words for the Walter Anderson book, Pelicans. His daughter was putting it together to be released. After all, we were on his grandson’s boat. Reading a primary document like that, from an artist I admired, was like handling original sketches or watercolors from say Winslow Homer or John Singer Sargeant, or John Marin. I have done that too. Goose bump moments those.
And if I could collect one scrap of a note from Steinbeck in his own hand, I would treasure it like a sketch from Alexander Calder.
Notes. These are ways in. Beginnings. Traces of thought. Drawings of what if’s and how is that? Of I wonder, or look at this.
All good ways in.
Show me the sketches for a piece of finished art and I am almost as happy as seeing the finished piece. These bits are as close as we can get to the original impulse.
A friend of mine edited Jack Kerouac’s journals, coffee stains and all.
I was in awe.
He did Reagan’s too.
And Kerry’s.
Primary documents. Held in his hands.
Context to a larger thing.
Moments of capturing.
On file, in the Library of Congress, there is a simple line drawing of a cowboy on a bucking horse in a letter….that bucking horse and its rider is now in everyone’s cultural memory bank just about. And it was the drawing in that letter that became the powerful bronze. One of Remington’s signature pieces of sculpture. You know Remington was on San Juan Hill with Roosevelt and the “Rough Riders”, right?
These bits of things are called ephemera…
But to those who make them,
They are our way in.
Into something bigger. Something we’ll refine, or play with, or toss out.
Beginnings. Starts.
Over and over again.
Fundamental practices we hone,
These are access to the flow.
All part of finding the path that speaks to us most.
Finding our way in,
We tend to leave a trail.
How about you? Do you have a favorite notebook, or journal, sketchbook or catch-all for your starts? Is it paper or virtual for you?
Compare and Contrast
October 9, 2009 by Janice · 6 Comments
Even when I am painting blades and blades of grass that are all basically the same color and shape, I compare and contrast with my brush. Some blades need to be the same, or similar, in fact if I did that all the way across the top of this painting, it would be okay. Okay. But we’re not after okay. Not even in the minor cast of players here. We’re after a bigger game.
We want vibrance. We want to breathe life into something that is essentially paint and paper.
We want shimmer.
So same is made slightly different. Curve is opposed by straight line. Warm is challenged by slightly cooler. And still is made to move. Just a little. This area is background. It needs to breathe, but not overstep its role.
But it needs to be as vibrant as the whole.
The essential parts need to work on their own and within the bigger picture.
And that’s a balancing act.
A consciousness of what the bigger picture is about while working in the small.
They exist in the same space and time and will be fixed, bound there in the finished piece. But our attention…
Well that has to be kind of linear doesn’t it? One thing at a time.
So how do we do that?
In a painting, you hang everything on good bones, on the structure and intent that gave you enough incentive to paint the piece in the first place. The what and why of it. The thing you most want out of it. That. That’s what you hang it all on.
So that each blade of grass is born from that place. Not tacked on, not rendered in just okay. It’s not just a blade of grass. It’s not just a minor player. It’s an active part of an idea. Each part has to have some bit of that central idea in it. Each part has to know the whole. THAT’s what you’re painting.
The thing is to know what that bigger idea is before you even begin. To own that. Live that. Brush with that in mind. And then those blades of grass breathe it too.
So not just yellow, but golden yellow and cobalt violet added in. Not just grey, but Davies Grey with that same cobalt violet added here and there. Not just golds that go to red, but golds that go to green too. Make the lines. Here fat, here lean. Here long, here never having end. Compare and contrast.
Set up shimmer here too, while working in the small.
Breathe it into life.
Yes.
Do that.
Weave the big into all the small.
It’s Friday. And rainy here. I am going to continue painting blades of grass today ( LOL, Walt Whitman where are you? ), but I have to give a huge thank you to Jonathan Fields for something he wrote this week on playing a bigger game. And, well, for being Jonathan. Go over there and give yourself a treat.
Almost time for one of those tall, chilled, Naughty Margaritas. Yes? A Prickly Pear one for me I think. You?
And have a good weekend. Watch out for all this rain.
Insert Tiara Here
September 18, 2009 by Janice · 1 Comment
Almost there on the passion blooms. Almost there. An eye-catching significant element goes right here. Yes, right there crowning the purplish blue and surrounded by all that green. It’s bright. Shiny almost. Have I left enough room? Well, it is partially concealed. So the end result will have that paparazzi captured feel. A stolen glance, a shot off the cuff. Just the way I found it. But it is going to be a tight squeeze.
Should I have done it first?
Maybe.
But maybe not.
Setting up the “bones’ of a piece is important. The overall structure. So that came first. The movement that carries the whole. That is there already.
This is a detail. One little detail that will significantly alter the whole, but it has to have bones to hang on.
So we’re good.
Almost there.
Finishing.
I think I am more fond of beginnings.
There’s something of anticipation, then process and adventure along the way. When the finish line is close at hand… that changes… not in a bad way, but it changes. I haven’t a name for it. But I am looking for one. I used to feel elated when a work was done. Glow-y almost.
Now, not so much.
Now, that glow usually comes much later, after the work has settled for awhile. I saw some drawings this week I had put away. Wow. I really like them. Really like them. So what is this, this discontent, this resistance to the finish? The work is good.
Did something go missing while I wasn’t looking?
Is it a function of so much loss?
Or is it something niggling,
something bubbling up..
That thing again…
that thing that I am NOT doing…
Could it be that?
Those 6 panels, in that box against the wall…
Unfinished business.
A big work I had to put away mid process.
Is it time?
Am I ready to re-engage?
First, I’ll put this tiara in its place…
and finish up this lovely piece.
And still my rapidly beating heart…but yes…
Maybe so.
Might be time.
To finish that one too. Because now I have its mate more firmly in mind. A place to take it. From here to there. So that it is not something that is over, but truly just part of the story.
Ahh now, now I am smiling…
Passion blooms.
Yes. As long as you stay open to it…
And yay, it is tall, chilled, yummy Naughty Margaritas at five Friday….see you there. AND I have an odd urge to play darts, sheesh…
Hope you have a great weekend.
Shades of Grey
April 29, 2009 by Janice · 6 Comments
I love to draw. Always have. There is something about that pull of graphite across paper that does it for me. And when I hold another artist’s drawings in my hands, or look at them on exhibit, I feel about as close as one can get to the person making the marks. There is no middleman, no embellishment, no interpreter of medium necessary.
Just pure and simple graphite tracing impulses on paper.
In the real world of artistic currency, show me an artist’s drawings and you’ve shown me the keys to the kingdom. Pure line. Pure form. And some shades of grey. Rudimentary or refined, drawings are the most direct line to pure thought for a visual thinker. They are concepts, origins, pulse points in shades of grey.
They are story.
I spent most of yesterday drawing. Tangles of trees. Organic lines. Large shapes for areas that need to be left alone, or graded ever so much in 6B. I need some of the paper left open, some of the lines made dark, some of them need to twist and turn. Others not so much. This is ground I have trod. Steps I have taken. Familiar textures and shapes. But this is only part of the piece.
Like leaving a place set for another guest, I’ve left room for more to happen.
In the little orange Rhodia pad are new spontaneous doodles. Four so far. Each one of them capable of being a full fledged piece to work on. They came to me after I let myself get still and relaxed. I was playing with an intersection of what I thought were two entirely different things. Not so. We’ re going to put them together. That pad is for capturing things just like that.
Yes, set some experiments up, step out on a limb a bit and ideas start presenting themselves.
Capturing is essential. Because after I saw those doodles, I pulled out another sketchbook and saw some similar sketches done immediately after the storm. And the notes that I had made with them. Hmph. This experiment series has been waiting for me. Patiently, but waiting nonetheless until I could stop and listen.
Oh, it needed some more elements, it needed some time to pass, but here we are now. Right here, right now. I am present… and I have plenty of pencils. I have a few sheets of paper. I am listening and capturing and playing in shades of grey. And things are getting good. Really delicious, I hope. Because the marks are pure and real and right for just this moment in time.
This is what it is like in Private Studio.
What about you? When you get down to the real nuts and bolts of what you do, does it give you shivers? Does it set your heart racing? Do you get a thrill over the tiny bits of magic that appear?
Like a Well Worn Map
April 22, 2009 by Janice · 6 Comments
I carefully folded the now dry painting into half, turned it and folded it again, then again and again until it looked like a well worn map. It was easy to do. Or easier than I expected. I loved feeling the texture of it. The soft Thai paper had travelled far and been through a lot. And now it could fit into my pocket. I smiled. Wondered at the irony of that.
What was this piece really about?
I reread the poem from the paper that had held my attention:
I remember flying back from Montauk.
I was flying the plane,
The instructor asked me, “Notice anything?”
Yes, the plane was absolutely stuck–
Speechless–ecstatically still.
The headwinds were holding us in place in space.
Ecstatically still. A plane invisibly held by forces greater than will. Stuck. Yet ecstatic. There’s a picture. And a concept. I traced the edges of the folded painting with a finger, thinking ahead to the tearing of it. The cutting it up. Feeling the softness. Looking at the lines and marks I ‘d made. Smiling at the spill of water all over it. Now dry of course and fine. A little worn, and fragile. Not whole, but resilient.
Hm. Deep breath.
As I reached for the scissors, I thought, okay, let’s see what still is like, what just free marks and no expectations look like. Let’s see what happens if I get ecstatically still. So I picked up the scissors and began to cut my well worn map into sixteen little pieces. No thoughts but the cutting. Right here, right now.
Cutting up my map.
Yep. I did it.
I can tell you so far that life and creativity in the studio do not exactly mimic poetry, at least not in a straight forward way. Or if it does, someone has a wicked sense of humor, and I want revisions. But we may be a little too close to it yet. In fact, I am still scratching my head at what has happened since I cut it up. Good thing I am not actually IN a plane. Stuck, but not up in the air, well only metaphorically.
But I have had good mentors, one in fact, who is nagging me from the grave. “Okay, okay, Scott, I am still just going with it. Yes, I remember. “After all he’s the MacArthur Genius. It would be silly not to listen.
So cut up maps, a stuck plane and a ghost for a mentor. See not quite poetry, but I am hoping. Now I must get ready for another session of ecstatically still, a phrase I am stealing for resumé purposes to go with private studio time.
And sure, I ‘ll give you a peek on Friday.
How about you? Cut up any maps lately?
Hug The Queen
April 6, 2009 by Janice · 8 Comments
Lots of travel tips out there. Lots of mystery too. In between the signposts, if there are any, we kind of have to wing it. Where do you look for guidance then? How do you set your compass? As you can see here, I have summoned several Shaman. They know we are about to start a new painting. They know it hasn’t yet fully formed and there are as many questions, more actually, than answers. They are kind of excited.
So am I.
They know I need to spend spend some time with my notebooks today ( It’s Organizing Monday) and they know there are a few spots missing on the last painting. It’s sifting around a bit. And they know I need to let go of some other things. What? We really don’t know yet. But that’s what decision means. Cutting off something to go toward something else.
Are we frantic yet?
No. We’ve been here before.
It’s a sifting, drifting place that is full of tempting choices. It’s a matter of listening. Of really being present. The right ones will drift up. Or jump out and say pick me, pick me. I just have to give them room. I just got a huge hint in looking at the composition of this photograph for example.
Sifting and drifting.
I am still bugged by this reference to trains and tracks that I keep getting. And I see some clues in the picture about that, and some surprises about possible color. And from about four o’clock this morning these words kept repeating , ‘Hug the Queen, Hug the Queen”
Hug the Queen?
An instinctive arm around that Royal shoulder by a confident woman in a new situation. One that signaled, hey we’re all in this together. And we’re good. It was a move I recognized immediately. It’s the way leadership looks woman to woman. Really. Maybe it is a southern thing, maybe it is an all girls’ school thing, but it took no words, no discussion for me to understand what was going on in that room. Been there done that. That’s how we roll.
So what was this phrase doing circling around my head this morning?
It was telling me I knew how to proceed. We set our compasses by trusting our finely honed instincts. That hug for the Queen took me to a place I know very well. And it has to do with trains. That one, the train thing? That one is definitely a pick me, pick me.
So, we will go with what that means…to me. The job then is to find out what it might mean to you. But I am up for some experimenting. Hope you are too.
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.