A Rainy Day
September 8, 2010 by Janice · 1 Comment
Pencil, 80lb Paper, Janice Cartier, September 2010
Color Pencil, 80lb Paper, Janice Cartier, September 2010
Rain bands from Hermine are kicking up outdoors, heavy puddle splashing drops are what I hear. And waves of wind, gentle ( from my perspective) but enough to still be a tropical storm. It’s the bands. The rhythm and the time of year.
Kind of cozy. And more familiar. Actually soothing to my bones. A cradle rocking.
I have something for such a rainy day. These color blocks are coming out to play. The light is dark outside. The clouds are dense.
So I am going to play indoors.
Make these a little bigger.
And bring…
my empty vacant mind…
to the steady rhythms that I hear…
And the tones and colors in the boxes,
As I see if they will scale.
I think it sounds like a lovely way to spend…
And indoor cozy day.
Unleashing
Color bands and rhythms of my own.
Yes,
The artist smiles..
And listens.
Very important to listen
In private studio
How ’s your Wednesday going?
Silly Me
September 3, 2010 by Janice · 5 Comments
Sennelier Pastels, Janice Cartier, September 2010
Silly me, all I wanted was a satisfactory translation of these words: “pastel a l’ecu”. Well, that and more OF them. Lots more of them. So I went searching. I thought knowing about the name would explain the attraction.
My thirst remains unquenched. Ecu is an ancient French coin… it’s also a shield. So I think we are in idiom city here. But I can say this one thing for sure, I only want them more. I love these pastels. Amazingly, tenderly soft…but boy they pack some power.
I am inexplicably drawn, almost obsessed… I want to feel them in my hand, moving across a sumptuous paper.
I had a small taste with my color blocks.
And something happened.
The box of “pastel a l’ecu” that I have, became a Trojan horse…
I remembered a long burning love affair with all things Sennelier and why I love them dearly.
No, not a surprise there..
Just…a craving denied for these and oil crayons as well…and sure more paper too.
As much as I love paint, and I do…
I want to roll around with color on a stick and make blazing, whispering
Marks of color…
Color as texture.
It was a small idea last spring.
I fanned the flames a bit.
Sheesh.
And now…I am entranced with the color, softness…sheer timelessness of these beautiful breaths of pigment, gathered from exotic places and hand fashioned in Paris.
Well…there’s nothing for it but to give in..
I told you this about the thing with time to order …
And how it’s a crazy mad passion that can pull us in further…
I give up…I surrender…
I’m having them.
Phew…that’s better… Decision made.
Now Naughty Beverages, right? Meet me there. And someone, hide the catalogs please.
The artist smiles.
And listens again…ahh
And no, no one paid me…or offered me gifts…I’m just admitting, I am crazy mad for these. Tell me you don’t have at least one mad obsession for some of your materials…or several…
It’s like this in Private Studio.
.
Feeling the Quiet
August 27, 2010 by Janice · 2 Comments
Watercolor, Handmade Paper, Janice Cartier, August 2010
I woke this morning feeling the quiet . The same quiet as before the storm. A preternatural quiet. The light changes, the air feels different. The birds get quiet.
If there is any doubt in anyone’s mind that the body stores your memories, I can vouchsafe that it does.
Incredibly, I felt it the minute my eyes opened…sacred ground…you’re tramping on sacred ground again…I tend to get quiet. The images play before me. The tears come easily.
I’m torn.
Wanting to be in two places, no three at once. There, here, and where I will be.
The only thing I’ve found for that, is to just be present.
Just show up. And be wherever I am as I am.
And today I am quiet.
Last year I wrote about color and how it seemed to be quiet for the day.
Today and this weekend… I just want to listen as birds sing.
They were first back out after the storm subsided…and the broken trees offered up fragrant sap…as we climbed over them..
I like to balance the grief with that.
And yes, I think we’ll need a Naughty Beverage, a toast to friends who surround us and one to my dear and much loved ghosts…
Color Canvas
August 25, 2010 by Janice · Leave a Comment
Oils, Gessoed Canvas, Janice Cartier, August 2010
Layers. These are the earliest tints of color that will go under several more. Like weathered clapboard walls and one doorway on St. Mary and Sophie Wright Place, across from the Half Moon Bar. I’ve never wanted that building painted. It is a work of art.
I seem to want patinated, tempered paint, as much as I want brand new. I want the paint to become, not just arrive ready made.
And I am keeping those raw edges.
This is cotton, not the usual fine linen that I prefer. So the surface is a little rougher. The gesso is light so the paint catches, and clings. Not smooth at all, unless the brush is totally saturated. I prefer gliding with brush and buttery paint. But this, this is presenting itself, insisting. And my hands are saying, okay. We’ll do it that way..
for now.
Let’s just see what you have to show me.
What lesson you want me to learn.
Before I have my way.
Hm…coarseness to refined?
Like an idea, finely honed…
We’ll just let you lead,
for now.
In all your roughness and your heavy weave.
But look out
I have some tickles and some buttery strokes that are appearing in my mind
and I will have them before we’re done.
Not sure who’s the boss today,
But who cares?
Choosing form, or form choosing you?
Either way, it’s a possible win.
How’s your Wednesday going?
Games Begin Gesso
August 20, 2010 by Janice · 3 Comments
Canvas, Gesso, New York Times, Janice Cartier, August 2010
“Monsters”. Right there. You can read it for yourself. Right next to the fresh blank canvas and the splats of gesso on the newsprint. Which again in the play that is random, cracks me up.
I rarely see blank canvas or blank pages as monsters, but I thought this was funny… in that universal karmic sense of funny.
Because there is a moment of possible freaking our own selves out when we look at a stack of blank materials. That moment just before…
the next one when excitement takes over.
If you ever get caught in that too much thinking about results moment,
Those blank stacks can become just that.
Monsters.
Hesitation monsters.
The artist smiles.
Got an easy antidote for that.
They are called first marks.
And we’ll be making them without much thought at all.
And choosing color purely on a whim..
And on all pre-painting I have done,
Are all the thinking that I need.
Hand me a brush,
Squishy paint trumps monsters any day.
The games begin.
Going to get messy
The artist says with a smile.
See you at five for about a gazillion Naughty Margaritas, yes?
Bergdorf Gesso
August 18, 2010 by Janice · 1 Comment
Canvas, Gesso, New York Times, Janice Cartier, August 2010
Maybe it’s just me, but I love this accidental composition of high fashion and menial studio work. Applying gesso to canvas is a pretty mundane studio task. Although, it squishes just fine and is rather zen to do. I enjoy it.
But I am enjoying this unexpected juxtaposition even more. Random enters the studio as a friend again, when the newspaper I put under this little piece happens to be a rather chi-chi ad for Bergdorf-Goodman in black and white. Well greys actually.
And I can’t stop looking at it and thinking ..hm…there’s an assemblage there and surely something I can make of it. Something about intentional and unintentional design.
I can’t help but see more blocks and other textures in a continuance of some thought that I really don’t have words for yet, just images.
So we will set this one aside.
Leave it apart from the stack of gesso primed small canvases that will become ground for squishy paint.
But..hm...gesso squares and ink…
Yes, there’s squishiness to be had there too I think.
And so it goes in small tasks and menial matters..
In full frame, the model stares and big bold black letters exclaim the name of the store. They almost demand a response in black and white and greys.
Who am I to deny them?
Surprise,
Discovery,
If you’re open to it.
Sometimes I just listen.
And look.
At where the squishiness leads.
Mistake? Could be.
But we’ll do it,
Then we’ll know.
How’s your Wednesday shaping up?
Black and White and Color
August 11, 2010 by Janice · Leave a Comment
Derwent Sketching Pencils, Water, Sennelier 140lb Aquarelle Paper, Janice Cartier, August 2010
Sennelier Pastels, Somerset Paper, Janice Cartier, August 2010
Black and white and color. Play. But more…inquiry. Sustained intrigue, as a dear friend of mine phrased it on Monday. That’s what we artists do after all. Set up safe space to sustain intrigue and then jump in.
So here are my small blocks of shells, going through a couple of paces. A couple of ways in. Sheer instinct …and practice. There’s just one more thing I want to do before I paint them for real. A tonal color restriction..just to test some sandy colors..to see how close I want to real..or if..a pure dance of color chords will be what I am after.
Because the painting will go fast.
I want no barriers of thinking, or time,
or questions in my mind.
I want to be alone with line and color
And fascination.
No questions except
This or that?
Here or there?
Stop or go?
Just breathing
And doing
So just one more page of play…
Um…no.
My hands just told me NO.
“Get out the scissors. Cut the canvas up.
And move everything aside…
go in not completely knowing…
and come out the other side.
Then you’ll know. ”
“No more inquiry?”
“Nope. ”
“No more prep?”
“No.
The answers are all primed.”
Well.
Sometimes the artist is the last to know…
I guess I’ll go get my scissors.
Vacation created all this space.. and the hands have taken over.
Not quite like the assistant I imagined hiring someday…more like a pushy partner.
“Well, snip snip…let’s get going.”
“Sheesh.. okay already..I’m coming. ”
How’s your Wednesday?
Some Progress…Finally
July 9, 2010 by Janice · 5 Comments
Watercolor, 300lb D'Arches Paper, Janice Cartier, July 2010
Step by step.. inch by inch…the artist smiles.. finally some progress. As unfinished, as unevenly layered as this is, here it is. The paint is flowing again on this piece about source. It is a work in progress, but I see already some shifts in color, some relationships that are new to me and many that are so wonderfully familiar.
And I like that.
Pushing away, or intentionally changing, while still becoming more of self not only sounds ironic or contradictory, it IS just that. In a paradoxical, exploratory and I hope good kind of way. It’s growth.
My shapes float more.
My colors are unapologetic.
So what if I am taking you to fuscia.
Hah. I need to BE fuscia this time.
Just look at that sky we’re building.
Right there in the puddle.
Hah.
“You like that well enough,” the painting says,
And nudges me…
“Look closer.”
And it LOOKS different.
It looks..amazingly… like a certain satellite image…
And that..
(My jaw is on the floor..)
I have to take in.
That was unintended.
This is ground zero after all. And it fits.
The artist tilts her head.
Well, what do you know about that….
Hm..
Just get out of your head…and dance…
The important stuff will come through.
And perhaps that will create its own path.
I love it when paintings do this to me.
Surprise me with a nudge…ask me to push them even more.
Give me meaty hints of what they can be that I hadn’t seen before.
Yep.
All this from another puddle, and some fuscia fronds
the artist smiles…
Finally…it feels …
Challenging …
and right..
I had my doubts on this one, just as much as I had a sureness that this would be important…
There’s that precipice… there that one….that edge of in between…now that’s a fine and challenging place to work from..
It makes a difference in the painting.
And painting from there makes a difference in you.
It takes intentional work to get there.
The artist, pauses….
Still amazed…
Small?
No, not a small thing at all..this feels..
This feels
Liberating…as much as it feels reassuring.
Mojo …a bit of mojo jumped into the paint..
The artist laughs out loud…
And does a little dance.
Yep. It’s like this, in private studio.
Now don’t we need some Naughty Margaritas?
Change and Little Boxes
July 5, 2010 by Janice · 3 Comments
Look inside those little boxes. Just look at all the swirly, moving goodness inside each one. And then look how contained they are. How clean the space between them.
I like them.
A lot.
Every time I look at them.
Now live in this, this excited, crazy making place of question:
How to set them free to become what I envision?
Because I love them as they are. I find that crisp clean-ness ever so thrilling.
A kind of strength if you will, harboring very delicious richness.
Structure.
Tension of containment.
Vision.
A wishing.
And I know that next comes a whole lot of possible messy.
The messiness of executing a vision.
Can get awkward.
Can be confusing.
Can be not at all what we think it is going to be.
Can be whole lots and lots of fun.
Can be scary.
and unexpected..
and exhausting,
And invigorating..
Yep.
Messy and uncertain, living in the question.
But the vision of what they want to be,
The concept the heart behind them
Sees and feels and wants
Beyond almost anything in the world
That thing they want to be..
Will help pull them
Irresistibly
Along.
It’s Organizing Monday, and I am organizing nothing, except feeling that energy in them. And looking in that heart. Yep… these.. these little boxes.. I love them dearly.
And that alone is kind of exciting.
The artist smiles.
Truly.
Silly little boxes are making me smile as if they contain a key…
Resilience
June 11, 2010 by Janice · 1 Comment
Watercolor, 300lb D'Arches Paper, Janice Cartier, June 2010
Destruction and construction are interlocked parts of creation. So is deciding. I’ve kept my hands off this piece for a week. Walked past it again and again. Of course news images are juxtaposed upon it in my mind.
Keeping this clean has become part of the painting process. I mentioned that struggle before.
Last night I saw a friend of mine on the news…calm collected informed and insistent….as he generally is in public…and heard an interesting thing….that we may just step up and do something that has been needed for a long time. Flood the wetlands with the Mississippi River.
And my heart lifted.
It would be that hard choice . You know the one to get out of nature’s way. Let it do what it used to do in a constructive way.
Sacrifice for a huge gain.
Flow to push the bad stuff out…
Using source to heal source….
The artist smiles…art imitates life imitates art?
So I will continue on this piece
With clean…
Exhale lovely greys of dying fronds in that white space on the right, in their normal life span..
And capture fractures of light in the blues,
And dapples of gold
As intended…
Use my brush as boom…
And leave room
For resilience.
I have no doubt that it’s going to be ugly enough out there for some time…
And I am saying no, this is mine.. you don’t get this.
Not here.
Not now.
It’s too magical, too worthy,
I’m saving space for it to bloom
This afternoon.
Flooding it with love and color…
Flow…
Decisions and resilience.
I tend to like those going to a constructive effort.
Now can we get a Naughty Margarita, it’s thirsty work…but not not doable.