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?
Which Way to Go
June 7, 2010 by Janice · 4 Comments
Color, Janice Cartier, June 2010
Is the question on my mind this morning. And a lot of the weekend.
First of all, thank you for listening last Wednesday. I had no idea when I wrote, that the words would have the effect they did. On you and on me. I just knew they had to come out.
I am a painter, an artist who needs a place to work. And needs the work to sell on line and off again so that I can continue to work and rebuild my life.
So I’ll be asking you to buy or recommend.
That’s my source. So any introductions or recommendations will be appreciated as much as purchases.
Some of my small inquiries are leading me to prints. But the real kind, not the quick laser printed kind that are digital copies. And that will take me looking around to find a master printmaker. That stirs the butterflies in my tummy. Not only for the excitement of doing them, but the thrill of making them available in limited editions. Wetlands and more seeping out into lives as little sanctuaries, I hope. That’s one path the small inquiries are on.
In the short term, I have three 22″ x 30″ wetlands watercolors underway. Those will be let go as they are finished instead of being held for show. And only to you on line. We’ll see those in process here. They are all offered at 1800.00 each, a discounted price for new collectors. 3 of them. So speak up if you want first consideration as you see them in process.
And there are several large pieces planned or in the works that are too early to talk about yet. But they are eagerly awaiting my presence. And the money/materials to do them.
And lots and lots of small things that are pouring out of my pencil and brush and scissors.
So if anyone feels like it, you can go to Dick Blick and see my wish list for materials anytime.
Email me your email and/or your mailing address at jancartier1 at gmail dot com to get on the limited editions list . No obligation, just put in the subject “please keep me in that loop” for updates on that progress. I am freshening and rebuilding my snail mail list to send out an occasional goody from the “studio” in the real world too. That’s what the mailing address would get you. And of course, total confidentiality.
And on Wednesdays…we’ll talk more about the oil spill and some stories about where paint has taken me.
But mostly, mostly the way to go forward is to talk about process and our source…our way of creative spark and practice and voice…protect that and everything goes forward. Accessing zone is the basis for all creative process. So Fridays will remain about that. And Margaritas. The artist smiles.
Finding the little in the big…it’s Organizing Monday.. and that’s what I am organizing today. Little steps for big passions.
How about you? How are the paths for your passions looking?
And thank you.. for your readership and your support and for the incredible amazing thoughts that you have and the creative souls that you are. That is beyond value to me.
Do You Have a Warroom?
January 4, 2010 by Janice · 9 Comments
You have a war room don’t you? You know, a place where you map out your take over of the world, or at least your part of it. That’s where I am today. In mine.
Okay, it’s just a section in a notebook and I am at my desk. But it is vital. Like get this out of my head and down on paper so I don’t have to make these decisions again, I can just execute them.
Like that.
But for the big picture.
The what are you doing and why part.
It’s kind of like that saying “measure twice and cut once.”
This is me kind of measuring how much of what I am choosing for the near future. Agenda setting and that.
You do that right?
And January is that kind of month isn’t it?
All fresh and new…
And my birth month.
So I like to see if I can give myself a nice start to the year.
Which means I am in my war room today.
Mapping out, collecting all the old and setting up the new.
Getting at the essentials, setting up the framework, so we can get into the zone at will.
Yes.
On this Organizing Monday, I am in my war room plotting destinations and how to get to them. Checking supplies, cleaning up equipment, straightening this and that. Setting my sites on a couple of new ways to explore and some tried and true ones. And I am liking what I’m seeing.
So you have a war room don’t you?
How’s it going in yours?
Paintings To Build a Room Around
December 30, 2009 by Janice · 1 Comment
I have a new assistant! We are busily at work. Making maps and plans and setting all to right. I know he LOOKS a little odd. Not your usual European accented too snobby for you gallery/studio slave, but he was a gift to me. So I took him in.
Never mind those two very efficient keep everything going including food in the fridge assistants to Glenna Goodacre I met in Santa Fe. We are not there yet.
So I will take this charming balancing seal and work with him.
And besides, he is highly entertaining.
And sometimes that is really needed.
Especially when carving out the next year’s painting roster.
When you are planning paintings that rooms are built around.
Or ones that create small sanctuaries.
We need some laughter, when looking at a full year and the many long hours that will go into bringing so much to life, and all that goes with that.
Phew.
A balancing seal looks pretty much dead on right now.
And he’s colorful to boot.
Now if he could just manage the trip to Whole Foods and back…
Ah well, we have Lindt Truffles to tide us over.
And some tea…hm..mine needs warming up…
Sigh.
He’s new yet.
Artist grimaces and heads off to fix more tea.
Staff.
Would be so nice to have.
Don’t you think?
When you are making paintings to build rooms around.
Just saying.
Back to work we go.
He IS very good at balancing that ball.
That could come in handy.
The artist smiles.
And gets back to work.
Toward the Soft Spots
December 7, 2009 by Janice · 4 Comments
Wholeheartedly. I was thinking about that word this morning early, very early. As in what am I going to write about today when so much inside is shifting around. Usually a word will pop into my head, linger, and I’ll stay with it awhile. Make more words of it that may be useful, or need to be said. This morning it was two words. Finishing and wholeheartedly.
Yesterday I had come across another note of mine that mentioned that I tend to head for those sweet soft spots, the inside heart beat of a piece. Or that’s the aim. In working on finishing my Counting Mondays list that I set before myself, several of those spots have appeared. Some are easier to work on than others. Some have magically arrived. Some you can color with the big red of resistance.
Yes.
Right there in my path, simple, innocuous ( innocuous? There’s a surprise word and I haven’t even had my tea, hm.) looking items on the list are looking more like stumbling blocks.
Which makes me groan.
You know what I think we do with those, right?
We ask questions of them.
Poke a bit to find out what’s holding them in place and specifically in place as in get out of there already, why don’t you?
Hmph.
I would say we are at 30 per cent complete on the list.
The good news is I got my surprise kisses from an unexpected source. ( item 11)
The bad news is I haven’t tackled that driving manual of rules. (item 4)
There’s progress on some of the other items. (1,2,3,5,6,7,8)
And a couple…well a couple are really making me scratch my head (9 and 10 specifically and of course item 4)
It’s not that I don’t know how to drive, I do. Even post apocalypse. Especially then. It’s the encyclopedic rules book that honestly bears not so much practical rules as punitive rules. Like this one, what to do if your low beams lights aren’t working. Well you switch to hight beams and get home or to a garage as soon as you can. WRONG.
They say, pull over and put on your flashing lights.
WRONG.
Are you kidding me? Do you know how long you would be safe in the hood with that one? Or who wouldn’t make it out safely in case, you know , the water got a little high…
So yes, I may have to read carefully, and pretend, imagine, a more suburban take on the whole driving thing….I am used to helicopters, boats, streetcars and being driven by taxi or friend, or colleague just to the jumping off point. Or walking. Walking is a good thing isn’t it?
BTW. The rule of the road on streetcars and autos? The streetcar wins.
Anyway. As I go about all the other items on my list, the painterly ones, that manual on my shelf is taunting me. I would much rather go to one of my happy places like say that window with the poinsettia in the photo…and the peace of an island painting that will come of it. Or move to higher ground listening to Wynton’s Christmas music.
That manual is taking on a distinctly unpleasant mocking personality. (I narrow my eyes at it. Growl a bit. )
Sheesh, getting my international license seemed to have more makes sense rules. Yes, grape harvesting wagons entering the road are to be looked for in the fall. And fog lights are required on your Fiat especially along the fiume.. or on the autostrada late at night… hight speeds and fog… it gets a little edge of your seat driving then.
Texas? Hmph. Jumping through a Texas hoop when I know out on the ranches…in between what in Europe are called “built up areas” anything goes. (We call them cities.) So I am reading their rules.
grr.
So finishing and wholeheartedly… I said I would do it so I will, wholeheartedly cursing it all the way… that counts for beating resistance, doesn’t it?
Was that laughter? I thought I heard that manual laugh.
How are your Monday’s going?
I need more tea.
First At Bat
August 7, 2009 by Janice · Leave a Comment
Those two tree trunks. And the bouquet that reaches toward them on a diagonal. That’s it. That’s all that decided me on this one to begin. Not the showy, in your face aren’t I gorgeous head shot of a blossom that truly is a show stopper. I am saving that one for later.
But this one. A gentle circle of green opening blossoms and then the full one but a side glance, a come hither that is more subtle.
And color that is almost all the same.
But it isn’t.
Close.
Very analogous.
But not the same.
Here’s the challenge: to make it all seem like an event.
To find the slight differences that say here is this part, that is another, and to move you around the picture. To walk your eyes in such a way that you are pulled right into a story.
A subtle story, true.
A restricted palette to tempt,and tease you there.
Under those trees, into the shade, to praise something simple and yet so extraordinary.
Maybe it’s a longing to go back to the garden of Eden.
Dunno. I am exiled. So maybe there is a bit of that.
But I think it is quite simple. Like a taste of fresh greens in a salad, crisp and clean. Fresh.
And then a hint of passion….
call it foreplay
… an appetizer.
But it was an event. And we’ll explore it.
Ahh, is it Friday then? Are we ready for Margaritas?
Best Laid Plans
August 3, 2009 by Janice · 12 Comments
“Flowers and fruits are always fit presents: flowers because they are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do I remember how to post? Are the rhythms there waiting for me, just lying dormant waiting to be picked up again and played? I hope so. It feels creaky and stiff and rusted like an old bicycle covered in the garage. Dark under a tarpoleon, stored for awhile.
I have to admit straight off that my break went no way like anything I envisioned. You know, renewal achieved, giant blocks of tasks put to rest, lots of new progress on paintings. Nope. Did not go like that. And as I type this morning I am really playing it by ear.
So yesterday, Emerson spoke to me with those words about beauty and flowers. And I thought, “Well now isn’t that always true.” So I thought I ‘ll just bring flowers. The new series, the passion blooms, are the only thing that I have actually been drawn to in Texas to paint. A simple little vine that runs along the hedge near by. And I have somehow managed to work up several new sketches for paintings of them to do.
Simple. Vines of lines and unfolding greens, and deep mysterious blues in a radius when they open. Can these open to a way forward? Can these be my much needed renewal? Can these anchor me once more?
Well, we’ll just have to see won’t we?
I spent most of my hiatus trying to keep my lungs open and air flowing in and out as it should. Simple. Something most everyone does without even thinking. When I went out to gather, to soak in the Texas sun, the mold count here was on the rise and for me that is not good. So my hiatus was a bit of a nightmare. More walls closing in, not freedom found.
So flowers. Flowers are very appealing and it is with these I am picking my way through and taking nothing, not even breath as a given. Once again. But we are pushing through, pushing through to paint, to write, to be…they found me just as much as I found them. So that’s where I am going, one breath and one bloom at a time. I thought maybe Texans are fond of them too. And that’s where I am. In Texas, very much hoping that passion blooms.
So the cover comes back off of my stiff and unused bike, the paint is flowing gently a little at a time, and the medicine is working, although it comes with it’s own set of goofiness and problems, scattering thoughts I’d rather keep whole. But the flowers, I think they’ll see me through. I hope you will bear with me. Already, it feels less stiff , less foreign, more me.
Yes, it is an Organizing Monday. I have organized these words. The artist smiles to herself. And that is good enough.
How have you all been?
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?
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?
Room To Play
February 18, 2009 by Janice · 13 Comments
Issac Stern once said that people don’t come to see him play the violin, people come to see him enjoying playing the violin. His pleasure, his immersion with it. Play is very important. In my experience it is those places in between that are sometimes the most playful the most possibly intimidating , and the most rewarding. Or they can be , if you let them. They can lead to some really juicy stuff.
Take that splat of green on the lower right corner barely in the picture in the painting up above. See the larger one right at the edge. Kind of a half circle. Yep. Oops. I overloaded the brush and ker-plop. It’s not on that leaf where it was headed. Hm, but it’s a really nice circle of green… what if…I put a few more, scatter them…maybe like this… cause they are exactly the shape of the scrubby bushes scattered all over New Mexico.
Oooh, nice pattern.. and what if…I make some blips in blue that go up up just above them? What for? I don’t know. Seemed like the thing to do at the time. What was there was calling for that. Go with me on this.
And what if I scooch over here to the left, just out of the frame ( hah, you’ll have to wait ) and put that thing I have never put in a painting before. Oh yeah… and here… starry , starry night… step back … pause… consider…Those white petals will go just here and here, but what is next to them? What is not them, but essential to them ? Hm… some green here… some of my orange connectors…Yes.
This might just be the map.
And there’s some room to wiggle. Some places to explore. This painting is dancing in my head to a lovely lovely tune. My eyes skim over the paper. I know enough now, but not too much. And there is room to play. Places where the painting can tell me what it is going to be.
I like where this is going. And I am eager to get back to it … so…
While I am rinsing my brush and getting some fresh water, tell me, is there a part of your work that is just sheer fun? A little part that you just love to do?