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.
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?
Magnolia Blooms In Santa Fe
March 6, 2009 by Janice · 5 Comments
In the sunlight, in the high desert, a magnolia catches the clouds. Nestled, cocooned, free to walk and wander, a painter explores. New friendships, new rituals, new light. Joining history. The Taos Eight, and The Moderns who came to the same pink dusted land. Hartley, Sloan, Hopper, O’Keefe, Davis and Benton. Even the architect who built the house I was in, John Gaw Meem came out for the air and light (his lungs were failing too.).
And it changed them.
New work. New forms. New sensibilities. Or perhaps room to let the sensibilities roam. Forms to play with. Spirit that called . And no clutter. No competing noise. Talk to anyone who’s been there for awhile and they’ll tell you Santa Fe used to be a cowtown, simple, a transit point, a getaway for even more remote places. And Taos, that hippie place. To ‘The Eight”, it meant a cheap place to live and paint the west. To the Moderns it meant a break from the city back east.
To me, it meant refuge.
And coming more into myself as an artist and a person. And I love it. It is one of my happy places. There’s tragedy in this piece, hidden, but still there, look in the browns. And hopefulness, spirit. A searching for some grace. So there’s lavender and gold. And beautiful cleansing clouds that sweep across a sky saying there is some to be had… just give it time. Look at this, then go look at that. Write a bit and paint alot. See here are some beautiful friends for you. Movie nights. Road trips. Back home is out of your hands. You survived. Be here now. Take it all in.
So I did.
Walking down Acequia Madre through the golden leaves on my way to Garcia Books and my new neighborhood coffee shop, I paused, looked up into blue skies, my heart divided and so broken… and then continued on. Be here now… keep walking. Just keep walking and looking. And being.
So there you have my Magnolia Bloom in Santa Fe. I am thinking…cactus…and sunny yellows may be next… maybe…or windows.. hm….some prickly pears, perhaps.
Now, I could definitely use a margarita, an especially naughty and huge one. How about you? Are we there yet?
Say Hallelujah!
March 4, 2009 by Janice · 5 Comments
Yes! I am painting again. (I even ate whole food last night!) And look, oh my, a bulto in the far left corner. This one happens to be Nuestra Señora de Dolores. Just up the hill from me in Santa Fe was the Colonial Museum ( housed in a John Meem structure like the one I was in) and in the museum were lots of these wooden talisman. Simple carved statues of the saints. Bultos they are called. I would walk up that hill and down, around the curves and through the dappled light, amid the adobe, taking in the big blue skies. Walking by all the coyote fences. Listening for birds, or just the sounds of the wind.
No magnolias, just cactus mostly and things I could not name.
But beautiful. Beautiful and high up in the mountains with a history all its own. Not too far a way, the old Santa Fe trail. In the Plaza central, Indians sat selling silver and handmade storyteller dolls of clay. My favorite dish became tapas, or of course a nice SHRIMP taco. And I swear I could practically hear the Taos hum from my front door.
There is an unmistakable spirit to the place. Expansive. Dry, but nurturing all the same.
In the far right of the painting you’ll see a bit of a A Very Large Array. Tuners pointed to the heavens, just in case there is something to be heard. Something to be gleaned from the ethers. It is a place just made for that.
Sometimes a bluebird would come and sit for just a minute outside the kitchen window. Splash in the water at the well. Or a coyote would yowl at night, or cross the road in broad daylight. And yes, one morning there was a snake, (euww and huge scream) just outside the door in the garden, sunning himself. He didn’t budge until the sun shifted to another rock. I spent that morning INSIDE sketching.
So somebody definitely moved my magnolia. But to a magical kind of place.
Say Hallelujah.
Have you a favorite place in the world that just hums, resonates with you? Or ever go somewhere and felt an immediate kinship from the first moment?
Discovery and Magnolias
February 20, 2009 by Janice · 17 Comments
On my way to a magnolia leaf I find I am painting pottery. I’ve painted plenty of leaves before. Let washes glide over heavy arches paper and sift , settle, move into place until they form just the right shape, modulated tones, a leaf. Or the illusion of one. This paper is different. Gliding, sifting, flow…not so much. If you see flow here, it is because I worked at it.
It’s always a balance anyway, just the right amount of pigment carried in the water. Teased and coaxed into position. A whisper here , a firm stroke there. Just a little more, just a little less. A puddle. A puddle that becomes something. Or the suggestion of it.
Flow and its opposition.
There’s tension in a watercolor painting. The good kind of resistance. It becomes your partner. Oh yes. You thought painting was a solitary thing? Silly. You’re just the conductor. It’s a negotiation.
Take this leaf. It’s not what I expected.
Although the way I approached it, I set myself up for surprise. I am trying to remember… did the brown come first or the green? The yellow was insistent. No, I set out to do this in a feeling kind of way . The paper said, “No, no flow here. Look, look, the marks are more important.” And when I had finished this passage, I paused. It looked like a window had opened onto something else.
I had discovered another impression essential to the piece.
Santa Fe Is dry. Arid. Oh, there is plenty of flow there, major flow, but not always of water. The lushness is found elsewhere. Hm. But there is lots of pottery. I drew it, painted it, loved it for the flowers and herbs it held for my enjoyment. I hinted at the pottery patterns elsewhere in the painting. And now here it is on this plane. The plane in the painting that will read leaf.
And I like it.
Discovery is one of the truly good things about process. I don’t want everything to be a surprise, but I like that my paper and paint sometimes give them to me.
Now, if they would just hand over some naughty and a margarita, my Friday would be complete.
What about you, do like surprises in your work?
The Dragon Room, Naked Models, And Mad Magazine
February 13, 2009 by Janice · 8 Comments
In Santa Fe, if it was Friday, somebody in the room was naked . All day long. That the nearest warm body next to me was a Mad Magazine cartoonist still makes me smile. And after a long hard day at it, some of us would head over to the Dragon Room at the Pink Adobe for margaritas and a gorgeous sunset. Ahh, good times. Some golden moments. Skin time.
Gathering and group activity can be refreshing. Rejuvenating. A little bit of cross pollination. When you take a magnolia out west, it is exposed to all sorts of things that may have been available before but maybe not so abundantly.
I spent abundant quality time with nakedness out west.
Yep. It is very important to stay fluid and fluent, hone essential skills. But doing it with a group of respected peers and friends, well that just brings everyone up a level. And levels are important. Every one wants to master levels.
So we practiced with naked.
Yep. Lines and rhythms and touch points. Looking for the core of what makes this different from that. How to get from here to there. We spent time increasing our sensitivity. Strength. Agility. Form.
Oh, we joked and kidded, gave each other pointers or praise. Critique when asked for that. Because we are generous like that. So this painting needed some gold in it. For this treasured time. And some hints of skin. Friends with warm hearts. Fridays well spent. So here right at the heart of it, some pink, some brown, some gold amid the petals of blue skies.
You know we’re talking about drawing here, right? Drawing naked models and drinking margaritas and laughing at the madness of cartoons with friends. All the while improving our skills. Doesn’t everybody’s work entail that? ….Maybe it should.
Smiling here. Fridays in Santa Fe… golden. I’m thinking of them as I type… golden moments with some friends warming my heart. Happy Valentines everybody.
Manly Men, Hearts, and Wide Open Spaces
February 11, 2009 by Janice · 5 Comments
I spent a bit of last night in a central closet here with Texas Tornado sirens blaring. And here I was intending to talk about expanding hearts and poetic things central to my painting. Tie them in with love, perhaps. That’s all well and good, but here’s the truth. Last night, I wanted to stand in the big front window and watch the storm come. I like wide open spaces. Cozy is fine, but give me some coast to look out on, or a mountain range that pierces clouds as they scud over it on their way to drop some snow, but don’t make me hide in a closet waiting. Because I know all about hunkering down. Intimately familiar with that.
Oh, I respect the power of those big things I cannot control. I know how to take precautions, and I do. But I have a secret love of storms. Of weather changed skies and the power of thunder, lightening darts, and forms of precipitation tapping out their rhythms on my soul. Someone told me once it is those charged ions like we get at the beach, that electrify me so. I don’t know about that, but I do know they speak to that wild part of me. You know that part, we ( I think) all have one, or use to, unless we’ve let it get tromped and tucked away.
A secret love of storms? Is she nuts?
Note I said storms, not the aftermath of them. That’s entirely different.
In Santa Fe storms are quick. Some are massively replete with snow. But they are welcomed for what they are. Nourishment for dry lands. The possibility of growth. After the storm in New Orleans, magnolias went into immediate fruition, to replenish, to rejuvenate. They bloomed by necessity wherever they were. Because they are just wild like that.
That’s why I chose this bloom. This piece. This juxtaposition.
The manly men in the title? Well, I wanted to keep them in mind so I wouldn’t get too mushy. I love hearts and flowers, am a romantic at heart, but give me a safe cozy spot with a view to a storm, take me out in a boat and return me to safe harbor, show me something wild and appreciate it too… tuck the chocolates on board and chill the champagne. I am there.
What would you give your wild self for Valentine’s Day? What would suit you down to the bone?
Magnolias, Gucci, and Talking to Aliens… Maybe
February 9, 2009 by Janice · 9 Comments
The new piece is about juxtaposition. About putting a magnolia blossom in high altitude New Mexico. In Santa Fe, you’re just as likely to see the highest of tech and the simplest of saints. So this magnolia piece needs surprises, but ones that somehow seem to be just right after all.
Enter the surprise of Golden Gucci on lavender from the paper yesterday. Those horse bit pieces look to me like the unfurling fingers on a magnolia pod, and that large Array, hm, there’s a spot for it too. And that Saint…how can I not put that in? But where? Is there room? Does it work?
Not knowing again. Just exploring.
Like I do out there. Where light kisses everything and hugs it all in. Lets an artist stretch, and be. Just being is very important. Being present. Being puzzled. Being entranced. Letting it all filter through.
Not knowing. Exploring. The parts that are really you in that place in that time.
Do I know yet what this piece is going to look like? Not quite. Do I know what it is going to feel like? Yes. Very much so. And now I am eager to begin. How fitting for this week: A love letter to a time and a place. I am smiling here. If it is Monday, then we are organizing. But this love letter is at the top of the list.
What if our to do’s were filled with love letters this week? I know, groan away guys. But polishing your ski boots is kind of a love letter don’t you think? What would you put on your list to do, if it was a love letter to yourself? And shouldn’t all to do lists be that anyway?
Drifts and Petals
February 6, 2009 by Janice · 9 Comments
Not knowing. Not knowing is sometimes a really good thing. It allows your beginner’s mind to respond to what’s before it. I know the feeling I want from this piece, but I do not know all the pieces yet. So not knowing, I begin to sketch. Let my hand explore. That’s how we get acquainted. How we find connections. By letting thoughts drift. And pencils move. Sometimes you find clouds and blue skies in the petals. Places where paint can flow easily unimpeded. Build anticipation for the fun of that. Will it be warm cerulean there? That high noon of blues. Hm, right here is a spot I’ll use that lavender, the one I see at dusk. How can I paint silence? The way evening felt as I watched day turn into night ? Thoughts need to drift. Need to have room to flow. Especially at this stage.
It’s the stage of becoming.
I am putting a magnolia in the land of pink dust and adobe. Light changes there, magically. Differently. It is one of my happy places. So capturing wonder is high on the list. With expansive skies and unfettered time, an artist can connect with clouds that move across skies. Chase the dance of light.
That too is a stage of becoming.
So not knowing, trying this, maybe that. Making exploratory marks on pieces of paper is a painter’s conversation. A little back and forth with my subject. A little chat with experience. I know where I want it to take me, it’s getting more solid by the minute. Even now I can almost see it fully formed. But getting there, bringing myself fully to it, is more than half of the fun.
Looking for wonder, looking for play. Thoughts drift , petals speak, of Santa Fe skies and clouds to me.
Now, who’s up for a Silver Coin Margarita? Yep, it’s Friday so we should head to the Dragon Room at the Pink Adobe by five.
What do you think? Do you give yourself time on a project, just to let it come to you?