where i'm at

August was a simple quiet month of a routine in the studio.  I 'shut the doors of my house' as Stanley Kunitz calls it, working on eight canvases,  smaller, more intimate pieces, chipping away at them little by little each day.   From February until June I drew a lot, sketched, looked, took pictures, watched movies, read, looked more.  A lot of the ground work was laid in those months of sorting.  Once I started painting  they happened like the natural next step they were intended to be. Now that I know where this work is headed, I’m tending to their nuances, fine tuning and tweaking.  This stage sometimes feels like polishing silver.  It’s repetitive and meditative. 

Today I turn forty-five!  It’s a solid sturdy number and it feels really good.  As artists we’re expected to explain the purpose and intent of what we do at every turn.  I actually enjoy figuring all that out intellectually – I like knowing why I do what I do at this particular moment in time.   The reader and explorer in me relishes that part of the work.  But truth be told, on a purely gut level, I make art because it reminds me that  I am alive and breathing, a conscious creature with a limited amount of time.  I feel like I’m actually just now starting to get a handle on art making. I don't think we ever really figure anything out, but I am hearing what I want to say with the work and trusting what I hear.  Hopefully, I’ll have a few more decades to keep making art, because not only do I like the idea of being an old lady, I have a lot of stuff I want to make.   As my friend wisely said to me recently, “work your ass off in the studio because that is going to tell you who you are.”   

complimentary colors broken down a bit 

and a little painting on paper with bright bright colors 

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The two things I appreciate most about my studio are the bookshelves and the mascot.

Here's a new drawing.

a new space to think about new things

 

Before I hung this new push pin friendly area in my studio, all the random imagery I regularly look at was either on crammed here and there or in a stack. Now that there is space to spread it all out, I can see more clearly what's actually on my mind.

Thinking about:

storage containers 

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Joyce Carol Oates (her face, her bookshelf, her husband)

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thin vertical lines
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neutrals with intense color (ongoing fascination)
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a big hunk of black with bright colors below it
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day glo
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thin horizontal lines
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perspective (in conjunction with the storage containers)
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red and off-white tightly woven together

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adventures in magnitude

My little pea brain appreciates the simplicity of this Powers of Ten video. When it's time to peel my face off the glass and gain a little perspective I watch it.  

The narration and music are very 20th century, back when Pluto was still a planet. 

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The Round 

by Stanley Kunitz

Light splashed this morning
on the shell-pink anemones
swaying on their tall stems;
down blue-spiked veronica
light flowed in rivulets
over the humps of the honeybees;
this morning I saw light kiss
the silk of the roses
in their second flowering,
my late bloomers
flushed with their brandy.
A curious gladness shook me.

So I have shut the doors of my house,
so I have trudged downstairs to my cell,
so I am sitting in semi-dark
hunched over my desk
with nothing for a view
to tempt me
but a bloated compost heap,
steamy old stinkpile,
under my window;
and I pick my notebook up
and I start to read aloud
the still-wet words I scribbled

on the blotted page:

"Light splashed . . ."

I can scarcely wait till tomorrow

when a new life begins for me,

as it does each day,

as it does each day.

I was recently reminded how much I need poetry in my life.  I return to this one over and over again.  Both the picture and the poem are from "The Wild Braid - A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden."

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first stages....with shadows

 

I wonder when people in Memphis, my neighborhood specifically, started putting iron on every window and door?  If I had to guess I'd say the 70s.  Luckily for me the people that lived in my home for fifty years had good taste.  They picked a beautifully ornate pattern that  cast elegant shadows throughout the day. 

These three paintings are in the armature building phase.  I have in mind where I want each one to go, but seeing them grouped together with these patterns suggest whole new possibilities. 
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orange, yellow, pink

If I approach a painting without a plan but want to get rid of that intimidating white surface, sometimes I'll just paint it pink.  It lightens things up a bit.  

The melons and tomatoes from the farmer's market may need to cross-pollinate with this canvas. 

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