The content of life

Again, I must begin this post with the same refrain as the last one  way back in 2012; it's been quite some time since I've written on this blogspot.

I do enjoy writing so I am going to try and maintain a regular, but not daily, log of my thoughts and paintings. Though many aspects of life have changed and insisted on being lived, painting has remained constant on a daily basis due to two main factors; I love it and I need money. As most artists know who've made the commitment to live the daring creative life, there are no pensions and the good intentions of starting a 401 K or saving 10% of everything I make just didn't actualize. I look upon it as a fortuitous set of circumstances for who among us would paint every day for 3 or 4 hours if the wolves weren't barking down the door? It all adds up to experience and a substantial body of work which is what I wanted when I made the commitment some 25 years ago. So I am a happy camper.

My sons are grown and thriving! Between now and the last post in 2012 I've gone through some loss and some grueling anxiety but painted my way through all events. One might call it life itself. My most wonderful loyal funny canine girl, Ashby, went to heaven February a year ago and though I felt like a child, I proceeded with all the grownup decisions I had to make like a true stoic. What can you do? She was my gift for 13 magnificent years, a true loyal companion and I will always carry her in my heart. I knew the day would come. I am just now strong enough that I think I can look at her photo long enough to make the portrait I've always dreamed of doing and that puts a smile on my face. I'm a special kind of nut when it comes to the dog/cat relationship. It feels very human to me.

The anxiety of which I speak above is reserved for the horrendous experience of learning your child has cancer and the tortuous events that proceed after the diagnosis is made which was exactly a year ago to this day. My 33 year old beautiful son was diagnosed with the same tongue cancer as Michael Douglas and underwent a 12 hour operation two weeks before thanksgiving last year in which they removed half of his tongue, rebuilt it with his arm muscles (wrist) and used a peel of skin from the thigh to rebuild the arm. I am happy and relieved to report that his most recent scan has shown him to be cancer free. The magnificent doctors who rebuilt his tongue have given him excellent speech and he and his lovely intensive care nurse, wife, are thriving. A scar remains but lies on the wrinkle that passes from behind the ear down the neck and is barely visible, and with a scruffy beard  it is totally invisible. Aside from the three weeks we spent sleeping on the floor in the hospital watching over him at the Loma Linda cancer center, I have continued to paint most days and am thankful for the structure it brought to my life during trying times. I have visited him many times during the follow-up radiation in LA and carved out a little painting niche on the porch and with the marvelous technology of today, was able to make a creative income all the while. With this last set of results from the Pet scan I am settling back into the "non-hyper anxiety alert" mode and enjoying some experimentation and am longing for new material...I recently got a hankering to study Maxfield Parish and his amazing glazed paintings. While reading the book I discovered TRANSPARENT ORANGE. I get a particular joy from certain colors and their properties and this is a keeper that I will always be using in my palette. It happens to rest opposite another of my favorites, prussion blue, so that makes it the complement (completes it) EVEN BETTER!

 I'm not to going to ramble on so I can save some thoughts for the next post but wanted to bring you up to date on where these last two years went. We are human beings and live not in a vacuum. Our life experience can't help but influence us whether it's in style, subject matter, materials, or complexity

I post my most recently completed work measuring 24 x 36. I lost myself for weeks in the the simple rendering in black and white of this figure and then began to patiently apply glazing of transparent orange, alizarin crimson, Prussian blue and scumbles of a velute (SP) which is a glaze mixed with some white and gray flesh tones.  The first photo show a couple of layers of glaze and the second shows the more advanced version.  The color wheel is my friend and companion always and I have many of them posted in every room of the house.  You might say I am a color wheel collector!

Contemplative solitude is always a good thing whether you call it prayer, thinking, wishing or exercising the imaginations.  I like this kind of painting because it reflects one of my favorite activities of being quiet and still and letting thoughts come.

test for wes

we studied tennessee
attached is the study sheet

Amusing

It's been some time since I've posted on my blog.  I just came across an amusing quote while looking through my old American Art Review magazines..I'll type it straight from the column.  It's a quote from Anna Lea Merritt, ..."the inequality observed in women's work is more probably the result of untoward domestic accidents...women who work must harden their hearts, and not be at the beck and call of affections or duties or trivial domestic cares...the chief obstacle to a woman's success is that she can never have a wife."  Thought there was some insight there....but of course the world has changed and is changing since then.  I now can justify a messy house.  I mean, really, it can take the entire day to keep everything perfect and it takes more than a life time to actualize the art life.

I am posting my recent work...enjoyed painting it so much ...I am continuing on with many of these two young women, sisters.  This painting practically painted itself.  I just happened to be in the room.  I love when that happens!

Simple

I don't know what I want to say yet... sometimes, I am told, if you keep writing it will come to you.  I like the simplicity of form here and found it mesmerizing to layer glazes over the gray underpainting and to work with a limited palette........yellow ochre, prussian blue, and pyr.red....though there was a burnt umber modeling into the background at the very beginning.......As I was painting this I was thinking of all the possibilities racing through my mind that I want to execute and found myself being ever so thankful that I detoured from my original vocation of teaching 6th grade 30 years ago and devoted myself to playing with color, luscious wonderful color that I could probably spend 50 lifetimes exploring and manipulating.......I think the composition and the subject matter for me are simply a "thing" from which to drape color.  I'm not sure what I'm trying to say when I paint but I know I have a good time doing it and I truly feel like me...doing it.. That probably sounds odd but it has always seemed to me that the big prize in being alive is getting to know yourself and how important it is to be living the right life instead of the wrong life where you are just plodding along counting the days until the weekend...I think people are happier when they have cultivated their own resources and spirit and that trumps the need for making more money than you need....
Steve Jobs said it well I think and I resonate with the sentiment and hope my kids have the spirit and fortitude to discover their own  genuine lives....Steve Jobs said at the Stanford commencement address:
.."our work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle."  


and also this:  "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

Photo Book

Click here to view this photo book larger

Shutterfly baby photo books are the perfect way to preserve your baby's precious moments.

Limitations

There are just as many people who say there are no limits (e.g. the sky is the limit), as those who say limits are good.  I was profoundly affected by reading Rollo May's book on creativity when he spoke about how the creation of limits facilitated creativity. "Creativity... requires limits, for the creative act rises out of the struggle of human beings with and against that which limits them. (Rollo May). " I saw this one today also which is from Robert Frost and it made me chuckle but how true it is.
"I play better tennis because the court is there. " (Robert Frost)
Anyway.....I made a pile of Indian Yellow, prussian blue and my new best friend, quinacridone red and of course white....titantium, white.....and painted five paintings; two landscapes and three still lifes.......I like the limits and I think there is unity.

"Everything great in the world is done by neurotics; they alone founded our religions and created our masterpieces."  Parcel Proust


Very honest fellow

Fineartamerica

woman paintings   (link to paintings of women, mine included!

I just discovered and joined a great website that prints on demand..It will make it so easy for customers to get exactly what they want whether it is a canvas print or a framed print under glass in any size from 8 x 10 to 48 x 60.  I am gradually loading all of my high resolution files onto the site.

final version

first version

I recently revisited this painting with a bottle of gamblin  neo meglip mixed with my favorite two colors, prussian blue and indian yellow and glazed over the haphazard cacophony of colors and unified the mood and atmosphere.  The one on top is the final version.  Everytime I walked past this colorful version it made me want to throw up.   eek ....did I say that?

Discovering animation and video

Somehow today I got caught up in the business of promoting myself on the internet and have been fine tuning web site info and looking into the latest and greatest...I came across this amazing little fun website which probably so many people know about, called Animoto.  You can do a 30 second video for free and put it to music.....I did one with my artwork without any thinking whatsoever and then I did one with the pets...it's just a trip....very fun...I present my efforts below...it's just fun.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

I love quotes.

Garden Contemplation
SOLD

first underpainting

"Observe your thoughts for they become your words. Carefully select your words, for they become your actions. Direct your actions, for they become your habits. Examine your habits, for they will become your character. Improve your character, for it becomes your destiny." Unknown


I love to find excellent arrangements of words to express what I think are golden tickets to living a more plentiful, successful, satisfying, contributory life.  I feel connected to the energy of humanity when I come across a thought put to words by a struggling human from another generation who also has reflected on the meaning of his/her own life in the crucible of their own unique time.


I'm working on the thought of painting each painting as if it will be the last one I'll ever do and all my self talk while I paint is about staying with it till my gut is at rest with it.    I don't know quite where I came  up that somewhat morose thought but I think it's affirming and motivating.  Sometimes I have an inner vision that has to align itself with the outer manifestation and sometimes I love the happy accidents of color that I discover. But the inner judge has to approve.  I generally paint and think later but I'm trying to observe longer and place the color, value, and stroke in just the right place.   I find myself often scraping down everything I've done if I'm dissatisfied and starting fresh the next day.  Our failures are often nothing more than a foundation for the finish but a good one and an essential one!  Those of you who scrape know what a wonderful foundation of harmony with which you can finish the day.........the neutrals take your breath away and open a door that takes the painting deeper down a more thorough road drenched with sunshine and shadow and spirit.
      
Some paintings paint themselves.. You feel you've been possessed when you are painting them.  The muse has visited.  The right brain was activated; you were in the zone and it feels so good.   Other times you can't find the zipcode of the zone.  Your brain is all over the place, you feel empty inside, no muse, no purpose, nothing........Everything you put down is wrong. You can wander and exasperate and carry on negative brain talk but all you do is dig yourself a deeper path down the "I can't do this" path or the "Who do I think I'm kidding?" path or especially the "All those other paintings were flukes.  I got lucky," path. How do I know....? I do this even though I know it leads to no good whatsoever and I've wandered deeper into the forest lost for certain.


My success at getting out of this (much like Gretel leaving breadcrumbs along the way to find his path back home)  is to breathe, be calm, love my life and  tell myself (self talk, again) ok, calm down....you've done this before, you can do it again. It's a matter of excavating that sincere part of my creativity.  I know when I'm deeply in it because I want to HUNKER DOWN AND PAINT FOR hours and hours til I get it right while getting madder and madder  as I get dirtier and dirtier.   When I get that panicked feeling I can catch myself.   I can scrape and take a break.  I can reorganize my palette and consolidate some goo.....clean my hands and brushes........organize my space a little bit.  Have a cup of tea or cold drink....and remember a simple glass of water and a few minutes with the pets.


There's painting and then there's painting. I will simply stay with it for as long as it takes.  Much like Gretel or Hansel leaving breadcrumbs to find their way home,  I recover and pick up my own crumbs by doing an inventory which reminds me of my motivation, my skills, my knowledge, my heart, my purpose with the painting and I stay positive..........and pretty soon there's a sea change rolling in and the wind has turned favorable and I'm back in the zone.  

PS. FOUND this on the internet ......all the political talk the last several years has included the word sea change and I got the meaning but didn't know the source........here it is and once again we have Shakespeare to thank.
Thank you Mr. Shakespeare. This expresses a great concept ........the alchemy of the painter, the alchemy of relationship, the alchemy of meaning in our lives.




 Sea-change or seachange is a poetic or informal term meaning a gradual transformation in which the form is retained but the substance is replaced, as with petrification. The expression is Shakespeare's, taken from the song in The Tempest, when Ariel sings,

"Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made,
Those are pearls that were his eyes,
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change,
into something rich and strange,
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell,
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them, ding-dong, bell."