Cold studio, cold dog.

It's so cold for people up north I'm a crumb for complaining...but it was cold in my studio today.
When Ollie the dog came to me at the easel for a pat on the head and I felt his skull shivering, I figured it was time for us both to head to the house. It's been going so well out there for me I didn't really notice til he told me.

Have to say, all that noise I was making about switching from oil to acrylic is now in the past. It's finally working really well. I'm back to working the way I like doing the sizes I like and zipping along. I'm in the middle of a sort of "not Alice" Alice and rabbit painting, with them in a kind of strategy meeting with Crow looking on as witness. I figure they're out to dethrone the red queen.

The last time I did a series of animal headed people was in the early 80's....it's fun to be back in that fantasy.

Hope everyone is keeping warm...hot chocolate or English breakfast tea with milk is the ticket.

Peace.

Calif January

I'm in California for my usual one week a month, visiting with my 92 year old mother. I see to her needs, the needs of the house, the garden, the car, and the connection of my 21st century splintered self to her wise and funny soul. It's a pretty good trade off. When I can slow down and really listen....there is still much to learn.

Wet and chilly I walk around the garden where the moss is green on the Japanese lantern, and the empty trees rattle. There is a redwood tree nook, where one tree planted fifty years ago has sprung a family. The ground is springy and soft there and it is very quiet. Christmas cactus is blooming exceedingly well and all the perennially green things are vigorously so.

I've just heard from a painter in the Netherlands, Fons Bloemen, whose work I like very much and who has a wonderful list of links to figurative painters. Not always something so easy to come by.
At least here in the U.S. ....in big cities where more conceptual art or abstract art is paid more attention. I'm adding his website to my list of links....be sure to check him out.

Since I posted last, I have slugged it out with acrylic vs oil and finally have a happy new relationship to plastic. It took some 18 months to make the change over. I'm sure most people would do this in a speedier fashion, but I was stubborn. What eventually worked for me was to stop giving a damn and just slather it on. So I made the commitment to go from big tubes to pints and pledge my allegiance to acrylic.

So now, in between shows and anyone caring what happens in this studio, I am feeling free. The problem with feeling free is how to pare it down into something that makes sense the next morning when I go look at the previous day's work. I have long wanted to make larger paintings of my tiny gouaches, and this seems to be the time. So I am taking inspiration from my own work and doing variations on older pieces. I've never done this before and had some concern that I'd be mucking about in old ideas. But once into a piece it naturally change and morph into something quite different.

So aside from the spiders and mosquitoes (yes, still, until a hard freeze comes Texas way), life is good once again in my studio.

Peace.

arts galla fundraisers, oh my!

Tis the season when there are galas and auctions for the benefit of arts related non profits coming up in the fall and therefore a few requests for donations of artwork to help support them. Artists have a love hate attitude about these donations. Some of us are concerned about our pieces being sold for less than the gallery prices. Or being tapped too often.

My own attitude is that I make a lot of work....why not let it go out there and support something....and maybe be enjoyed. Obviously I wouldn't feel this way if I only produced three or four pieces a year. And maybe there would have to be a limit of donated pieces if I were famous and a hundred people asked for the work. But, hey, that's hardly the case. Just don't ask me to go to the gala. I'd rather stay home and paint. Or read. Or garden. Or actually anything other than get dressed up and smile.

So, here's to ya, all you hard working arts supporters, cheers, bid high, have fun.

From little stories to little sculptures, sort of...

Ahh.
After a meltdown yesterday, bathing myself in swaths of self pity because I can't figure out how to fix things on my: blog; organise things in my: house; studio; paperwork; life or even the bathroom faucet, I arrive at today full of optimism and elation. This might lead one to assume I am tilted a bit off my base, but this is the way I have always led my life.

So, while the little colored pencil drawings were fun, a bit, and made me feel like I was doing something with my need to make stuff, they were really a bit of puffery. Or that's the way they seem today. I cleaned up the studio, wired up the last paintings and worked on a piece that is going to take some time.

Then I dug into my basket of gouache and started some new semi abstract pieces that do not feel like puffery. To me they feel like plans for sculpture, which of course I will not be doing....but what interests me is the form. Looking for and finding form.........I like that.

So peace to all in the dire August heat.

the short story of little drawings

In the wilt of the year's hottest month.... after a few more paintings in the studio, I have taken to the pine table in the cool of the house. Armed with colored pencils and stray sheets of paper, work continues. Or, rather, play continues. There is so much less to invest, in time and even effort, in a sheet of paper. You know, just throw it on there and see if it works.

So I'm doing these geometric landscape type things that are whimsy and doodles...perfect for August. The world spins around, I'm no longer working "out there", and my world shrinks a bit.
My world becomes more interior even than it was in all my somewhat narrative paintings. At least for right now, August. And I find myself using symbols and abstracting shapes and using color in a more haphazard way. Who know what September will bring. Meanwhile these colored pencil things are the perfect short story.

studio procrastination

Geez.....making things work out in the studio has been more exasperating than I imagined. It is like getting muscles to perform properly after being atrophied. I imagine. Months working on the mural and weeks and weeks traveling, looking after other people have put my imagination in dumps!

I put together some stretchers. And I am procrastinating about stretching the canvas on them. "It's too hot" "my hands hurt" "I don't feel like it".......and the best one: "I just need to finish this book".....ah yes, actually, quite a few books.

But finally .....I completed three small works on panel....panels that were already prepared, mind you. And I have to say....."I still HATE acrylic paint" .....and hated that I had to give up oil due to my crumby lungs. But maybe, maybe, things might be cooking in the studio again. Pahleese.

And Peace.