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.

facing the canvas

After a month or so away....I'm back to the home ground again.

The garden, after weeks of rain, has become a jungle, complete with voracious mosquitoes vying for a piece of flesh.

My dog barely knows me.

My studio is free of the smell of anything creative and looks hollow and lonely.

I have read more than my share of summer books.

And although I'm still in love with fish and boats to paint and draw, I haven't a clue as to what I will do when I can finally paint again next week. Probably I will thrash about a lot and swear and pitch a bloody fit as I face the blank canvas and feel that I don't remember how to paint.

I base this on years of bloody fits. And then I will begin again.

Peace.

mural done, relaxing begun

The mural is finished.

It was fun. It was work. It was good to know that in my dotage I can still climb ladders and swing that brush all day.

I am trading in mural walls for tiny gouache paintings for a while. While the humidity spreads its soggy wings over my house and garden for the summer, staying inside and painting would appear the more comfortable occupation....vs. pulling weeds and chasing the dog.

Besides, someone just told me that there were three copperhead snakes found on our block last week.

Peace.

lost restaurant not on the whiplash road

Finishing up another week in California.....and finding that my patience isn't what it needs to be.

Of course, it is not all the mother/dementia thing....it is also me taking her out for a last day beautiful lunch and getting lost on the upper reaches of Page Mill Road where it nearly connects to the ocean.
That is to say, the restaurant I was looking for was somewhere else and we drove for 90 grueling minutes on a whiplash road with countless switchbacks with me always thinking we'd gone beyond the point of return and might as well keep going.

It is a beautiful road with amazing views of the bay and surrounding hills at the top. And all the way up and all the way down are groves of redwoods, buckeye trees, madrones, oaks and ferns. Gorgeous. And the mothership loved it, except for getting very hungry and a bit tired of sitting and waiting for that wonderful restaurant. And then it started to rain.

Oh well. Back on level surface we had a rather late lunch, more good talk, promises of what to get/bring/remember for next time and a good goodbye. Til next month.

We, of the generation that serves.....elderly parents, overwrought grown children and grand children. We are a self reliant and hardy bunch. In my opinion.