​"On Your Mark" - mixed media on mat board, 14" x 14". Inquiries.
​On your mark, get set, GO!
This piece is the result of a mark-making exercise. Begin with a mark, then help it have a conversation with another mark. And another. And so on. And then edit the conversations. Abstract instructions for making abstracts.
At first I didn't really get it. So I played around with different marks, and tried to get them to speak to each other. Mostly they just stuck up their noses and were silent.
So I consulted my new favorite art book, Drawing and Painting People, by Emily Ball. And yes, the book begins with exercises on making marks! Woot! Ball calls marks "dynamic little cluster of information" and stresses the importance of overlapping the marks. She also shows how marks aren't just something you make with a writing implement or a tool, but finger swipes and smudges of paint, blurred blobs and fuzzy shapes. Ooooooooooh.
It began to click. I created a small stack of mark-making conversations and managed to avoid any angry arguments (although those would be interesting, too). As my confidence grew, I made marks on larger and larger supports until landing on a 14" x 14" size.
The piece with marks alone (below) isn't very interesting. But when you "edit" the conversations (as in the final piece "On Your Mark"), the marks become juicy bits of overheard gossip or pearls of wisdom, depending on the remaining conversation.
Perhaps this is an exercise in the construction of an abstract, mark-making and editing a piece. But it could also be a metaphor for conversational consensus building! Bring a number of interesting but different people together over a topic. Let them fully express their opinions and then boil it all down to common themes and areas of agreement while editing out the bits that clash or are off-topic.
Which I will not be able to attempt as I leave for a brief holiday in Italy, given my grasp of the language is limited to the helpful pocket guide to Italian in my bag. I will be delighted if I can clearly ask for the bathroom. Dov'è il bagno?
Head on over to The Storyteller's Apprentice page on my website for a sneak peek an illuminated novel coming this fall! Written by author Dana Kumerow, and illustrated by Brittany Tate and me. We're thrilled! More information coming soon.
A Special Gift​ by Z. Rosti, illustrated by Jen Walls. Available on Amazon.
Though I've never actually met the author, Z. Rosti, I can feel her love of animals shining through this delightful tale. And through her donation of all proceeds from the sale of this book to the Lost Dog & Cat Rescue Foundation.
"The Four Faceted Face" - mixed media on paper, each 15" by 11". Inquiries.
This could become a workshop in the fall, as my brain noodles and muses and ponders hundreds of ways to interpret faces in mixed media.
But let's begin our week by channeling our inner Bailey....or Lino, in this case, who runs like the wind through the forest of the Alps.
"Arrival at the Precipice" - mixed media on 300 lb watercolor paper, 22" x 15". Ready to frame. Available here and at Artfinder.
​More experimentation and following the paint, leaving remnants of markings and shapes, carving back into the paint and scraping away seeking buried treasure. This process makes me jubilant! Again, that 300 lb cold pressed paper can take a beating, lots of water, scraping, carving and even sandpaper. I wonder if it would be rugged if I made luggage out of it? Hmmmm.
This week I am reading ​Mozart's Starling, an exquisite little book recommended by artist Dotty Seiter. I find myself gleefully racing to bed in the evening for a dose of this sweet novel. But I wondered why the universe plopped it into my hands at this particular time, when I've been on a science-fiction obsession for months.
experience and therefore be tended to, treated kindly and observed. Household pets became common, including birds.
As I read the descriptions of the Mozart family's likely relationship with the bird, including cage-free frolicking when no visitors were around, I realized exactly why this book was in my hands. The anniversary of my dad's passing is next week, and he, like Mozart, kept a bird. A bird who sat on the edge of his breakfast plate and ate scrambled eggs while leaving poops on the newspaper. A bird who slept cuddled under his neck, occasionally checking his mustache and nose for interesting artifacts. Dad was a big fan of Mozart, and Jujube and my dad likely listened to Mozart while drifting off together in the chair, dad draped with a huge beach towel (or poop catcher).
When someone we love passes, it is hard to mentally place them anywhere. Something about this book (fully researched, full of philosophy and classical music) seems so dad-like. The vision of him sitting in a salon with Mozart, each with their bird shadows busily exploring from the safety of their shoulders, clicks with me as where to visualize him now. There is peace and a wee bit of closure in this thought.
"The Canyon of Lament" - mixed media on 300 lb watercolor paper, 22" x 15". Ready to frame. Available here and at Artfinder.
​Since childhood, I've been fascinated by bones. I dreamed of becoming an archeologist, certain the bones I would find would whisper their secrets to me. There are stories in the bones, clean of all their earthly housing and bared for all to see.
My own bones speak loudly every darn day. Mostly groaning and creaking and complaining. Not exactly the kind of magical whispering I had in mind. But Mark Nepo might caution me to listen more closely to my own skeletal murmuring..."Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow cycles of nature, is a help." This May Sarton quote is in the beginning of the chapter titled "Regret" in Nepo's The One Life We're Given. Like a bag of rocks dumped on my head, a bit of an "aha" moment as my own bones slow me down to tortoise mode and force patience beyond my abilities.
There is grief in my bones...the loss of parents, of pooches, of strength and youth. A nearly empty nest - the loss of fertility and motherhood. The running shoes I can no longer wear to lope through forest trails and city streets. But Nepo warns us of these canyons of lament; easy to sink into and flounder in our own regret and attempts to unravel the knots of the past.
When lamenting the past, our own reception is limited...Nepo compares regret to misaligned plumbing pipes - things cannot flow through us and to us freely because the flow is interrupted. How do you know if your pipes are askew? "...if you have trouble hearing or taking things in." Well sure enough that happens often. So what now? Call a plumber? Nope. The answer, says Nepo, is to "give of yourself - anywhere and everywhere. Sometimes the only remedy is to empty ourselves and begin again."
Though I don't think Nepo meant this literally (my apologies, but the plumbing metaphor has my mind turning to all the wrong images here - as if you could read my mind, dear reader! Wait - maybe you can?), I can't help but wonder at the universe as I prepare for a surgery this summer where the insides of parts of my cervical spine will actually be removed - emptied, as it were- and a long recovery set back into slow cycles begun.