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The Courage to See Clearly

6/3/2022

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The Courage to See Clearly

The Courage to See Clearly - acrylic on craft paper, 14.5 x 17.  Available here and at Artfinder.


This courage to see clearly what is before us, around us, and within us applies as well to the largest acceptance of all — that we will die. In accepting death, we can see more easily where we can live. In accepting that we have no control over the stream of life, we can see more easily the gestures we do have control of, which sages refer to as our chance to steer in the stream. In accepting that life is relentless in its rush of experience, we can see more easily where it is tender and wondrous. In facing the harsher ways of those we love, we can ask for authentic relationship and accept the hard work of how to get there.   - MARK NEPO
Lately, I've been stuck in the middle of the stream.

Stranded in a tiny, swirling, cloudy vortex of grief,  And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.

Two friends passed away in recent weeks, and each was a brilliant well of creativity and kindness, vibrant and generous and sweet. And national events...that, too. A monkey pile of sadness and loss.
And so the inner world has become a miasma of reflecting, ruminating, regretting, celebrating and feeling - oh so much feeling.   All the way to the ends of my fingertips and edges of my eyeballs.  

Nepo's words give purpose here. They point to the BIG REVEAL that we all face when confronted with the loss of others - the inevitable ends of our own lives.  I was fighting the stream until a few days ago, when the overwhelm of exhaustion and feelings had me fed up with my own stew of sadness.  And I surrendered.  

We have no control over this stream -  who it takes, who it leaves behind.  But we can "steer in the stream", accepting, seeing more easily where we can live.  That's where the relief is.  Where the lives of those loved and lost become even more meaningful - they point us ​where we can live.  And so I gently steer myself to the tender and wondrous​ parts of the stream.  I think Heidi and Dana would approve.

About the art: another piece on that lusciously leathery gesso'd craft paper.  Layers and layers of softly blended paint, added with brushes, sprayed, scraped away, then added again.  Embracing the random textures, lines and splatters that result.  Following her gaze to clearly seeing.
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Faulty View

5/19/2022

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Faulty View
"Faulty View" - mixed media on paper, 21 x 21.  Available here and at Artfinder.


Claude, you have a faulty view of my kin,
Our Corvus family is not responsible
For foot-tracks around your eyes
Or measuring a straight flying distance.
We would not stoop to the metaphor
abasement, such as ‘eating human.

- W.K. GOURLEY

​
The crows continue to roost in the studio.

Sketches and paintings and inspiration images and feathers. 

Rocky, our porch crow, looms large every day.  We recognize his voice, admire his demonstration of territorial ownership, leave him offerings of nuts, popcorn, corn on the cob and eggs.
We've become those people.  The ones who wander with pockets filled with peanuts, chucking and clucking and calling the crows.  And now, often, the crows call us.  Or swoop silently over our shoulders to land in a tree limb ahead, waiting for the morning offerings.  There is great joy in this, for us.  Making contact, forming recognition, learning each other's ways.

It has become a lovely pause in a tumultuous world.  Our eyes and ears are atuned to the crows, leaving little space for news and chaos.  I think of it fondly as crow meditation. :)

About the art:  this piece is painted on one of my new favorite substrates - craft paper.  Once gesso'd, this paper takes a beating and forms delicious textured wrinkles and warps, creating an overall leathery texture and heft on a thin plane.  

Beginning with black gesso'd paper taped to a board, drawing the bird with white charcoal and then adding water and paint to form a value sketch.  Continuing to add the requisite 80 million layers of acrylic paint, this time choosing a very dark, limited palette.  Using the sprayer bottle, squeegee and rubber wedge to force the paper to wrinkle and warp, enjoying the way subsequent light layers cling to the high points in the texture and leave the valleys dark.  Resisting the urge to overly define all but eye and feet.

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The Night Will Give you a Horizon

5/3/2022

4 Comments

 
When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.


When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.


Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.


There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.


The dark will be your womb
tonight.


The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.


You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.


Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.


Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn


anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
​

is too small for you.

​"Sweet Darkness", David Whyte


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The Night Will Give You a Horizon



​"The Night Will Give You a Horizon" - mixed media on wood panel, 18" x 24".  Ready to hang.  Available here and at Artfinder.
There's a lot going on in the world right now.

It makes me tired to think about it.  But think about it I must, we all must, because war and disease and the economy and the people making decisions on our behalf effect us.  The key, I believe, is not overthinking about it. 

I'm a big overthinker.   It comes with being introverted, highly sensitive and a survivor of a measure of trauma.  There are worlds of thinking in my head that are ever expanding during times of strife.  So Whyte's words, the reminder to "give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong", places that brain of mine back in the present moment - this peanut butter sandwich on my desk, the sound of the crow outside, the in and out breath.  

Anything (or anyone) that does not bring us alive, dear reader, is too small for us.  

About the art:  beginning with a wood panel thickly gesso'd in black.  Using colored charcoal and blocking in shapes based on an inspiration photo from a sunset on the rocky Oregon shoreline.  Grabbing the gist of the scene with layers of fiery oranges and then building rocks and pools and edges with a palette knife laden with acrylic paint.  Liberal use of spray bottle, squeegee, rubber wedge and chopsticks (for carving into the paint).  Dollops of colored pencil.  Thin washes of paint mixed with matte medium for the sky.  Resisting the desire to overly define.  Allowing paint to move.

​This piece. moves, me...I hope it moves you, too. xo
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Wonder and Grief

4/23/2022

8 Comments

 
"Wonder and Grief" - mixed media on cradled wood panel, 8 x 8 x .75.  Ready to hang.   Available here and at Artfinder.


Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.

This is how the heart makes a duet of
wonder and grief.  

from "Adrift" by Mark Nepo


​I am one of the very, very lucky ones.

Nearing 60 years old, and I am able to (and do) wander and hike and witness some of the most beautiful places, in the company of an extraordinary human, and then repeat that experience again and again.  Sometimes, it just leaves me in a puddle.
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Wonder and Grief
Nepo's poem goes on:

In the very center, under
it all, what we have that no one can take
away and all that we’ve lost face each other.
It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured
by a holiness that exists inside everything.
I am so sad and everything is beautiful.


When all that I've lost (in nearly six decades, in my case) meets all that I have (which is more than I ever imagined), I catch my breath.  There is a holiness, an unmistakable sacredness, to this.  Wonder and grief, in a beautiful duet, leaving me smiling and brimming with tears.

Here are some of the recent gems in the realm of overwhelming beauty:
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About the art:  beginning with a panel covered in black gesso, mixing a limited palette of colors and applying them with rubber wedge, paper towel, chopstick and brush.  Allowing the paint to move and dictate its direction, resisting the desire to drop more color than a small piece can handle.  Finishing with colored pencil applied with a very loose, non-writing grip to keep the marks organic.
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Cosmic Octopus

4/14/2022

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"Cosmic Octopus" (a commission) - acrylic on wood altar.  SOLD

The madcap laughed at the man on the border
Hey ho, huff the Talbot
The winds they blew and the leaves did wag
They'll never put me in their bag
The raging seas will always seep
So high you go, so low you creep
The wind it blows in tropical heat
The drones they throng on mossy seats
The squeaking door will always squeak
Two up, two down we'll never meet

Please, leave us here
Close our eyes to the octopus ride
​

Please, leave us here
Close our eyes to the octopus ride

from ​OCTOPUS, by Syd Barrett
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Cosmic Octopus
The wild Pacific is surging through the studio, and a cosmic octopus dropped by.

This piece was a commission request from one of the most sparkly humans I know.  So when she asked "would you?" I immediately said "yes!"  Personal altars are just that - personal.  They speak to your insides while sitting on the outside, gathering your special talismans and holding your hopes and wishes in a sacred place.  And if you are a very colorful, very sparkly human, your altar needs a candy-coated cosmic octopus.  

I'm going to want one of these for myself!

About the art:  beginning with a solid wood, two-tiered altar, the areas to be personalized were taped off and coated with black gesso.  A colored pencil sketch followed, along with the requisite 80 million layers of color in both acrylic paint and Uni Posca Paint Pens.  Finished with a coat of cold wax to protect paint and wood.
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Cosmic Malarkey

4/13/2022

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Works in Process - mixed media on paper. Coming in May to Artistic Souls Gallery.

Here at Malarkey Central, we've had a lovely, long adventure vacation.
Even the pooches got away from the city and out into the wild in the Samuel H Boardman Corridor on the Oregon Coast.  As much as we'd like to keep wandering and playing in tide pools at the beach, the work and world beckons and - poof -  I am back in the studio.

In a mash-up of vacation inspiration, the round, tumbled rocks of the beach ran headlong into a sci-fi novel we just finished and cosmic malarkey erupted.  Cats in space, anyone?  Intergalactic deer? These littles (approx 7 x 10 inches) will be done in time for the next online auction event in May.
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cosmic works in process!
In case you're looking for a little stony inspiration, here are a few of the colorful cast of rocky characters we met at the beach. :)
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Care Erases the Walls

3/23/2022

6 Comments

 
"Care Erases The Walls" - mixed media on cradled wood panel, 16 x 12 x .75.  Ready to hang.  Available here and at Artfinder

After almost seventy years, I confess that though I have struggled I have never been lost and have never stopped loving—everything. And this has enabled me to inhabit life authentically. In the beginning, there were goals I was taught to work toward and these longings for worth were honed in time into personal ambitions, which all fell away. For staying true to the love of everything as our teacher has turned out to be the most enduring ambition of all. This love has made me get up when I have fallen, and has given me the strength to enter the breaks in my heart where I have retrieved my gifts. And so, I have very little to offer beyond the confirmation that unending love without preference will lead us to drink from the Mystery without leaving the world. Unending love without intent will fill every contour of existence the way light fills every hole. So, there is very little to teach. Just that love awakens everything. And care erases the walls we build between us. - MARK NEPO
The world is a bit messy right now.

But maybe it is always messy - always has been messy.
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Care Erases the Walls
There are walls between us and them.  Idealogical walls, religious walls, political walls, walls of opinion, perception, assumption - so many walls. It makes me weary, these walls.  When I read Nepo's words in this passage, my eyes welled up and my heart sighed.  Never stop loving everything.  Whoa.  Love without intent.  Love without preference.  Again, whoa.  Erasing walls.  Yes, please and thank you.

Here's some unending love from me to you, dear reader.  You show up here, in this little haven of art and musings, walls down and heart open.   I adore you.  Thank you for being here.

About the art:  beginning with a layer of black gesso and adding a rough pencil sketch over the top.  Building the layers of color and paint, mixing background paint with white gesso to keep it chalky and matte.  Layers of gold leaf interspersed, pulled forward and then pushed back.  Water sprayer and rubber wedge used, but not too much.  Finishing with colored pencil lines and scribbles, adding that final layer of texture.
6 Comments

Be the Lion

3/14/2022

6 Comments

 
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Be the Lion
"Be the Lion" - mixed media on gallery wrapped canvas, 20 x 16 x 1.75.  Ready to hang.  Available March 20-21 at Artistic Souls Gallery.

If to find our way to our core is to face the lion, then to stand by our core is to be the lion. And to sustain the practice of living from our core—to live out of our courage—is to find our way in the world by tracking inner courage and where it lives. - MARK NEPO

​I am trying to live out of my courage.  

But to do that, as Nepo says, we have to find our core - face the lion.  It is pretty tempting to dodge that beast with the teeth and sinewy muscle.  It is really easy to skirt around the edges and do a little fancy footwork, keeping out of its path.  What I really want, I know, is to be the lion.  


And when you're looking for something, generally it finds you.

I didn't set out to paint this portrait.  But recently a lion came into my life.  A woman who faces her own lions and keeps on going, even when she's shaking in her rain boots.  This human IS the lion, but doesn't see it yet in herself.  I happened to snap a photo of her in a moment of fortitude and badassery, and that photo was stuck in my mind until I freed it onto the canvas.
Liberties were taken with this painting - it's in my own style, with my own interpretation of strength and resilience scraped and layered and scratched into it.  It is every one of us who has faced a lion even when terrified - even when we couldn't see our own courage.  I look at this piece and feel doubly resolved to live from my own core as I find my way in the world.  I hope she inspires you as well, dear reader.  She is you and me.

About the art:  beginning with a canvas covered in black gesso, creating a rough sketch with white charcoal.  Slowly adding in layers, following the paint where it meanders away from the inspiration photo to let texture and nuance form where it might not have been before.  Liberal use of a sprayer bottle and rubber wedge.  Scratching into wet paint with colored pencils to add texture and movement.  Resisting the urge to overly define.  Stepping away when her gaze told me the lion was in the room. 
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Shadow Beast

3/2/2022

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Shadow Beast
Shadow Beast - acrylic on cradled wood panel, 9 x 12 x .75  Ready to hang.  Available here and at Artfinder.


So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.   RAY BRADBURY
In times when the ugliness of mankind rears its head like a shadow beast from long ago, leaving us doom-scrolling and worried about the end of the world - there is art.

Oh, sure, looking at and appreciating art, but mainly making it.  Or trying to, anyway.  Putting my mind and hands to the task of creating has been balm.
There was a companion piece to this one - a large canvas which went through a million iterations, receiving on its surface the aches and pains and worries and fears of the week in layer upon layer of color.  Which is now covered in black gesso.  Mama said there'd be days likes these.  I am grateful for its willingness to accept all that angst and store it safely within its frame.

I think what's important is that we keep doing.  Create, sing, dance, play, move, clean, read - whatever you do, keep doing it.  Let the doing of it revitalize you amidst it all.    Wherever you are in this week of tumult, I wish you a pile of play dough and a companion or two to make weird creatures with.

About the art:  beginning with a black gesso'd wood panel and a reference photo of a dinosaur skeleton, then a rough colored pencil sketch over top.  Adding washes of warm tones and then beginning to define the bones with increasingly lighter tones.  Allowing the dark to show through and create shadows and depth.  Resisting the urge to overly define - keeping the washes light and ghostly.
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Two Possibilities

2/22/2022

6 Comments

 
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Two Possibilities
"Two Possibilities" (a diptych) - acrylic on cradled wood canvas, 16 x 8 x .75.  Ready to hang.  Available here and at Artfinder.

"Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying." - Arthur C. Clarke

I grew up on science fiction.  

My copy of Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles​ was threadbare before I graduated high school.  Heinlein, Van Vogt, Asimov...worlds imagined and yet seemingly possible. Science fiction tackled all the big questions without hesitation, made me think, allowed a broad view of what could be. 
The older I become, the more those big questions rattle around in my noggin, and sometimes spill into the paint.

The wild thing about these questions is that likely none of them will be answered in my lifetime.  In this world of fast-paced technological growth, invention and speed, answers to the big stuff still remain (pardon the pun) light-years away.  And so we can seek knowledge without answers, practice  the ability to question and query and conjecture and ponder and sit with the wondrousness of it all.  

Which is something I do while painting.  

If you want to stuff your noggin with some fascinating knowledge, check out Kurzgesagt -in a nutshell on YouTube.  Because I don't want to be the only one contemplating what happens if the moon falls into the earth. :)

​About the art: beginning with two panels and some black gesso, creating shapes with a rubber wedge.  Adding in colors to the shapes, following the thread wherever it meanders and then discovering a forest of sorts emerging in a celestial world.  This piece is finished with a layer of cold wax.
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