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In a Trust So Gentle

1/25/2021

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"In a Trust so Gentle" - acrylic on deep cradled birchwood panel, 12" x 16" x 1.5".  Ready to hang (sides are painted; no need to frame.  Hanging wire is attached). Available here and at Artfinder.

When you go,
if you go,
And I should want to die,
there’s nothing I’d be saved by
more than the time
you fell asleep in my arms
in a trust so gentle
I let the darkening room
drink up the evening, till
rest, or the new rain
lightly roused you awake.
I asked if you heard the rain in your dream
and half dreaming still you only said, I love you.

​ - "When You Go", Edwin Morgan


​
The poetry of Edwin Morgan (Scotland) continues to mesmerize me.  It began when I was introduced to his poem, "Hyena" and continues.  He has an ability to be visceral and dark, and  also exquisitely tender as in today's poem.  

I've been contemplating tenderness lately.  And the phrase "in a trust so gentle" made my heart melt a little.  
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In a Trust so Gentle
That's not hard to do, lately.  The heart melting part.  As my edges soften, the light gets in (and comes out, and moves through) and I feel things even more deeply.  As I learn to speak gently and tenderly to myself, my thoughts and words toward others become ever softer.  I trust again.

About the art:  beginning with an unprimed birchwood panel, an inspiration photo and a limited color palette, painting from the inside of the figure outward, and then from the outside of the figure inward.  RESISTING the desire to define features.  EMBRACING the abstracted background and shapes/textures made by rubber wedge, brush and fingers..
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4 Comments

Comfortable With Being Human

1/21/2021

8 Comments

 
"Comfortable With Being Human" - acrylic on deep cradled wood panel, 12" x 16" x 1.5".  Ready to hang (sides are painted; no need to frame.  Hanging wire is attached).  Available here and at Artfinder.
​
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Comfortable With Being Human

​Vulnerability is....something Brené Brown asks everyone she interviews.  It's a good question, and one I've been contemplating recently.
If someone asked you what vulnerability
means, what would your answer be?

Perhaps you’d rattle off the dictionary
definition, and remind them that vulnerability
is the quality or state of being exposed to the
possibility of being attacked or harmed, either 
physically or emotionally.


Perhaps.

​Or maybe you’d tell them something else.

Maybe you’d say, “vulnerability is being able
to say, “no, I am not ok” right now, but that
doesn’t mean that I won’t be ok tomorrow.”

Maybe you’d say, “vulnerability is letting the
tears fall freely when my heart feels as if it’s
about to burst, and there seems to be a waterfall
coming out of my eye sockets.”

Maybe you’d say, “vulnerability is being able
to say, I don’t know. I don’t know where to go,
I don’t know what, and I don’t know the
answer to this question or the solution to this
problem — and I need help.”


Maybe

If someone asked you what vulnerability
means, what would your answer be?

Perhaps you’d tell them, “vulnerability is being 
comfortable with being human.”

- MEGAN MINUTILLO
I like to think I embrace vulnerability.  It sure feels that way as I approach the rocky end of a narrow cliff ledge on a mountain.  And it sure feels that way when I post my art, my words, my thoughts and feelings on social media and in this blog.  It sure feels that way when I open my wounded (but resilient) heart to another human.  And for darn sure when my aging, scarred body is revealed to another.  But am I really being vulnerable?

There are "waterfalls coming out of my eye sockets" that I often hold back or feel sheepish about.  There are parts of my life where "I don't know.  I don't know where to go" and yet I don't ask for help.  And I do struggle with saying "I am not ok right now."  Mostly, I realize upon this path of inquiry, where my hiking boots are not helping and my resilience doesn't make it any easier, that perhaps I have not yet reached the summit of vulnerability.  Sigh.  I will keep climbing.

This week the GoPro is on loan to an improvisor and visual poet, so I'll give you a little pictorial journey of this piece in lieu of video.

Beginning with a notanized selfie as a loose inspiration image and an underpainting of fluorescent paint mixed with titanium white.  Drawing with my non-dominant hand in charcoal and then layering in colors while trying not to try...in other words, to keep it loose, to let the paint play, to resist realism and allow peculiarity to dominate the piece.  Tools include fingers, paper towel, rubber wedge, brushes and a spray bottle of water.
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Born to Tame Dragons

1/18/2021

6 Comments

 
"Born to Tame Dragons" - acrylic on cradled wood panel, 8" x 8" x .75".  Ready to hang (sides are painted; no need to frame.  Hanging wire is attached). One of a gaggle of goodies available at the Jan 17-18 auction at Artistic Souls Gallery.
Girls like you
were born
to tame dragons,
​to fight in wars,
to lead armies.

Girls like you
were created
to swallow darkness,
to quell monsters,
​to destroy obscurity.
Girls like you
were given life,
to bring tempests
and hail gales,
​unto their enemies.

Don't let a king
or a prince
or a fairytale
tell you you are smaller than that
​or who you are meant to be.
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Born to Tame Dragons (reserve piece)
​Dragon's Breath, Nikita Gill - Wild Embers - poems of rebellion fire and beauty
I've been channeling some fiery females in the studio this month!  Taking the technique I began last year in creating trees and bark - fluorescent underpainting on unprimed wood, keeping the paint wet, carving into the wood through the paint - and applying it to flame-haired girls. What fun!  But there is no telling these feisty broads what to do - they rule the studio right now. :)

And so it was. no surprise when Nikita Gill's Wild Embers landed in my lap and began pummeling me with words of rebellion.  Which is, perhaps, appropriate for this woman in this world at this time.  Watch out monsters, you are about to be quelled. 
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6 Comments

Welcome Home Your Emptiness

1/14/2021

4 Comments

 
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Welcome Home Your Emptiness
"Welcome Home Your Emptiness" - acrylic on repurposed wood panel, 24" x 10.5" x 1" .  Ready to hang (sides are painted; no need to frame.  Hanging wire is attached). Part of the series "A View From the Gorge".  Available here and at Artfinder.

When the old ghosts come back
to feed on everywhere you felt sure,
do not strengthen their hunger
by choosing to fear;
rather, decide to call on your heart
that it may grow clear and free
to welcome home your emptiness
that it may cleanse you
like the clearest air
you could ever breathe.

from "For Loneliness" by John O'Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us


Now and again (and again, and again) the "old ghosts" return, shredding confidence and making me question all I thought I knew of the thing that is me.  They are sneaky, those ghosts, gliding in on the back of words spoken, looks cast, a song that brings back a time when....

I am learning.  Learning to recognize them, to call them what they are, to set them firmly outside and ask them to leave.  Sometimes I win.  Other times the ghosts win.  O'Donohue asks me to "welcome home my emptiness" - that very thing I am always trying to fill.  Sigh.  I am learning.  

About the art:  First, my apologies!  I have no process pics and no video.  This piece began between other paintings, as an intuitive attempt at the feeling I had while hiking in the gorge two days prior.  The sun!  The mist!  The imposing cliffs!  A surreal view that made me gasp and think "is this really my life?" and become teary at the wonder of it all.  The muse had her way with this one.  Acrylic paint directly on old, heavily textured board. The striations in the board informed the cliffs, which are vertical chunks of basalt in the gorge, evidence of their rugged birth and the pressure of being born.  Painted with palette knife, paper towels and a rubber wedge. Here are a few of the actual views from that hike:
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4 Comments

When Your Heart Wants to Break

1/11/2021

6 Comments

 
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When Your Heart Wants to Break
​"When Your Heart Wants to Break" - acrylic on cradled wood panel,  11" x 14" x .75".  Ready to hang (sides are painted; no need to frame.  Hanging wire is attached). Available here and at Artfinder.

When your heart wants to break, let it break. If tears want to come (or perhaps a flood of love or gratitude), allow that to happen. Grant your heart all the space it asks. To do so feels deliciously alive, because it locates you in what’s real in the moment.  - JAN FRAZIER, "Be Kind to Yourself"
Many thanks to artist Dotty Seiter, who introduced me to the wisdom of Jan Frazier in her blog post this week.  I've spent hours noodling this article and the concept of being kind to ourselves - which includes ​resting from wishing things were otherwise.​

It's been a wild week in the world.  It is temptingly easy to spend a lot of time wishing things were different.  Instead, I'm trying to let my heart break if it wants, to cry if I feel the tears, to give my heart the space it wants.   It is a feeling of overwhelming relief to think of this allowing as a self-kindness.
In the most recent Studio Visit with Brian Rutenberg,  Rutenberg says: Feel your own pain.  All art comes from sadness.   So, with my miner's headlamp firmly strapped on, I spent a day mining my own sadness in the first self-portrait of the year.  Again, thanks to Dotty Seiter for reminding me of the unbridled joy of blind contour drawing, which became the base start of this painting.

There was a kind of joy in the mining of sadness, tears in the allowing of heart breaking space, and relief in the self-kindness of not wishing for other than what is.  And as Frazier suggests in her article, it was ultimately restful.

I am only disappointed that the whole exercise did not include a big slice of pie. :)
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6 Comments

Beckoning Hand

1/7/2021

10 Comments

 
"Beckoning Hand"  - acrylic and charcoal on cradled wood panel, 14" x 11" x .75".  Ready to hang (sides are painted; no need to frame.  Hanging wire is attached). Part of the series "A View From the Gorge."   This painting will be part of an ART DROP courtesy of Get the Gallery.  Follow them on social media to find out when and where this painting will be "dropped" for one lucky collector to discover!

There is a faith in loving fiercely 
the one who is rightfully yours
especially if you have
waited years and especially
if part of you never believed
you could deserve this
loved and beckoning hand
held out to you this way.

from The True Love, by David Whyte.
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Beckoning Hand
The view inside my mind stays firmly in the Columbia River Gorge...vast skies, basalt spires, misty horizons and every shade of gray.  It is becoming so much a part of me that I feel it in my spirit deeply.  It makes me sing and laugh, smile and weep, catch my breath and sigh.  It is softening my heart.  I feel myself opening and becoming braver, even as my thighs scream at the final assent, even as my lungs beg for mercy at the millionth steep switchback.  With each step, each hike, each view - my edges are becoming polished and the light begins to come through.  


​About the art : this is the second piece done on a neutral underpainting of raw umber and titanium white.  Using mostly rubber wedge, paper towels, fingers, the back of my hand (thanks for that, Pauline Agnew!  Now it is my favorite tool!) and acrylic paint.  Unlike the last one, I was able to work quickly and instinctively here.  The key is the inspiration pic was well-composed and allowed me to veer away from it rather quickly without losing the gist of the idea.  Very satisfying session.

I made a couple of small adjustments to the painting after the camera was turned off and I could step away from it for a minute.
10 Comments

Afraid of Everything But Not Afraid

1/4/2021

7 Comments

 
"Afraid of Everything But Not Afraid" - acrylic and charcoal on cradled birch panel, 14 x 11 x .75.  Ready to hang (sides are painted; no need to frame.  Hanging wire is attached). Part of the series "A View From the Gorge."  Available here and at Artfinder.

A dozen or more walking soundlessly east at night,
a half moon rising before them.
I like the long deft brush stroke
as each hoof swung into and out of the snow,
​and the little splash kicked out ahead
​as they stripped sweet bark from the darkness,
afraid of everything but not afraid.
from Winter Morning Walks: One Hundred Postcards to Jim Harrison​ by Ted Kooser.
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Afraid of Everything But Not Afraid
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Well here we are in January.  I am not a maker of resolutions, but was asked on New Year's Eve what I might choose if I were a resolution-maker.  I'd like to not be afraid.  

I mean, I am pretty fearless in a LOT of ways!  But when it comes to people - friendships, romance, relationships, love - there is a fear monster perched on my head.  With good reason, perhaps, and yet...I'd like to free myself of that monster and just live brilliantly fearless. So when I read this passage from Winter Morning Walks, I thought, huh, I can do that!  Afraid but not afraid.  I'm going to try that on for a bit and see if it fits.

About the art:  I'm working with a more neutral palette for the next three pieces.  Today's painting was a big OH NO during the videos, as I tried to recreate an image from the gorge.  It just wasn't working.  So I turned the camera off and fully vandalized it.  A more abstract expressionist landscape resulted.  When I let water sit on it long enough, I was able to push through to the underpainting (raw umber and titanium white) to expose some highlights in the verticals.  Yay!
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An Index of Bare Trees

12/31/2020

6 Comments

 
"An Index of Bare Trees" - charcoal and acrylic on repurposed plywood, 14.5" x 13" x 1".  Ready to hang (sides are painted; no need to frame.  Hanging wire attached). Part of the series "A View From the Gorge."   Available here and at Artfinder.

A bibliography of falling leaves,
an index of bare trees,
​and finally, a crow flying like a signature
over the soft white endpapers of the year.

from Winter Morning Walks: One Hundred Postcards to Jim Harrison by Ted Kooser


Diving back into the gorge this week with inspiration from Falls Creek Falls, where a long, meandering exit trail took us through deep valleys with boneyards of massive trees straddling hilltops, rocks, bramble and each other.  The oddly architectural lines of the inspiration image grabbed me.  
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An Index of Bare Trees
You've followed me through every awkward phase of my painting and blogging journey, dear reader (well, I'm sure there will be more of those yet)  Now get ready for the awkwardness of my baby giraffe-like video legs.  Thanks in advance for your patience as I learn editing software, camera settings and all the things!

Here's a video in three parts.  With each one the stopping point was a 24-hour pause where I spent time pondering the painting and sneaking up on it during different lighting and from various angles.  In this piece, on a piece of plywood my niece previously painted and then donated to my pile of paint-overs, tools used include brushes, rubber wedge, squeegee, deli paper, paper towel and fingers.  Charcoal and acrylic paint, liberal use of water.  Underpainting in fluorescent orange.
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Inspiration image, Notanized
6 Comments

The Courage You Go Digging For

12/28/2020

9 Comments

 
"The Courage You Go Digging For" - acrylic on repurposed plywood.  NFS.

The greatest magic you have is the
courage you go digging for,
when your world falls apart,
the light you still hold,
when everything has grown dark

from Wild Embers by Nikita Gill

This year, nearly done, holds for all of us, I think, the "greatest magic" in the courage we've excavated and found in response to all the things the world threw at us for twelve long months.  The "light we still hold" at the end of this - these tender and exquisite connections of courage and resilience - that light shines brightly.
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The Courage You Go Digging For (NFS)
As I ponder my own tumultuous year, I find myself stronger, more courageous, more open and also more prone to tears, softer and quieter - I catch my breath at the breadth and depth of this year's journey.  We are still. here, - you and I, dear reader.   Still wild, still wonder-filled, still digging for courage.  
As a holiday gift to her fans and followers, Irish  artist Pauline Agnew gave a free online class last weekend.  It brought together painters from around the world, playing in the paint​ and learning new techniques, posting our masterpieces and sharing words of encouragement.

And so I'll pay it forward - a little video of the painting in this post, created during the class with Pauline.   Two new techniques/tools to add to your repertoire (thanks, Pauline!):  dragging deli paper (or, in my case, a Tyvec envelope) through wet paint, and painting with the side of your hand - oh oh oh, that's BIG fun!

And here's a little taste of what's been percolating in the studio in preparation for the first auction of 2021 at Artistic Souls Gallery!    Click on the link to head over to their Facebook page and join in the fun!
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9 Comments

A Tree Becomes a Talking Tower

12/24/2020

4 Comments

 

"A Tree Becomes a Talking Tower" - acrylic on repurposed plywood panel, 18 x 18.5 x .75.  Ready to hang (sides are painted; no need to frame.  Hanging wire is attached).  From the series "A View From the Gorge."   Available here and at Artfinder.

In the beginning and in the end the only decent
Definition is tautology: man is man,
Woman woman, and tree tree, and world world,
Slippery, self-contained; catch as catch can.
​

Which when caught between the beginning and end
Turn other than themselves, their entities unfurled,
Flapping and overlapping -a tree becomes
A talking tower, and a woman becomes world.

from I Am That I Am, by poet Louis MacNeice


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A Tree Becomes a Talking Tower
It's funny what you might stumble upon while hiking in the gorge. Including this tangled root web, which dazzled me and also tested my crampon-enhanced boots with slick bark and mud.  I joked, in the moment, that the advertisement for said crampons might read "Prevents slipping on snow, ice, mud and rock.  Will not prevent tripping. "  Ha! 

And then I stumbled upon this poet, Louis MacNeice, while tumbling down the rabbit hole of googling poetry.  And voila!  An Irish poet (and an outsider, no less) I hadn't heard of and now delight in.  And as the tree becomes a talking tower, perhaps this woman can become - not just woman - but world.

About the art: Beginning with an image from a recent hike and a piece of unprimed, repurposed plywood...drawing with charcoal coming in with layers of paint and moving it around with whatever tools my hands can grab.  Fighting the very heavily=grained plywood for several layers, then surrendering to the texture and allowing it to dominate the painting.  It is, after all, a painting of trees and roots and wood.  Which, in its abstracted form, very well could be a talking tower.
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inspiration image from Falls Creek Falls
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Thanks so much for the responses to our READER GIVEAWAY wish list request!  Wonder Mike, after much grumbling and stretching, left his cozy spot on the sofa to choose a winner - congratulations Lisa G!  An original painting is coming your way!
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