This blog has been moved

I've moved my Art Journal to www.elainemari.com/blog. Come on over and check it out. 

Home for the Pandemic

It's been a year with nothing to say here. What a year, 2020. Throughout this pandemic I've been working on drawings and an occasional watercolour painting of memories of road trips. The drawings I wrote about in January have stopped and I have moved into a series I'm calling "Somebody's Home".  I've been working on them for several months. They are drawings of little older homes in my neighbourhood, threatened by demolition and densification. In this time of covid they represent to me the instability of this period in history. While we are all confined to home, the importance of home is magnified in our minds and in reality. The threat of losing our home looms as so many have lost jobs and security of any kind.

Somebody's Home

In September I had a flood in my home, a small apartment in Vancouver. All of a sudden my stability was even more under threat than usual. I had to move out after 2 months of insurance claim rigamarole. As soon as I moved into the temporary home I'm in right now I started drawing birds and self portraits, it helped with the stress. The birds took me away. 

tiny bird drawing

These little drawings are ongoing for now. I've posted some of them on Instagram @e.elainemari.

New Drawings

New work, lots of drawings. I'm using self portraits to work with the human face and nature. These drawings seem to be pulling on a sense of time passing, the veiling of feelings, secrets hide under dying plant life. Submerged consciousness needs no further articulation, it is enough to just float there.

I posted some of them to my website at https://www.elainemari.com/drawings.

I Drown In The Fern

Poet, painter and podcaster Phillip J. Mellen @phillip.j.mellen asked me to collaborate with him on a project involving his poetry and my drawings. 

I sent Phillip a drawing and he wrote a poem instigated by it. You can see it on his blog here All Systems Nervous.  

He sent me poems to choose from and to use as impetus to make a drawing. I chose I DROWN IN THE FERN. This poem is light and verdant at the same time, living and dying. Time passes and still there is return.

I've posted my collaboration below. Thanks Phillip for reaching out. It was great to work with you, let's do it again in the New Year.

Explore and Seek

Drawing 
Seems I've come to the end of something and something new is beginning, or I'm circling back somewhere. Ever since finishing the website (since my last post I updated my website with recent paintings) I've been concentrating on drawing.

I've made a lot drawings over the years. I may create a separate site for some of them. Recently there are a lot of medium size self portraits in ink and chalk and there are sketch books of self portraits, landscape and still life drawings ..like thoughts on paper in pencil.

There are small coloured ink drawings of flowers in various stages of living and dying, in bottles and jars.

Drawing on myself
A series of drawings has evolved in ink on mylar, self portraits that are not self portraits. I'm using myself as a convenient model to draw from life, and draw from photographs (you should see the number of photos I've taken of myself with my Mac's photo booth program. I alternately work from them and from life).

Photo booth capturing

I'm combining drawings of the plants in various stages of living and dying with the portraits. It took awhile to come to this decision to combine in this way.

Drawing on others
Recently I saw the Giacometti show at the Vancouver Art Gallery. I was struck by how he focused in so many drawings on one aspect, drawing and redrawing that aspect and leaving a lot of slightly drawn and unworked area. I don't work that way but I am drawn to it as an example of artists who explore and seek through drawing. At the same time there was a Rauschenberg show in a nearby gallery space. His combines, especially those on silk, were wonderful. I work a lot on mylar and that work of his left a mark too, opened my mind to possibilities.

Rauschenberg at the Vancouver Art Gallery

Giacometti

This series, as illustrated with the woman with plants above, is pulling me along.

Stepping into another stream

Meantime, as usual, I have another stream going. When I'm on the road, which is a lot, I want to make work based on my experience in nature. I've been doing some drawings. When I saw a hiker I follow on Youtube (I follow several hikers and campers and the like) who makes watercolours with a tiny postcard size pad and water brushes on her hikes I got excited to try this and I did. You can see them and my drawings if you follow me on Instagram @roadtrip.painting.

Steady on

Getting a bit more of a grip on things (see last post for losing a grip), I think.

Some travel and time outdoors has helped a lot. I'm moving into a new series and doing a lot of drawing. And accepting how things are. This, what I'm doing now, is what I need. It is slowly evolving and changing. When I can I will update my website, and look for a show. Right now I will travel and make art. When it is ready I'll put it out there. Sometimes you just have to be quiet and work.

A photo from my recent trip.

The river flows steadily on after the rushing water of spring has passed.

Teeny Tiny Art Problems

I should call this blog "Talking to Myself". After the last post, talking to myself, I did some self examination as an adjunct to talking to myself. I examined the frame of mind I am in right now with regard to art making, and just about everything else. I do not have the market drive, I surmised. I have a teeny tiny income from my pension, with which I can pay my teeny tiny bills and my rent, which, though not teeny tiny, is affordable if I am very very careful.

For a long time the possibility of money and a wish for admiration and approval of my skills, and also a wish for communication with like minded others motivated me, and then it didn't. So crass, I know. But, no longer crass, presently, just unmotivated. But, this unmotivation is about showing and selling, not about making. But, without the second part, I question even more drastically the first part and it makes me a bit down at times (mostly when it's cloudy or raining, which is a lot here in Vancouver)

My biggest drive at the moment is to travel, to go out into the wilds. I enjoy all that is involved. The meeting of new people in new places, the going there and the leaving, the seeing of all the things, the hardship of rainstorms, freezing nights, travelling down dirt roads in a van through potholes and washboard, the hikes, the kayaking, the lugging of things. I'm not interested in comfort, I'm interested in challenge, physical and mental.

At the same time, I can't do that ALL the time, and don't want to. I want to feel motivated to put my art out there, to show it, to go after exhibitions, but I'm stalled.

For instance, I know I need to redo my website, as mentioned in the last post, before I apply for anything. But, that means money from my teeny tiny income and an enormous block of time. For some reason, I can't commit. Maybe it has to do with the feeling that the work is just not good enough, not developed enough, so what's the point. I'm waiting for that magic moment when I see it all come together and say to me. YES, this is it, we are here now.