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.

January 2018 Studio Journal Update

I'm still working on the "lost for words" series. I've uploaded a few of these paintings to Saatchi to put out there what I'm doing. And it allows me to price my work for anyone interested. My website needs updating. I'm thinking of changing it completely to a more artist friendly layout. That is an enormous task for which I'm not ready.

All I've done this year is paint and draw and post on social media. I've done no marketing or applying for shows. I felt the need to just make work and see where it goes. In past years I experimented with working hard at showing and marketing. It took a lot of energy and the results were modest. Marketing also affected how I worked, I fear. I don't want to consider my "audience", to be "professional". I want to make work from my heart not from a formula laid down by marketing and, so called, professionalism. It's good to be painting and drawing without these distractions.

When I'm not in the studio, I'm performing activities of daily living, and traveling and being outdoors. I post photos of my excursions and drawings from a drawing diary as well on my instagram account.

Below are examples of both, from a day trip to West Dyke in Richmond just outside Vancouver BC.

  

Lost for Words

In the last post I was looking at where I'm going with the latest paintings. Wanting to pick a lane to travel in for a while. I seem to have picked a lane. Some photos below. I'm not feeling very articulate about these, a bit lost for words.

All the text and the language has disappeared from what I'm doing in the studio, even titles are mute. Maybe I will look at them all later and they will tell me what to say, and how to name them.

Flounderer in the Shallows of Art

Summer studio has been productive. Now what? I need to update my website, photograph work properly, look for a way to show what I've been doing. I'm kind of torn between two "bodies of work" I'm working through.

Why do I always do this, start one thing and have to have another project happening at the same time? Henry Samelson , in his blog, calls it having a Buddy of Work, or work you do alongside of your main preoccupation at the time. Trouble is my preoccupation seems to be divided down the middle. I tell myself "pick a lane road warrior" (a line from a Frasier episode).

I'm sitting here now between a wall full of paintings in the"weathering realities" series and, on the other side of the room, two of the oil paintings on old paintings with an old painting waiting on the easel to be set upon.

Two, of a large number of  oil paintings, behind and on the floor.
An old landscape I'm painting over on the easel.

Just a few of the many many paintings in the
'weathering realities' series

I'm not finished either series yet. I want to continue for a while before I start deliberately looking for venues, although I've already had an online show of some of the weathering realities series. It came my way, I didn't seek it out and if something comes my way I would consider showing some of this work again.

Do I have to choose a lane? What does it mean if I don't? How do I present them? Do I look for shows of the two separate bodies, or do I look to show them together? Am I just a flounderer in the shallows of art? Maybe you shouldn't answer that, it might crush me.

Studio Glimpse

Wow! since my last post, in April, the studio is humming. It's been a long few years of various stresses, illness, moves, accident, death, day job. Through it all I've painted and drawn. I've shown and I've sold work. I feel I've moved to a more solid place in making work.

For now, I don't have a 9-5 part-time job and other life stresses have let up. I'm able to spend more time in the studio and travel. I feel the difference. There is time, there is space and, in my new studio, there is light.

As usual I have two projects on the go. A project I'm calling Weathering Realities in ink and acrylic paint on paper that I showed, in part, at Galerie Cerulean last month. The second project, going on in the background, is a series of oil paintings over old paintings. 

The ink on paper paintings are not as cohesive a group as the oil paintings. They are wildly experimental within the confines of materials and subject matter, the subject matter being my response to and attempt to weather psychologically the impact of current political realities. In other words, making them helps me get through the awful days in which we live. 

The latest Weathering Realities experiments alongside some of the oil paintings on  the right.

The oil paintings started out as a side project, but they are a more consistent and calmer companion to the other work.

Painting over old paintings, a more cohesive group that started out as a side project.

All together now. One side of the studio, with dog, where I look at
some works from both groups of paintings

  

More oil paintings. The one on the floor is the first larger work.
I find it too blatant, too disjointedly expressive so far, I'll be going back in.

Studio vignette. The blue elephant sculpture (studio mascot) was made by my daughter in
elementary school a long long time ago.

A new start, ink on paper.

The most recent oil painting in progress.

Exhibitions, Travel and Change

Back from the desert

Well, that trip I talked about in the last post happened. It was wonderful 2 months and one week on the road. I'm back 6 weeks now and have already taken a short solo camping trip since then. I did only four small drawings of the desert while I was away and otherwise stayed away from art altogether.

Dome Rock Arizona

World affairs and change

My painting is changing. I think the Secret Messages series is done (but not all on my website yet, I'm working on it and planning to work on the website also). I'm moving more and more into abstraction. It started happening with the Secret Messages series. The change has been gradual and recent, so, we'll see how that evolves.

Oh, and, an online show of the new work! at Gallery Cerulean in their Project Room. This came out of the blue. The gallery director, whom I know through Facebook and Instagram, emailed me and asked me to show in the Project Room. Online exhibits suit me. The cost of framing for a show is prohibitive and this way I get to show my work at venues I have respect for and that are all about the art, not the commercial. Besides the online show, Timeraiser purchased one of my paintings. It will be auctioned this week at Timeraiser Vancouver as a way to raise volunteer hours for non-profit organizations!

The election in the US of a complete twit, threw me for a loop as it has done so many. Immediately I could not paint, feeling what is the use? But I needed to try to calm myself and painting is how I do it. I know my efforts 'don't mean a hill of beans in this crazy world', but they are what I have. It's how I communicate about, and weather realities. So I opened my sketchbook and started apathetically, it helped, I became less apathetic. The show  at Gallery Cerulean is an exhibit of some of these efforts.

Below is one of the latest pieces in this new series titled "Weathering Realities".

Turbulence, 4 x 6"

Moving on Into the Pink?

I took down my last post, so rainy, sad weathery a post. I'm moving on. Today I get back to my "regular" studio work, and preparing for the trip. The way things are going down in the United States of America, I'm not sure how much I'll feel like going in December. But, it's still in the plan, I'll play it by ear.

Just gonna get to work on what's bursting to get out here in the studio. Fall is such an internal time for me. So, I'm just going to go there in my work.

I think I'll stop posting for a while and see where that brings me. Of course, I might change my mind.

Just rambling on here.

Here is a happy little drawing from the summer.

Dog in the Pink

Art, travel and all my sisters: apathy and excitement

I've got a cold, and am soo slowed down. Can't paint so I'm writing this. Feeling apathetic in the studio. It's not just the cold, there's something else going on. The "why bother" syndrome has taken me over ever since the latest move. Maybe it's the state of world affairs.

I started a commissioned portrait because somebody asked me and I thought it might push me out of the doldrums. I'm enjoying it. Though I am not thinking it's that good at the moment I can let go of the need to be good, and just try my best with it. My agreement with the commissioner is that they don't have to buy it if they don't like it.

The cold sucks, adds to the apathy. I think I should just rest or it will hang on and get worse. That's hard when I feel a need to push myself a little. I'm coughing and sweating as I write this, so maybe no pushing will be done today.

I'm a loner, I don't go to many openings, don't like the "art scene",  local, or anywhere. I haven't much ambition to be part of it all. Sad, maybe, maybe not. Maybe just realistic. So, why am I bothering, it's certainly not the money.

I've been doing a lot of travelling since the spring and am preparing to take 2 months to go on a winter road trip to Arizona. This is the thing that is most exciting to me at the moment. Planning, fixing up the truck camper, and working on my little commission.

The commission is a version of a painting I made a couple of years ago, it's of all my sisters and me. It needs a lot of work on it still. Maybe I'll give it a couple of licks right now.

Here are two stages of it. Ack, shouldn't really show it now, but wtf. Maybe someone else can relate to the place of apathy and beginning again.

Not Good Enough

I've been stumbling into the studio irregularly for a while now. As I said in the last blog entry getting started has it's ups and downs. I still like the painting I posted in the that blog entry. That was my starting point in the new studio. But, it fits with this series on my website rather than with the latest group of paintings I've been working on. I don't feel that vein (the latest work) has been tapped out yet. 

I made a better start with the work in progress below, then I veered off into another direction altogether. I posted some of those pieces on facebook. They are emotive, emotional and a way of getting out the toxins. I will probably come back to them. There always seems to be a side project. Sometimes it becomes a new direction.

The painting below is closer to where I'm going right now but it's not good enough yet. I'm going to work on it and post about that here. It might resolve in one session or take weeks. Even then I could put it aside and take it out later and feel that awful feeling of "what was I thinking, unfinished at best". It might never get where I want. But we'll see.

What do I want from it? More depth, more meaning, more solidity, more work, more risk. More.


Stage 2

Ok, take a chance, red, oops, too many colours? Make it dirtier, some white, some orange yellow, stop, wait, leave it alone, come back tomorrow, see what it says then.

Let it be ugly, bad, strange.

Stage 3

It's tomorrow, it says, more, go deeper.

It's taken me all day to start, procrastination, a part of the process. First, I'm thinking "is this getting optimistic?" "Not right at this moment. More black (or is that the easy way out), More figurative elements? Try that new paint stick Posca thing ..ooh white drawing".

Then, "Ack feels flat, dead, maybe turn off the music tomorrow".

All those voices in your head, you need them.

And later, I go into it some more though I told myself to leave it, not listening to my own advice.

The red!!  hmm, don't know about this at all.

Note: The photo light is a little uneven, it's not lighter at the top than the bottom

Leaving it now, tomorrow, there's always tomorrow.


Stage 4 (well, not really)

I've been looking at it all day, between things distracting me. Haven't started working on it yet. Took a better photo so that I can see it from a distance more clearly. Photographs do that for me, give me perspective. I am choosing not to rush in, at least for today, maybe I'll rush in tomorrow, or in a few minutes.

The photo is better, but still, gives it a darker feel than I experience in it. Hmm, is the photo trying to tell me something?

Stage 5

Still holding back, I went into it with oil markers. Thinking, slow down, take it easy, let it happen.

Here are a few of the details incorporated today.

Friday night and I'm in here, staring at a painting. I'm a hermit.

Stage 6

Oh no! ruined. Well, wiped out in frustration. Tooo bitty, too not enough, don't like the colour, too heavy, tooo messy, not right.

So, here's what happened; I was feeling maybe it was almost there, but deep down I knew it wasn't and I couldn't get past that. I kept at it till I couldn't stand it

I kept at it till I couldn't stand it.

I kept on trying, then jumped on it with a wet rag, trying to obliterate it so I didn't have to see it any more.

As it stands now, obliterated mess

Ack, I'll let you know if I think I can salvage it, maybe not. Need to do some thinking about what I'm up to. Need a plan. I am always getting ideas, but want to see this through if I can with the Secret Messages paintings.

I've been going through old art work as I unpack things and so much of it is dispiritingly bad. The good thing is that I knew it was bad at the time and so just kept on working until it got better. I do feel I've made some good work, it's just that digging through the bad stuff is not so good for my confidence. Lots of throwing out is happening.

Stage 7

Here's where I got to today. I think I'm at a point where I need to leave it for a while. I went into it thinking "nothing to lose here". Wanting to keep with the initial impulse and with the colours I started with, I continued on top of yesterday's mess.

I mixed some black, red, yellow orange and blue to get me started and scooped up titanium white the with with a palette knife. 

Thoughts as I progressed

"bring in more white so you can paint on top without the dull colour coming through"

"ooh too pastel and too pretty, too insipid, red, needs red"

"bring up the red, bring in some red linear elements" 

"better, mix some blue, put in more blue to bring it all together, not so many little bits"

"now black, bring back those figurative elements, more larger black areas, more linear elements"

So, no idea what I really think, just letting it go for now and starting something else. Unless I change my mind tomorrow.

New Studio, new day. New work?

Despite my intentions, the move (now complete except for all the boxes still unpacked) and a lot of other stuff going on at the same time has interfered with being able to make work. And, it didn't turn out to be a bad thing. The itch to get back after the hiatus gives me energy and excitement to start again. There is also trepidation and questioning as usual.

I've finally set up  my new space. I hung all my most recent work up to get me in the frame of mind to start. I also pulled out some older work that I'm happy with and am going back and forth contemplating the two ways of working to see what pops. 

newest work hung for contemplation

Below are two older small pieces that I still love and am looking at for clues. To what, I'm not sure. They were made a couple of years ago. The newer work involves using figures. But, the latest of the newest paintings are becoming more abstract like these older paintings.

I've started something new. Where is it going? How is it connected, or not, to the whole? 

I was very happy with the start and now I'm asking where do I go from here? Make another mark, set it aside, work bigger, work smaller, return to the old ways, take a leap??  

Getting started has it's ups and downs.

All in a Days Work: Accounting for Myself

Art and Taxes in the Kitchen/Studio/Office

Recently I've been feeling that I'm not getting into the studio part of the Kitchen/Studio often enough. Medical issues at home, as I may have mentioned before :/ have eaten up energy and time. They are almost resolved now and Tax prep reared it's ugly head. Office work happened, catching up on things happened, well not really, that never happens. Now there is packing for the upcoming move and moving and various appointments that are a disruption to the day to day studio schedule.  And, what I want to be doing is preparing for and going on road trips and painting and working on showing paintings.

A move is happening and I have to get at that packing! I plan to get into the studio regularly while packing just like I've been doing through taxes and clearing up backed up office work.

Making these two slight drawings before sitting down to the computer work meant I felt fairly grounded through the 3 day office work stint.

No No No

Source of Income

I also worked on two paintings through that time. Thanks for listening (that is reading) my attempts to account for my actions, knowing you are there keeps me honest with myself :).

What I Am Doing Part 6

Beginning to End

For Parts 1- 5 see previous posts on making this painting.

So here is the painting from beginning to end. I'm supplying a bit of a narrative about what happened in each stage. This painting was was not "thought" out, but each move was a response to what was there. In the narrative I'm describing what I see from looking at the photo of the stage.

There was no real plan, except to respond to the initial colour choices and marks made haphazardly at the beginning.

Stage 1: a painting I was not happy with that I decided to paint over:

Stage 2: I chose and mixed some colour to start with and covered as much as the first painting as I needed to in order to start fresh and loose.

 Stage 3: I brought in some warmer colour to give it more life.

Stage 4: more warm colour black, white and grey. More graphic/drawn elements.

Stage 5: Calm it down bring it together, cover some of the black and the red with grey, and white, bring up some of the yellow.

Stage 6: Bring in blue, calm down the reds and orange, bring it all together even more by breaking up the black more.

Stage 7: Bring it way down in brightness, bring in finer graphic elements. See what happens, then go from there.

Stage 8:  Warm up the cold yellows, liven up some of the dull parts to bring back life and movement.