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.

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.

What I Am Doing Part 5

All the Answers

For Parts 1- 4 see previous posts on making this painting.

It's been a rough transition back to the studio, but I'm here now. Now that I'm back into my studio routine I will move along with more flow for a while until the next interruption. I'll have to come and go in the next few months as I soon will pack and move. Working from the kitchen means that will be a big interruption.

Just a job
As a friend of mine said on Facebook today, making art is a job, all jobs are hard at times and easier at times. The job of making art is the job I want and is easier than any job I've ever done because of that. I'm blogging about my job because It helps me get perspective and because I enjoy communicating with others who share my difficulties and my enjoyment and those who are interested in what I do. Thanks for coming along.

Laziness
The painting sits here in the kitchen as I come and go. Having it around all the time means I can let go of its status as some kind of precious object I have to be careful with.  Today I started late with actually putting paint to paper. I let myself wait until I felt I knew what to do to start. Once I began I quickly felt it was done. It gave me the answers I was looking for, for now. It told me this is all I can do with it and I should stop, let it go, start something else building on this series from this point.

I know someone who makes and modifies things, she says she is physically lazy so she designs all kinds of options in her head and thinks through every possible configuration before she starts the physical work. I'm lazy too; I sit around, I mix paint, I wander around in my mind, I look and then I paint, usually not very long at a time. Then I come back the next day and go through the same process. I love that process, it is a daydreaming, pleasure filled, all possibilities are open, all dreams can be fulfilled space in time before I start to work and the work goes best if I allow myself that time.

Let it be both dark and light
Some of my thoughts as I looked at the last stage before I began painting today: "warm up that cold yellow", "bring in more warmth with yellow orange and cool with white and grey",  "just a little now, a light touch", "let it be both dark and light but you don't want heavy, that's not where you are", "take care of that dirty yellow on the left middle it makes everything off balance, but don't bookend the orange"..

Last stage:

All the Answers,
24 x 18"
oil and mixed media on mylar

What I Am Doing part 2

Building on what I wrote in the previous post, here is where I left off on this painting yesterday. I needed to introduce some yellow so that I would have warmth to work from and to give a different life to the other colours. I work very loosely, as you can see, and when I feel tight, I close my eyes take a brush full of paint and make a mark to work from. This satisfies my wish to never be precious, to break away from expectations including my own. I like breaking expectations down as I work. 

Below:
Today I started to try to balance the top and bottom of the painting, working to liven up the bottom and bring the tone down in the top. It was crying out for graphic elements to give it some meat and to sober it up after all that yellow. I tried for some grey and some black. It feels lively to me now but unfinished still.

All these things I say here are what occur to me after the fact of painting, they are conscious decisions but unconscious needs. For instance, one black mark started to drip, and I said to myself, "no, no drips" "no" ..now why did I say that? Perhaps I am responding to a critique of drips I heard in art school or while reading someone like Matthew Collings on Facebook :). I think it's useful to listen to others sometimes, but be careful who you pay attention to. Or, perhaps there is so much organic in here already, I feel the need to be careful about flourishes. A drip can be a flourish?? Or, I can't say what I need to say with drips.

I'll work on it again tomorrow and let you know how it goes.

Again, forgive the glare, wet paint.

What I Am Doing

What am I doing? I asked myself that on Facebook yesterday. So today I thought I would write about that. I'm painting. Painting makes no sense really. I'm not in it for the money or for the career. It actually takes time away from making money or having a career, I've decided. A career might happen, whatever that is, but it's taking its time. Money might happen, and it does occasionally, but not enough to use it as a reason to do what I'm doing. And, that is not what I want. I don't want money to be the reason. I'll take it if it comes though.

My answer to my question is "this is what I'm doing, I'm painting", I'm exploring, I'm living my life the way I want. It's not easy, very few have easy lives. Sometimes it's terrific, sometimes it sucks. No self-help book or rosy outlook will change that. There are things I do that help me get through the sucky though.

Today I painted. I took another older piece, shown in a previous post and I began painting on top of it. I had already reworked it from an even older piece. It still wasn't working for me. I don't know, it was too static, too obvious, not subtle enough, not enough about painting. Lately it's all about the painting and the secret messages that are held in painting and in paintings. I will try to post a photo each day I work on it of how it goes unless that starts to get in the way, or I'm too embarrassed, or I lose my nerve.

Here is where I started today:

Here's where I obliterated enough of the image to be able to carry on. Excuse the glare, wet paint.

Exhibition at Curating Contemporary!

Safe as Houses
oil and mixed media on Huile paper, 12 x 9"

Curating Contemporary, a terrific online gallery, is showing my recent paintings in the exhibition titled Open Pomegranate.

Curator of Open Pomegranate, painter and Facebook friend Frankie Gardiner, asked me to be part of this show. I'm honoured to exhibit with Sarah Nesbit, Kyle Staver, Shaun Ellison, Mary DeVincentis Herzog, Farrell Brickhouse,  Katelyn Eichwald, Melanie Parke. Richard Kooyman and  Thibaud Thiercelin.

Please click over and then click on "current show: Open Pomegranate" to see the list of artists. Click on my name and the individual artists to see the work.

As you may know this website is highly regarded as a venue for established and emerging contemporary artists. I am beyond thrilled to be part of it.

Have a look at previous shows too. So much good stuff here.