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.