Narrow Path

Featured image: New Beginning Orchid Shoots

There can be no new

Growth if we do not remain

Open and vulnerable 

To what is new

Different, fresh, beginning,

Stepping into the

Unknown

Like a flower in a

garden

It Is Not Art

 

Featured image: Peacock

Abstraction : the quality of dealing with ideas rather than events. Freedom from representational qualities in art.

Abstraction, transcends, labels and forms. Abstraction begins naked. It is undressed.  When we can touch the naked work, the blank paper, the white canvas, then we become part of it and it is no longer naked. We, unfortunately, find a need to dress the blank page or canvas,. We label it and it is no longer abstraction, it becomes representational.  The beauty in abstraction is that it allows us to create a unique one-of-a-kind work that can be itself.
My art is that way, when I step away from the work it needs to speak for itself.  That is hard for me with most of my work, because I seem to always want to speak for it because I am so much a part of it. But, if it cannot speak for itself – then I believe it is not art. 

Transcendent

 

Featured image: Patchwork Landscape

Transcendent – Beyond or above the range of normal or merely physical human experience.  Existing apart from and not subject to the limitations of the material universe.

Is a soul or spirit transcendent? If so, how can it be imagined?  For me the soul, the spirit is something that is a loosely woven tapestry made of fabric, a weaving that has a lot  of gaps. A weaving of the transcendent is not stable. It is unstructured.  I imagine a weaving of clouds moving with the changing wind- not stable, sometimes transparent and sometimes opaque. So yes, I believe the soul or spirit is transcendent.  

Is this kind of transcendent divine like many famous philosophies claim,such as  Kant, Plato and writers like Emerson and Thoreau?  I don’t see it that way. I don’t know why, because their transcendence is based on the idea that romanticism is better than rationalism.  I do like their idea of transcendent being grounded in nature –  but this nature needs to be divine.

How do I imagine the transcendent?   Imagine a haze surrounding yourself, something like a sun dog surrounds the sun  because that implies a glow – a light. I like that imaginary and the weaving of the sun dog with the clouds.  Great tapestry – the soul and spirit of the transcendent – honestly – it is the imagined.

Struggling

 

Featured image: Struggling For The Soul

I frequently get asked the question - "How long does it take you to paint a work?"

My answer is always, "It varies."

This work, for example, began during the NWAT. That was six weeks ago. I have painted, repainted and changed colors. The concept behind the work even changed. I told folks during the tour that it was going to be a work of a friend of mine. It would be about rainbows, prisms and the color of the soul.

The whole concept of the work changed as I worked on it. And, I think one of the reasons that it was so hard to finish is because it exemplifies just about everything I write about the self. There is the grid - the computer grid in the face representing the mechanical and controlled, robot-like. Then, there is the on fire blaze emerging from her skull that wants to escape the grid and the control. The blaze is her spirit, her soul and it should belong to nobody but herself.

It is a very powerful piece for me. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I enjoyed and struggled with it.

Caw Caw

 

Featured image: Black Bird

The wind this morning

Hushed the delicate bird

Song black birds caw caw

 

Sky fades from black purple

Soft blue melts into golden 

Yellow, oranges, sunrise

 

Chorus rehearsing

Warming up new day begins

Cello song wind strings

Copy or And Original????

When is a work of art all yours and and original and not a copy of another’s work?  Inspired by a viewers comments about a new work of art I posted on Facebook.

Viewers of my work frequently ask me about the squiggly black and white lines I have dancing through just about all of my work.  I always tell them the story of when they first appeared.  I was painting a large watercolor on paper and there was one area of the work that I didn’t like.  Watercolor is very unforgiving and I didn’t know how to make that area work and still keep the integrity of the work.  I took out a ruler and drew three straight lines through the troubled area.  Then I painted them black and white.  These black and white lines have been dancing, they are no longer straight, through my work ever since.  For me they represent motion and movement in the work they appear in.

So where did these lines come from?  Just out of the blue like I described them above or was there something in my history of being around art, literally all my life, that I could look back to and say this is where these wonderful dancing lines came from.  The only thing that comes up in my memories is a an exhibition at the Chasen Museum of Art, where I was volunteering as a docent, of work by a people who inhabit the Ivory Coast of Ghana in Africa.  Just about everything they owned, furniture, footstools, weapons, clothing had a checker board pattern on it.  I must have given over 50 tours for that exhibition and perhaps that is where the black and white lines came from.  I don’t know.

I tell this story because recently I painted a painting which I called “The Performance.”  I was challenging myself to do figures as I rarely do them in my work.  I had been researching how other artists have done figures just to give me some ideas how I might want to do mine.  I knew my figures would be suggestive and not detailed with reality.  To my surprise I created my first figurative work unintentionally, just like the black and white lines suddenly appeared in my work a figure appeared in my work.  When I finished the piece I called it, “RingMasters Coat.”  And there is was my solution to how I wanted to do figures.  And I have been working on an entire series I call “At The Circus” where figures are the main focus of the work. 

For the most part I began the works with watercolor washes like I do 90 percent of my pieces.  The washes don’t always remain but the work always starts out that way.  For the newest piece in this series “The Performance” started out with a wash, and I was going to move into try and accomplish what I have been unable to accomplish in many years transparent watercolors.  I had played with some watercolor sketches in my Kasba Lake Series and thought I had a good idea as to where I was going to go and create a transparent watercolor. I liked where the piece was going but suddenly there was a huge drip in the work that I didn’t know what to do with. 

I returned to what I was comfortable with to make the piece work – I added opaque color.  Two figures appeared.  I saw them right away and began developing them.  But what to do with the background of the work.  I was coming at it backwards.  I wanted to create a wash that flowed across the entire piece but that would have destroyed the figures which I liked.  So I abandoned the watercolors and began using opaque color for the entire piece.  But the question came up what to do with the background.  I blocked out some shapes filled them with color and called it a day.  The work was done.  Mind you there were about 20 different layers underneath the finished work.  I was never comfortable with the solution I came up with.  When I called it a day I posted the work on Facebook to share and get some comments on.

The very first comment was that looks like Bob Burridge’s work.  I was devasted.  What did I copy someone?  I knew of Burridge’s work, he has been a judge in many of the completions I have entered. In fact recently he awarded me a 2^nd place in a very prestigious exhibition.  I was extremely honored.  But there was no way I would copy his work.  Perhaps like the black and white lines, the influence of his work just appeared in mine. I went to Burridges website to remind myself just what it was he did.  And sure, enough my work resembled his.  And he loved the colors orange and yellow with complementary colors as a focal point in his work. I love orange and yellow together – and often use a complementary color to bring the viewer in. And Burridge had done an entire series on a circus.  I was devasted.  I knew I could never enter this piece in a competition – it was way too much like his work.  When you enter a competition, you sign a form stating that this is your work, not done in a workshop, not copied from another’s work, not copied from another’s photograph.  You sign that everything in that work is yours and only yours.  I couldn’t do that with this work. 

These two stories bring me to the point of this post – just when is a work a copy and just when is a work yours and yours alone, an original?

Most of us know when our work is a copy of another’s, but do we always?  And what about folks who for example do landscapes, just how different can a landscape be, and you can still call it your own?  Flowers are another example the list can go on and on.  Yes, most artists are inspired by other artists, but not to the point of copying their work. 

Those of you who read my blogs know I challenge many a work as art because it is not original.  The question becomes then what is an original work of art?  If we make figures like others have made figures, if we handle color like others have handle colors, if we create landscapes like others have created landscapes does that mean our work is not original?  I have argued yes it does mean your work is not original.  So, is anything original anymore?  I answer yes, if you the artist are in the work.

My work “The Performers” had very little of me in it as it was presented.  The simple fact for me that there was a horizon line to add perspective disqualified it for me.  What you say, a simple horizon line that adds perspective, disqualifies the work as original.  I say yes, especially if almost immediately a viewer asks if I know of another artists work and tells me how much my work looks like his.  Yes.

I changed the work – the first piece no longer exists except in photographs. I am very happy with the changes, and there is no one I venture to say that has another piece like it.  It is an original.  And yes, I will enter it in competitions.  We are influenced by other artists, we do admire other artists, we are inspired by other artists, but it is not until my black and white lines weren’t straight anymore and danced across the paper that those lines became mine.  And it was not until I changed the background of my work and created my own blocks of space and perspective did the work become mine.  That is how I understand the word “original” when I say to be a work of art it must be original.

"The Performers - At The Circus"

"The Performers - At The Circus"

40x30 Acrylic on paper.

Man did I struggle with this piece - trying to learn how to put figures in my work. Just a wonderful new challenge.