Creatively Thinking

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

  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. 

  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 ...

  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 po...

  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

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 th...

"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.