Spontaneous series

Here are the new paintings I was referring to in yesterday's blog entry on the importance of "going with the flow" --

Figuring it all out

VERY interesting studio experience today.

I had spent a lot of time and energy over the past few months working on my blue series, and was becoming progressively less satisfied with it. The paintings as individuals were fine, but I had envisioned them in some kind of formal grouping, focusing on the way they would ultimately be displayed rather rather than how they looked one by one, and it just WASN’T working out.

Just now, I had the urge to grab white paint and squirt it on plain canvas. I ended up with two wonderful paintings that are everything I said I wasn’t going to do.

First, I had reasoned that people (i.e. collectors) like color, so I wanted to use an evocative color (in this case, blue). Second, I wanted my work to stand out among applicants to galleries and shows, so I wanted to incorporate dramatic contrasts of light and dark. And third, for practical reasons, I didn’t want to work bigger than will fit in my car, which is 50” x 30” (I measured between the wheel walls).

But today I had to let all that pragmatism go. I honestly felt like working in neutral quiet colors, on a huge canvas. And as soon as I did, as soon as I let go of my plan, EVERYTHING STARTED TO WORK!

I realized from this experience that I’ve been expecting myself to work linearly, whereas art-making is reflective of the artist as a person, and therefore cyclical in nature. I had come up with an idea for a series, and because it was a good idea (and I still think it was, logically), I was expecting to just bang the paintings out one by one. Wrong.

Furthermore, the two pieces I made today relate to a different series I was working on several years ago. And I looked at the new works just now and caught myself thinking, Oh no! When I display the ones I made today with the two-year-old paintings they are a natural fit with, people who have already seen those older paintings will think I haven’t been working on anything new and will judge that I’m not a “serious” artist because I’m not always doing brand new things.

Doesn’t this smack of that scene in “Gone With the Wind” when Scarlett can’t decide what to wear to the barbecue, because she’s going through every dress in her closet and thinking about how people will react to each one? Finally she just gives up (“Fiddle-dee-dee!”), decides to wear her favorite dress, and ends up having a great time at the party … until War is declared, but that’s another chapter.

In other words, I also realized from this experience that I’ve been allowing how I THINK other artists might judge me as an artist to influence how I work. And I further realized that part of the reason I’ve been trying to work in a linear way is that I’ve bought in to the gallery dogma that once a work is more than six months old, it’s OLD and passé and not worthy of exhibition.

My day has emphasized to me that we artists have to paint what WE want, and that others’ output is really irrelevant. Sorry, I know that goes against the philosophy of all those artist feedback groups, but I disagree with the idea that someone else knows better than you what you should paint.

And let me add that these fears of mine are based on my own inner paranoia, not from any actual negative or damaging feedback I’ve ever gotten. Except for a few dorky professors in art school, I have never had another artist give me bad or dishonest advice, or anything but kind and supportive words.

But I still think we have to be our own guides and follow our own muses, not anyone else’s ideas, or what we think or fear others’ ideas might be.

Another benefit to the D.I.Y. approach

In making some works on paper (started yesterday, continued this morning), I've come across a great discovery.

Now that I'm diluting my acrylic paint myself instead of buying it as already "fluid" (this blog entry describes that decision), I just realized that my latest batch of diluted white was a bit more watery than usual. I pouted when I first realized how "soft" looking, almost translucent my layers were when I first rolled them out with the brayer.

Then I realized, "Wait -- translucent layers! That's a GOOD thing!"

So it occurs to me that now that I'm making my own concoctions, I can intentionally vary the paint-to-water ratio, depending on how opaque or transparent I want the layers. This hadn't come up when I was just using the manufacturer-prepared paints. Yay!

Assessing the summer, looking ahead

I just finished a wonderful week of teaching a watercolor course to art teachers. It was a fun group and I think that they learned a lot. They certainly accomplished a lot of beautiful work. Here are three of my favorite projects (among many) that the students created.

The first piece is by Shari Fox, who teaches in Shrewsbury, MA:



The next piece is by Sarah Steinberg, who teaches in Wellesley, MA:



And this piece is by Kristin Clark, who teaches in Marlboro, MA:



That was my last teaching week of the summer. Whew, it has been A LOT of work! I taught my last spring semester class on June 27, and then on June 29, I started teaching a five-week watercolor intensive at Framingham State College. As soon as that was over, I taught a week-long fashion illustration course and a week-long pastel drawing course to high-school students, and finally, this past week, the graduate-level watercolor course, all at the Danforth Museum School. As hard as I worked, I loved every minute of it.

My next college class begins on September 2, so not much time to regroup. BUT with all the busy-ness of last week, a thought hit me through the din: I will be 50 years old in three years. That, obviously, is a milestone!

What do I want to have accomplished by age 50? What are my goals for my 50th birthday, that I can start to work on now?

Like almost every other woman in the western world, I would like to lose 30 pounds. And it would definitely be a good idea to have a goal of how much money I'd like to have saved by then.

But I want to come up with some goals as an exhibiting artist that I can aim for, to have reached at the half-century mark. I've had a lot of luck lately with selling my work, but what about artistic goals? I'll keep working on this idea over the next week ...

Small works heading off to show

Here are some small works I'm dropping off today at the Danforth Museum School for their Small Works Exhibit and Sale in September. For more information, click here.

More paintings, but fate of series unsure

Two more of the blue series, completed on Sunday. Not sure where the series is going now; the five finished panels are even more disparate than the original three! They really don't hold together as a group, but the long thin format doesn't seem strong enough for them to stand alone as individuals ... maybe I'll go back to the 30 inch squares, using the same techniques I've used for the panels ...

Just not sure, and I'm teaching full time this week, so these big decisions will have to wait until next week, which is just as well. I'm too close to the series to be thinking clearly about it, anyway.

A Room With No View

I just discovered this wonderful quote from Annie Dillard's "A Writing Life": "You need a room with no view so imagination can meet memory in the dark."

I have always felt "wrong" that I have no interest in traveling, the way everyone else seems to. It's not that I hate traveling, or that I have a fear of flying, or anything like that. I just prefer to be at home and enjoy what's around me here.

I know other artists who find their inspiration in travel, by attending residencies and/or drawing/painting while they're traveling. This seems to be the norm, and as I mentioned, I've always felt "weird" that I have no interest in either attending a residency or doing anything but look around me, unhindered by a sketchbook or camera, on the rare occasions when I do travel.

Art-making, to me, has nothing to do with recording where I've physically been. It means going to a quiet, isolated and familiar place -- which I make sure my studio is -- and expressing whatever is inside me: the abstract, the intangible, the intuited, the felt, the remembered.

Annie Dillard's quote articulates perfectly my interests as an artist. And she reminds me that it's "OK" to be this way!

Progress on blue series

I have finished three panels (stretched canvases, actually, but their long thin format makes me call them panels) in my blue series, and in looking at them together, I have made some decisions. (First of all, they will eventually need to be professionally photographed!)



My intention had been to have all kinds of different blues and directional marks. But I'm thinking this takes away from the individuality of each piece, rather than enhancing it.

So I'm going to take the middle piece (shown below) and make two (maybe more) panels with vertical marks and carvings like it has.



Then I'm going to try making a third piece to show with the lefthand one and the righthand one. If this third piece somehow bridges them, fine; otherwise, I might give each one its own series.

Closeup of lefthand panel:



Closeup of righthand panel:



I'm having so much fun with this series, learning a lot about blue and how to play with different blue values and hues, and also discovering what I really want to say with this series (graphic vs. textural vs. dimensional appearance).

Two of my reviews published

Two of my reviews appear in today's New Bedford Standard-Times.

The current exhibit at the New Bedford Art Museum, and the current exhibit at the Artworks! gallery in New Bedford.

It feels good to be a published writer again! Teaching has been keeping me SO busy that I haven't written anything since June 2008. I miss writing very much, but it's so hard to find the time. But I miss it TOO much; I'll have to MAKE the time.

Pastel drawings

I'm teaching a pastel drawing class this week, and made these drawings alongside my students. Had fun!

Hand-made greeting cards

I made some greeting cards this afternoon; I'm planning to sell them (with matching envelopes) at the open studios I'm participating in this fall.

Varieties of blue

I've taken another step in developing this blue series. It's all about shifting varieties of blue, floating in layers of gel medium.

Today I got paid for the college course I taught in July, so I've made a purchase of some new Golden blues (while planning to use cheap Dick Blick acrylics for larger coverable layers like toning the canvas, as part of my money saving scheme). These new (to me) colors are cobalt turquoise, cerulean blue deep, cerulean blue chromium, and anthraquinone blue.

So I'll throw them into the mix (i.e. the old faithfuls, ultramarine blue and phthalo blue/green shade) and see what happens!

Going with the flow

Last night I “lost” one of my new paintings – painted over it, thinking I was improving it, and didn’t realize until the layer had dried that not only was it not better, it was now unacceptable. UGH.

I really shouldn’t have been painting last night at all; I was too tired and worn-out to be capable of good ideas or effective decision-making.

I went to bed frustrated that I had wrecked the work. But I woke up this morning with a weird but wonderful singlemindedness and awareness. I went down to the studio and cleaned up, organized, and set things up so that later on today, when I have more time, I can jump right back into my current project.

You know those piles of accumulated STUFF that you don’t know what to do with? This morning, for some reason, I went right to those piles and did whatever had to be done with them – sorting, moving or throwing out. Even stuff that had been sitting there for months because I didn’t know what to do with it, today I just DID something with it.

This experience made me realize the importance of going with the flow. Last night I tried to force a painting, and it didn’t work. This morning, I needed to do something methodical and unromantic, i.e. organizing the studio. But instead of trying to paint when it wasn’t the right time, I did the everyday stuff, and it really worked out.

It’s important to do what feels right, whenever that feeling happens to come up.

This also reminds me of the importance of small and mundane steps when you’re working toward a goal (mine is making progress on these five blue panels, to see if I want to continue working in this way). Little steps add up to one big advance.

I feel like I got closer to finishing the series by doing what I did today – sorting through piles of unrelated junk – than I did last night, when I was actually painting.

Blue works in progress

I keep wanting to work BIG (like bigger than my body), but I just don't have the space (even though my studio is sizable) or the carpentry skills (to build big stretchers) or the cash (to hire someone to build big stretchers, and then to rent a vehicle big enough to drive my big paintings to exhibition venues).

So I've decided to try a "modular" approach, by making a number of moderately sized panels and hanging them alongside one another.

Since I've had so much fun focusing on blue recently, I've decided to do a series of 5 blue panels. The longest stretcher bars I had on hand were 50", but that will do for a start. So I've stretched 5 canvases that are 50" x 20", which will get me up to a respectable width when they're displayed together.

Here are the initial layers of paint on the first two panels: