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Whatever Lola Wants

1/28/2023

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Whatever Lola Wants
"Whatever Lola Wants" - oil on paper, 15 x 22.  Available here and at Artfinder.

Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets
I always get (what, what, what)

What I aim for (what, what)
And your heart and soul is what I came for
 - 
Jerry Ross / Richard Adler
Welcome to Lola-land, which is also la-la-la-la-lola-land and is now officially www.lolajovan.com.  Whoa.  That's pretty sweet.

This is the story of Lola.
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Many years ago, when I first started down this creative path, I painted a self-portrait and called her "Lola" - my alter-ego and badass inner wild child.  Her unstoppable persona was what I mentally put on for gallery openings, public talks and other swashbuckling events where my art was on display and my person was anxious or lacking confidence.

Later, when the universe tossed a couple of life grenades at me and sent me into a tailspin,  becoming more Lola-like was the way I survived.  What would Lola do?  

And then one day, my incredible partner, knowing the name and its significance to me, began calling me Lola.
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​Now it is one thing to hear your inner badass name in your mind as you give yourself a pep-talk or a boost of confidence, but it is another thing entirely to hear it spoken by another.  There is big, BIG power in that.  Major mojo.

It gave me permission (permission I very much needed, apparently) to become Lola.

The final step in lolafication was acquiring the domain for this website and a new email address to complete the outfit. 

​And so, here I am, fully lola-fied.  Oh my!


About the art:  beginning with an inspiration photo from the 1960's and an old painting covered in gesso, creating a rough sketch and adding thin layers of oil paints to form an underpainting of the figure.

Covering the entire piece with 
liquin-thinned paint and dragging a rubber wedge, using it to carve in some texture and leave dark deposits.  Adding back the highlights with a brush and thick oil paint.  Oooooh la la!

​Check out a little glimpse of the process here, or click on the photo to the right.
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The Fully Complex Scope of Being

1/26/2023

2 Comments

 
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The Fully Complex Scope of Being

"The Fully Complex Scope of Being" oil on art board, 16 x 20.  Available here and at Artfinder.


"It’s my nature to question, to look at the opposite side. I believe that the best writing also does this … It tells us that where there is sorrow, there will be joy; where there is joy, there will be sorrow … The acknowledgement of the fully complex scope of being is why good art thrills … Acknowledging the fullness of things,” she insists, “is our human task.” - JANE HIRSHFIELD

My wanders are taking me back to portraiture for a moment.

I've been fascinated with the many contemporary painters who use paint like a sculpting tool in carving faces into canvas.  Leaving rough, thick paint and harsh lines while still conveying the emotion and essence of a human.  


In both abstraction and portraiture, I wonder how much I can convey without spelling it out?  How little can I define while still helping your eyes see it fully?
The words of Hirschfield (some of her other words are literally tattooed on my body)  had me nodding and mmmmhhhhmmmmm-ing.  The more art I look at, the more images passing through my own visual, emotional and intellectual filters, the more I see the good stuff acknowledges the fully complex scope of being.  Our humanity, our very being, is complicated and messy and fraught with stumbles, trips and falls.  The pendulum of joy and sorrow.  The scales of fullness and emptiness.  Beauty and ugliness.  Despair and wonder.

Thank you, dear reader, for being part of the fullness of things.  Your very presence swings the pendulum toward joy. XO
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​About the art:  beginning with an old painting covered in white gesso, a notanized photograph and the images of heavily sculpted paintings in my mind, thickly sketching the darks of a face in colored pencil and then adding thin layers of oil paint mixed with liquin.  Using only palette knife, rubber wedge and fingers, adding thicker layers and stepping WAY back between them.  Does this look like a face from 10 feet away?  Yup.  Ok, keep going. Resisting the urge to overly define.  Resisting the urge to add colors other than my pre-selected limited palette.  Letting the highlights speak.  Letting the darks anchor.  Walking away with a smile.
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Coming Home

1/15/2023

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"Coming Home"  oil and cold wax on paper, 15 x 10.5.   Available here and at Artfinder.


“was always a strange thing, coming home. Coming home meant that you had, at one point, left it and, in doing so, irreversibly changed. How odd, then, to be able to return to a place that would always be anchored in your notion of the past. How could this place still be there, if the you that once lived there no longer existed?” 

― Becky Chambers, A Prayer for the Crown-Shy

Oh, what a lovely, craggy, cliff-hugging hike I'm having in the studio!

Cold wax and oil is the closest thing to the deeply organic, geologically-astounding, gritty and basalt-y layers of the Columbia River Gorge you can get while standing indoors.
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Coming Home
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And simultaneously reading aloud another book featuring a wandering monk and robot is the next best thing to actually wandering the countryside while being curled up on the sofa on a dark, rainy evening.

The meandering dynamic duo (the. monk and robot, not the husband and myself, though we are, indeed) have a way of tackling philosophy in the sweetest ways, often leaving me smiling and teary simultaneously.   Like today's passage and the idea that home is always part of our past, and then when we return to it we are never the same person who once lived there.  Whoa.

Which is exactly how I feel returning home from a hike, a walk or a wander, or after painting something  - creating a new world that wasn't there before, and being altered by the process of creating it.  The Lola who enters the studio is never the same one who exists.  

About the art:  beginning (as I am in 2023) with an old painting which has been gesso'd over.  In this case, the painting was also cut in half.  Jumping off from a hike-inspired photo and beginning to build the layers with thin washes of oil added with a rubber wedge and draaaaaagggged hither and yon.  Adding layers of thicker paint and paint mixed with cold wax with a palette knife.  Dragging the paint into vertical cliffs with a rubber wedge.  Carving back into the layers of paint with oil pencils and a scribbly hand.  Walking away as a new Lola.
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The best chance to be whole

1/9/2023

5 Comments

 

”The Best Chance to be Whole” - oil on paper, 22 x 30.  Available here and at Artfinder.

The courage to hear and embody opens us to a startling secret, that the best chance to be whole is to love whatever gets in the way, until it ceases to be an obstacle .  - MARK NEPO 
Oh, how things get in the way.

I mean, can I even imagine feeling "whole"?  Personally? Creatively? Interpersonally? In life?  Yes, I can nearly see it there, just beyond reach - like a word on the tip of. my tongue.  Elusive, but there.

The definition of and obstacles in the way of wholeness vary by person, I'm guessing.  There are real world obstacles which we all face in various combinations, but inner hurdles and obstacles - I'm guessing those are what Nepo is getting at.  Our own assumptions, beliefs, judgments, attitudes and flotsam.  Oy.
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The Best Chance to be Whole
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​There are so many obstacles on the creative path.  Time, for sure.  Education, experience, instruction, materials - yup.  But mostly, mainly, what I hear from other artists and musicians and writers and performers of all. kinds is that the big, bad obstacle is nearly always inside our heads.  Mine sounds like "I CAN'T".  (My inner obstacle is not verbose, just stern.).  It's different from my interpersonal obstacle voice, which sounds like "I'M AFRAID TO."

So I'm not sure exactly how to spread big love to these obstacles, but I think it begins with the sound of Thich Nhat Hanh's voice saying "I see you little one.  I see your fear.  I see your lack of confidence.  Come here and let's work through it together."  And so, as I hold hands with my inner obstacles and skip off into the studio, I ask you, dear readers, what the obstacles to your wholeness  and how can you love them?

About the art:  beginning with a thickly gesso'd layer over an old painting on 300 lb arches watercolor paper.  Laying in wet horizontal lines of oil paint with a rubber wedge and dragging  downward and at angles, creating a rough structure of "cliff and rock"  inspired by hiking photographs.  Varying many neutrals, creating mud and then bringing it back to color with some brighter paint and a palette knife.  Carving back into the layers with chopsticks and flat blades.  Allowing  paint thinner to run along some portions to create texture.  The requisite 80 million layers exist in this large piece, which is, by far, my new favorite.  
5 Comments

Our Walls Crumble When No One is Looking

1/5/2023

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"Our Walls Crumble When No One is Looking" - oil on paper, 12.5 x 16.5.  Available here and at Artfinder.

Consider how the sun washes the Earth with its heat and then clouds dissipate, and grasses grow, and stones crumble when no one is looking to reveal a smoother, deeper face. It is the same with us. In a moment of realness, the clouds in our mind clear and our passion is restored, and our walls crumble when no one is looking. It all continues and refreshes, if we let it.  MARK NEPO, The Book of Awakening
And a new year begins.

Already I am wondering, how will I be different at the end of this year?  How will my heart feel?  What will the art look (and feel) like?  Where will my feet have walked in those 365 days?

​I have SO MANY IDEAS.  It's a bit overwhelming.
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Our Wall Crumble When No One is Looking
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Despite all the wondering, one thing is for sure:  I will continue to wander.

More than that, I will EMBRACE the wandering.

Now wait a minute, whoa, hold on there lady.  As artists, we're suppose to find our voice and STICK WITH IT, right?  Or at least, that's what "they" tell you.

Um, nope and nope.  I plan to let the art wander EVEN MORE than it has in the past, dropping all the inner critic voices and the anticipated judgment of others and just make the dang things.

Reading over this, that is a LOT of capitalized words.  I'm not yelling, dear reader.  Well, maybe I am a little.  I'm FEISTY about the wander.  

Raise your voice in the comments below, creatives!  Where are YOU going to wander?

Wonder Mike and Lilly are falling all over themselves with excitement!  They couldn't choose just one winner of the reader giveaway...they chose TWO!  Leslie M and Traycee, you're the winners of a free piece of original art!  Email me at imajenation@gmail.com with your address, and the shipping pooches will have your treasure on the way in a jiffy.  And thank you for participating!
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Here's the blue wild, where
tiny dreamers ride beasts, speak
​ birdsong, hold the moon.

(by poet Mary W. Cox)
​


​Art prints available on request
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