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Bone Dog

8/29/2022

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Bone Dog
"Bone Dog" - oil on cradled wood panel, 24 x 24 x 1.5.  Ready to hang.  Available here and at Artfinder..


The love of a bone dog, she thought, bending her head down over the paw again. All that I am worth these days.  Then again, few humans were truly worth the love of a living dog. Some gifts you could never deserve.” 
― T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone
The studio has gone to the dogs.

We just finished reading Kingfisher's Nettle and Bone, and the rattling run of a bone dog is echoing in my mind and has jumped onto the board.

In the novel, our protagonist is given three impossible tasks in order to secure a means of killing a prince.  One of the tasks is to build a dog of bones.  Which she does.  And the dog romps and cavorts and rattles throughout the novel.   
Have you ever completed an impossible task?  Overcome the un-overcomeable?  Done the thing you didn't believe you could do?  I'll bet you have.    I think we all have bone dogs in our lives - a symbol of our own tenacity, resilience and determination.  With perhaps a little magic, serendipity and the love, support and encouragement of others.  When I think of the things I have done that I didn't believe I could do, I feel a little sparkle.

And so this piece - a dog made of bones - a talisman for the impossible.  Which we know, you and I, is sometimes very possible, likely, probable and ​done.

About the art:  beginning with a thickly gesso'd wood panel and an oil pastel sketch of a dog skeleton.  Adding the requisite 80 million layers of oil paint.  Coming over the entire skeleton with thick lime green paint, then scraping away, leaving deposits in the bones.  Adding back the details, allowing paint thinned with Gamsol to run down the piece.  Adding a light pink sky in a thin wash with a rubber brayer.  
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A Formula for Happiness

8/22/2022

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"A Formula for Happiness" - oil on cradled wood panel, 10 x 10 x .75.  Ready to hang.  Available here and at Artfinder.


“In my life I have found two things of priceless worth - learning and loving. Nothing else - not fame, not power, not achievement for its own sake - can possible have the same lasting value. For when your life is over, if you can say 'I have learned' and 'I have loved,' you will also be able to say 'I have been happy.” 
― Arthur C. Clarke, Rama II
We've begun hoarding science fiction books.

Building stacks of books to be read.  Making sure the piles are plentiful and well-curated.  Consulting lists of "best of" and "recommended" until we've sifted the best of the best and created a bounty of other worlds waiting.
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A Formula for Happiness
Somewhere in this odd couple of pandemic years, we began reading aloud each afternoon.  A bowl of popcorn, a couple of popcorn-hungry pooches and two humans transported by words to places far, far away. The places, the stories, the juicy descriptions and words - oh the words! Words to look up, savor and roll around the tongue.  Words to contemplate and share and deliciously place into sentences.  Words to forget as aging brains leak a portion of what we glean every day.

And this lovely ritual contains both learning and loving - Clarke's formula for happiness.

It also leaves two artists with brains stuffed full of adventure, creatures, planets, people, conundrums and endings.  It cannot help but spill over into the art.

About the art - using oil paint palettes still wet from prior pieces and inverting them over a wood panel.  Sliding, scraping, blotting, moving the palette against the wood until the wet paint has transferred.  Finding shapes and worlds within the paint and jumping off from that place using only rubber wedge, soft cloth, fingers and chopsticks.
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Lagomorph

8/15/2022

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Lagomorph
"Lagomorph" - oil on cradled wood panel, 24 x 24 x 1.5.  Ready to hang. Available here and at Artfinder.


"The mushroom’s gills were the deep-red color of severed muscle, the almost-violet shade that contrasts so dreadfully with the pale pink of viscera. I had seen it any number of times in dead deer and dying soldiers, but it startled me to see it here. "
 - from What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher
You wouldn't think a hare would be unsettling.

Rabbits, bunnies, lagomorphs.  But we just read Kingfisher's retelling of  "The Fall of the House of Usher" and now the hare has become a little more than a ball of fur with a twitching nose.

Kingfisher paints with words.  Mushroom, mold and hare become visceral under her expert pen.  And so it called to me to take paint to lagomorph and see what peculiarity I could conjure.
At first it's difficult to draw a hare that is anything but sweetness.  But now I admit to being a wee bit obsessed with the creepiness of these creatures, and find myself sneaking up on this painting after dark, just to be slightly startled and delighted.  More to come along this path, I think.  

Just so we don't encounter him on an actual path. :)

About the art:  beginning with a wood panel gesso'd thickly and with random texture.  Initial sketch in oil crayon over the gesso.  Slowly layering thinned oil paint and allowing the underpainting to dry thoroughly.  Applying then a thick layer of varying blues over the rabbit and dragging the paint with rubber wedge and squeegee.  Allowing liquin and paint-soaked brushes to leave trails through the drying paint, then adding back a few details.  Check out a process video at  Instagram.com/jenjovanart
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The Connection Between Soul and Landscape

8/10/2022

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The Connection Between Soul and Landscape
"The Connection Between Soul and Landscape" - oil on wood altar, 5 x 10 x 1.  Available here.
"It is one of the great perils of our so-called civilized age that we do not acknowledge enough, or cherish enough, this connection between soul and landscape -- between our own best possibilities, and the view from our own windows. We need the world as much as it needs us, and we need it in privacy, intimacy, and surety." - MARY OLIVER

Here in the studio, I am contemplating the huge amount gratitude I feel for the silver lining of a pandemic.  Which is, if you're wondering, the push to find places unpopulated and beautiful, safe from all the things we carry around as human Petri dishes and inadvertently pass along to others.
Thanks to COVID 19 (in all of its many, multiplying forms), we hike.  And not just hike, but go to the places where others are unlikely to go.  Over the last two-plus years, this has replaced movie theaters, restaurants, shopping, concerts, plays and all the things that used to be entertainment. Something wondrous happened inside of me because of this - a deep, intimate connection with the wildness of "out there" (wherever it may be) and a feeling of calm, peaceful ease inside my head as our feet go up and down for mile after mile of wilderness.  Even when the rain falls hard upon us.  Even when the brambles leave legs lacerated and stinging.  Even when the way seems harder than we can do.

I try to bring this back into the regular world, where sometimes things feel too hard to handle, even though my butt is in a chair and the air conditioning is keeping me cool and nothing is pushing my heart and lungs to near bursting.  Sometimes this works.  But little reminders help.

We collect treasures - bone and stone and shell and feather, wood and moss and branch.  There are little altars everywhere - vignettes of the wilderness.  They are reminders of what matters, this connection between soul and landscape, as Oliver says, that we need.  And I do love the thought that it needs us.

About the art - oil paint on black gesso over wood.  A crescent moon holding our bare spirit, ready to receive treasures gathered along the way.

NUDGE-SHOVE is open through the end of August.  We hope you'll explore, linger and love the experimental art we've created, and the idea of PUSHING ourselves in response to the words of Sylvia Plath and world events.  Thanks for your support!

Artists!!!  Interested in participating in future collaborations?  Express your interest here.
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NUDGE-SHOVE

8/1/2022

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Soft Fists (Lola Jovan) oil on paper, 13 x 20

These are unprecedented times.  And I've been struggling for words.

So when artist Helaine Abramson and I collided in a cyber chat about our emotions, frustrations and feelings of powerlessness in these times, something else was born.  The idea of a call and response - the world is calling (shouting, screaming, banging fists on tables) and artists (humans, women, men,) want to respond.  When words fail us, there is art.

Abramson and I stumbled upon a poem from decades ago by Sylvia Plath (Mushrooms), which beautifully gave voice and a loooooooooong trajectory view of women's struggles in the world.  How could it be that here we stood, feeling the need to heave the needles (Plath) and keep moving forward, just as Plath deliciously described so long ago?


Abramson challenged me to channel the poem (and our own feelings) into art.  Art for the sake of expression, without any care for sensibility, marketability or brand.  To push each other to try things we haven't tried, take risks, be bold.  To create an environment between us of growth, power, strength and voice.

NUDGE-SHOVE is a small experiment.

Two artists pushing each other in a tiny, safe environment cocooned within the larger, dangerous environment of the world.  I think we were both surprised by how empowered and edge of the eyeballs we felt in creating the art and in writing the narrative for this experimental show.
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Bloodless No More (Helaine Abramson) mixed media mosaic on wood 12 x 12
We haven't solved any of the world's problems here.

But we have found a way to take the chaos of everything out there and use that energy for something else - to connect, inspire, commiserate, encourage, listen and see.  

It is our sincere hope that our art and words will touch you, dear reader.  We hope to hit a nerve, strike a chord, make a little splash.  Maybe, if we're lucky, it will inspire other small experiments in the world - nudging and shoving until our kind multiplies (Plath).

NUDGE-SHOVE​ is open!  Head over to the show page and take a gander.  We love if you'd linger awhile.  Comments, feedback, questions and all the things are welcome.
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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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