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Soothed Into Remembering Our Common Name

11/22/2022

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Soothed Into Remembering Our Common Name
"Soothed Into Remembering Our Common Name" - oil on cradled wood panel, 12 x 12 x .75.  Ready to hang.  Available here and at Artfinder.
"It seems that the ancient Medicine Men understood that listening to another's story somehow gives us the strength of example to carry on, as well as showing us aspects of ourselves we can't easily see. For listening to the stories of others - not to their precautions or personal commandments - is a kind of water that breaks the fever of our isolation. If we listen closely enough, we are soothed into remembering our common name."  -- Mark Nepo 
It's softly raining here in my studio in the trees...surrounded by gold and orange and green and red and falling water.    And I am thinking again about stories.

I've been trying to listen not to their precautions or personal commandments but to the stories of those around me.  The themes under the words, the stories they tell with words and actions.  Which helps me, in turn, see my own stories in a bright, clear light.

​I believe we all want to be seen, heard and understood.  We want our stories to matter.  

​For me, when I feel understood, it is indeed a soothing balm that helps me feel connected and no longer isolated.  The little gem in Nepo's words regarding precautions and commandments really has me contemplating, though.  Which of those am I delivering in lieu  of a vulnerable, authentic story? Hmmmmmmm.  As I listen, so will I learn.
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A view from the studio window

About the art: another piece emerging over top of a prior painting.  Keeping to a limited palette and using mostly rubber wedge and palette knife and fingers, trying to capture mood and emotion.  Resisting the urge to overly define her garment or the background, allowing the paint to move and suggest.
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The Unknown Forces Beyond All Wonder and Catastrophe

11/14/2022

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"The Unknown Forces Beyond All Wonder and Catastrophe" - oil on cradled wood panel, 11 x 14 x 1. Ready to hang. Available here and at Artfinder.

We gave name to the unknown forces beyond all wonder and catastrophe, by telling each other stories. - ALITHEA, Three Thousand Years of Longing
Every day, we tell stories.

Stories to each other, for entertainment, for encouragement, for validation, for safety, for connection and comprehension.  Some stories are true.  Some stories are slightly true.  Some are complete fabrications, some delightful and others malevolent.  These stories build the fabric of our relationships with each other and the world around us.  It helps us make sense of things - sharing and hearing these stories.  
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The Unknown Forces Beyond All Wonder and Catastrophe
Art is visual storytelling.  Each painting has something to say, or to hide, or to shine a light upon.  These stories emerge from within - the stories the painter tells herself.  Whoa.

I find myself examining those inner stories recently.  The brain is a powerful tool, and the thoughts we think are mighty.  Artists are notoriously riddled with self doubt, imposter syndrome, criticism and anxiety about their work, their talents, their value and contribution to society. I've got plenty of that.  But if I see those thoughts, observe them and then ask myself what if I think THIS (or THAT) instead, they lose a bit of power and free up a space for bold adventuring without hesitation.

As this year begins to wane, I find myself asking what if I paint over everything and begin again? ​What does that story look like?  And my brilliant husband, an extraordinary and insightful artist, reminds me there is beauty in destruction, too.  So I begin, painting over, building the new on top of the ashes of the old, freeing space for bold adventuring.  Oh, oh, oh. Here we go.

About the art: a board covered in black gesso, with multiple sketches and value studies on top.  None of them were just right. So I grabbed the rubber wedge, the oil paint, the chopsticks and let the cosmos begin to reorder itself right in front of my eyes.  My first real grid composition - something I told myself I would not like.  And then I did.  Oh.
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The SUn Came Up Slowly

11/7/2022

6 Comments

 
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The Sun Came Up Slowly
"The Sun Came Up Slowly" - oil on linen,  11 x 14 x 1.  Ready to hang.  Available here and at Artfinder.
The sun came up slowly, taking its own sweet time, doing the job right.  It bathed the world in soft pastels, in rose and soft yellow and rich brown.  It warmed the ground, the leaves, the grass.  It rolled into the sky, almost timidly, and looked down on itself, smiling into the chuckles of the spring.  The Wind Blows Free​ by Chad Oliver.
I'm missing the sun here in the midst of a days-long atmospheric river.  

It's grand in the studio, where skylights and big windows let a soft glow of daylight in on paint and painter.  But out and about, in galoshes and raincoats and layers of gloves and mittens, the sun is sorely missed.

Today's quote, from the ending of a long lost generational ship sci-fi short story from 1957 (read the entire story here at Archive.Org) grabbed me and plunked me into sunlight and warmth and a respite from the rain.
And so, though here in the studio I'm  still exploring galaxies and worlds beyond, a momentary dive into portraiture and wistfulness seemed like just the thing.  She's a sweet spirit.  And she's got her eye on a spaceman emerging on a canvas across the room...:)

About the art:  beginning with a linen canvas and white gesso.  Using an notanized photograph as a jumping off point and gently sketching a portrait with colored pencil.  Limiting myself to a color palette from a random floral painting in oils that I found online (turning it upside down to focus on the color inspiration, not the image) I placed light washes of darks with a rubber wedge, leaving lights for last.  Blending with brushes, fingers and paper towels.  Slowly adding thicker layers, then finishing her garb with a palette knife.
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notanized photo
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inspiration colors
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work in process
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emergent sweetness
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Soften While Still ALIVE

11/2/2022

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"Soften While Still Alive" - oil on cradled wood panel, 16 x 16 x 1.5.  Ready to hang.  Available here and at Artfinder. 

As the ancient sages all confirm, everything softens in time.  If we want to soften while still alive, we have to bring our hurt places into the light.  - MARK NEPO

Space exploration continues in the studio.

But when I say space, I am referring to the inner spaces as well as outer spaces.  I don't know about you, dear reader, but the more I look deep inside, the more I see what needs to be healed, brought into the light and embraced.  And the more I bring forward and embrace those  things, the more vulnerable I feel,  It can be overwhelming at times.

And yet...

I feel the softening of things.  If I can, I'll bring them all out to soften while I am still alive.  And enjoy the light shining on  soft places with a glorious warm glow.
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Soften While Still Alive

Artists!

A newsletter from Andrew Simonet dropped into my in-box today, just as I was contemplating the business of art.  This quote resonated with me, and I thought you might like it, too.

"Insufficient branding is not what makes an artist's life hard. Know why it's hard? Because artists do essential, arduous work that fuels everything in our culture, and we are consistently under acknowledged, under respected, and under compensated. That's why it's goddamn hard. Artists are not screwing this up. Artists are doing heroic work under intolerable conditions. This world extracts our creations and insights and abandons us economically."

For all of you out there creating, you are DOING HEROIC WORK!  I see you.  You look mahhhhhvelous. xo
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WANDERESS

10/25/2022

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"Wanderess" - oil on cradled wood panel, 16 x 16 x 1.5.  Ready to hang.  Available here and at Artfinder.

“What is a Wanderess? Bound by no boundaries, contained by no countries, tamed by no time, she is the force of nature’s course.”-  ROMAN PAYNE
The studio has become a space station.  A place to launch rockets and explore new worlds - an expansion of physical wandering into the imagination.  And so, of course, there are nudes in helmets, both exploring the cosmos and embracing vulnerability at the same time.

Because when we step outside of our comfort zone - when we step (or leap, or plunge) into what's calling us, we feel quite, well, naked.  At least, that's how I experience the things that have me on the edge of my eyeballs.
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Wanderess
A recent step (leap, plunge) into a SF series by Martha Wells, The Murderbot Diaries, brought to light all the nakedness of emotion and being seen to experience emotion by others.  Murderbot (what the bot named itself), is decidedly an antisocial introvert riddled with anxiety.  Uncomfortable with eye contact, touch and experiencing emotion.  It self-soothes with binge-watching media.  But it is well able to navigate space travel and battle and pulse weapons.

“I hate caring about stuff. But apparently once you start, you can't just stop.” 
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

​
Murderbot's dry humor is in my head now.  And apparently influencing the art.

About the art:  beginning with a black gesso'd cradled wood panel and roughly sketching a figure.  For this piece, I used as inspiration a pose from a classical painting from centuries ago,  Using a palette knife, a small rubber wedge and a paper towel, slowly adding layers of oil paint in a limited number of colors.  Resisting the urge to overly define.  Using a paper towel to soften some areas, and allowing the knife to leave sharp edges in others.  

​I am now determined to add a space helmet to my wardrobe. :)

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The Heat of Autumn

10/18/2022

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The Heat of Autumn - oil on cradled wood panel, 6 x 12 x 1.  Ready to hang.  Available here and at Artfinder.
The heat of autumn 
is different from the heat of summer.  
One ripens apples, the other turns them to cider.  
One is a dock you walk out on,  
the other the spine of a thin swimming horse
- JANE HIRSHFIELD

 We are in the last days of the heat of autumn.  Tuning to cider, the spine of a thin swimming horse.  Here in Portland, it is hazy with the smoke of wildfires, dry as a crisp from a long summer without rain.  

In my mind, images from a month of exquisite hiking along the coasts of California and Oregon soften the heat like the fog bands across the highway near the ocean.  My spirit is overwhelmed with abundant experiences- redwoods, cliffs, sea lions, pelicans, whale bones, frigid ocean waters, warm sun on boulders and bare shoulders and the joy of marrying my love in a courthouse one afternoon.  
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The Heat of Autumn
In the studio, I am stymied by too much inspiration.  

And so I begin in the way that I know best - showing up, letting paint move and following the trail it leaves.  Rubber wedge and paper towel, fingers, chopstick and brush.  While immersed in the wander of this luscious oil painting, ideas began to take root. A sketch of the next piece appears on the easel.  The mind eases back into where my feet are standing now.  Home.
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Summer Collapsed Into Fall

9/2/2022

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Summer Collapsed Into Fall
"Summer Collapsed Into Fall"- oil on cradled wood panel, 12 x 18 x 1.5  Ready to hang.  Available here and at Artfinder.


“…and all at once, summer collapsed into fall.” - Oscar Wilde
September.

How did THAT happen?  Already our neighbor's tree has begun to turn.  Already the shadows have lengthened.  Already the crows are practicing aerial acrobatics in the evening sky, contemplating forming murders.  It seemed like summer had only just begun.

But no wallowing!  Here in the studio, we're packing our traveling art supplies and getting ready for a big, long adventure along the coast of Northern California, plunging into the redwoods, the wild ocean and  acres of dunes.  We'll gather up all the sun and surf we can, even as the temperatures drop and we pull out the wool for chilly morning dog walks on the beach.
And, of course, we will be witnessing and photographing all the beauty we can grab -  fodder for future paintings and creative endeavors that haven't yet been imagined.

On the easel, just completed, this selfie-inspired portrait (what to do when you've run out of inspirational models!) in oils.  Underneath the portrait is a full failure of a painting, which became a lovely base of texture to keep things from becoming too precious. Beginning with a notanized photograph, I roughed in a sketch in blue oil pastel.  Then a liquin-thinned wash of white mixed with ivory, grabbing the blue pastel edges and thinning it all into the beginnings of flesh-tones.  The requisite 80 million layers of paint, this time with a very small brush (usually I opt for something large to keep things loose).  The small brush allows some natural mottling and texture. The hair was roughed in with a rubber brayer, some chopsticks and the occasional shirt-sleeve (unintended)  

​The last painting of summer.  And now....fall!
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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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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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