Lola Jovan Art Musings and Random Thoughts

The Beliefs That Cloud Your Vision

6/26/2023

The Beliefs That Cloud Your Vision

"The Beliefs That Cloud Your Vision" - oil on cradled wood panel, 20 x 20 x 1.5. Ready to hang. Available here and at Artfinder.

Come new to this
day. Remove the rigid
overcoat of experience,
the nothing of knowing,
the beliefs that could
your vision.

Leave behind the stories of your life. Spit out the
sour taste of unmet expectation.
Let the stale scent of what-ifs
waft back into the swamp
of your useless fears.

from 'Prescription for the Disillusioned" by Rebecca del Rio

Here is the thing about rabbit holes - the deeper you go, the more you discover. And sometimes what you find is not what you'd hoped for, not what you imagined, not what you wanted. But there it is. And once you've seen it, you cannot unsee it.

Alice in Wonderland is an allegory for many things. The more time I spend there, the more it becomes, well, a bit personal. How cheeky! But this is what happens when an artist crawls into a theme and shines a light on every little thing. Somehow, magically, life itself becomes illuminated.

I'm curious...and curiouser. What do you see in this piece, dear reader?

The Wildest of the Wild

It's COMING!

A Song for the Hunted is nearly here! Join mixed media mosaic artist Helaine Abramson and me as we explore wolves and women in a new show that pushes our creative boundaries while celebrating the bonds we share as women and wildlings.

Show opens July first and runs all month long, right here at www.lolajovan.com/exhibits

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Losses and Hardships

6/19/2023

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"Losses and Hardships" - oil on plywood, 15 x 16.25. Available here and at Artfinder.

Fairy tales were a natural fit for the fantastical imagination of the young artist. Since her earliest childhood, she seemed to dwell partway between the real world, with its disproportionate share of losses and hardships, and some otherworldly wonderland of levity and light — a wonderland Virginia could now bring to life for the world.

- from THE MARGINALIAN, on the life and art of teenage artist Virginia Francis Sterrett by Maria Popover.

The fairytale crowd are corralled into the studio waiting area this week, as we pause to mention the lives of crows. Alice and her cohorts will return next week with gusto.

Rocky and Natasha, our adopted crow family, seem to have lost not one, but two fledglings this season. Their little departed selves ended up in our vicinity, so we scooped them up and gave them a proper farewell.

Losses and Hardships

One of the crows (Natasha, we believe) spent a few late afternoons on the birdbath near the tiny memorial site, watery-eyed and listless. We know that crows do mourn, and we thought perhaps she was (and hoped she was not ill). We sat with her when we could, softly talking and making our own (awkward) crow sounds.

I suppose we have created a fairytale around these two city crows. We watch them, make up stories about what they're doing or thinking, add a wonderland of levity and light to their little lives. We illustrate with our words, appreciate with our eyes and connect with our hearts. Anthropomorphism at its best.

What we really want to know is - what stories do they conjure about us?

About the art - beginning with a crow photo and a ton of words about mourning and crows for the AI bot, I finally landed on an inspiration image that combined both birds and abstracts into something emotionally representative (in my eyes).

A piece of square, thin plywood left to me by my recently departed art friend seemed the perfect substrate for this subject. Beginning with thinned oil paint and the basic background, adding the crows one brushstroke at a time and resisting the urge to perfect the details. Walking back to look, walking forward to dab. This piece has been varnished with Gamvar Gloss, an odorless varnish which brings out every bit of color.

Congratulations, Molly and Dotty! Wonder Mike and Lilly drew your names out of a bag of treats - you're the winners of the June Reader Giveaway! Watch your mailboxes for a little original art coming your way. And thanks SO MUCH for participating!

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The Heart of Conflict

6/12/2023

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"The Heart of Conflict" - oil on paper, 18.5 x 18.5. Available here and at Artfinder.

As the ruler of Wonderland, the Queen of Hearts is the character that Alice must inevitably face to figure out the puzzle of Wonderland. In a sense, the Queen of Hearts is literally the heart of Alice’s conflict. - SPARKNOTES.COM

The long passage down through the rabbit hole has landed us at the feet of the Queen of Hearts.

She's terrifying, absolute in her rhetoric and yet, ultimately, just a playing card - powerless to actually harm anyone. Kind of like the inner critic, yes?

The Heart of Conflict

My inner Queen of Hearts shouts "off with her head!" over many things, both professional and personal. She's very loud, rather bossy, and takes up a lot of space between me and the other side of whatever she's yelling about. It is a challenge when the thing that trips you up is your own inner villain. Looking at this piece helps me shush her - I can replace her stern visage with an image of my inner cheerleader. Who might look something like Alice. :). More to come.

It's time for the JUNE READER GIVEAWAY! Leave a comment below about how you manage your own inner critic and be entered in a chance to win a small piece of art FREE!

About the art: the AI bot loves the Queen of Hearts. It has a way of making her quite frightening and imposing, if you give it enough words. Beginning with a soft pencil grid and adding a rough sketch, I placed a wash of thinned oil paint on the background. Then working from the face outward and gradually deepening the darks, making sure to keep blending the colors enough to mute them into this rather renaissance color palette. Ending with the hair, which was created with very thin paint and a round brush lightly held near the long end, dragged and rotated simultaneously to create a dreadlock/coil effect. She's beastly, and I kind of adore her.

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Impossible Things Before Breakfast

6/5/2023

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Impossible Things Before Breakfast

"Impossible Things Before Breakfast" - oil on cradled wood panel, 18 x 24 x .75. Ready to hang. Available here and at Artfinder.

Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Oh, let's DO believe in impossible things!

On our bookshelf here at home sits a growing collection of science fiction. Some as old as 1950, others as recent as 2022. When you read a span 70+ years of futuristic imaginings, it is easy to see how many of these "impossibilities" are now quite real.

As artists, writers and creators, we are charged with the mission of imagining the impossible, the improbable, the unlikely and the peculiar. Whether it is Alice in her best insectoid tea-serving form or the unsettling emotions of being human captured and rendered into a treasure of experience and deep beauty, or the landscape of a hidden mountain pass covered in mist and made magical for those who may never get to place two feet in that place - we carve a path in the human continuum that makes space for the unlikely to blossom into existence. Whoa.

Click on the image to link to the video

Here's a link to a 1960's BBC version of Alice In Wonderland. Mary Jean St Clair, the granddaughter of Alice Liddell, had a lot of concerns about this rendition. As a descendant of the girl who inspired Lewis Carroll's story. she worried that "the film would make her grandmother ‘appear into some sort of strange person’ when ‘[s]he was not’. The BBC version was not intended for children, and doesn't even use costumes! I admit to not having watched it in its entirety. But I am fascinate by this very peculiar version of Alice.

About the art: beginning with a wood panel with a very smooth surface treatment (almost as slippery as Yupo) and adding layers of dark, liquin- thinned oil paint. Moving the paint with a large rubber wedge to create a spider-web effect in the background and letting the darkness fade into the bright foreground. A rough sketch of "Alice" with thinned paint, then off to the races in creating this quirky piece. Final details with a small brush.

The AI bot and I are now on the same page about Alice. Together we are well down the rabbit hole of peculiarity and improbable Alices. It is absolutely delicious.

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The Beliefs That Cloud Your Vision

Losses and Hardships

The Heart of Conflict

Impossible Things Before Breakfast

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