It isn't always easy, of course. It is, however, always messy. Werewolves just aren't that neat, and we don't expect them to be.
The July Reader Giveaway continues! Leave a comment on any blog post this month to be automatically entered to win a piece of original art - free!
And thanks for reading, subscribing and sharing this blog. You, dear readers, make this little space sparkle! xo
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Which sent a flood of awareness coursing over me - all the people whose benefits, jobs, housing, education, food, utilities, medical care and citizenship are at stake now. First a trickle, then the flood. But we see you, human monsters. We see you and we vote. We protest, we write letters and send emails and make phone calls. We see you.
About the art: a mad fury of paint-laden palette knives and Yupo, big gestures and small, creating the landscape even as I wandered through it. Unrelenting paint, colors melding, smashing, carving and cresting, letting the chaos both exist and get wrangled simultaneously. Walking away before getting precious with it. Congratulations to Carol E! Wonder Mike chose your name at random from this month's commenters. Hooray! Send your mailing address to [email protected] and your original art will be flying across the world in a jiffy.
Thank you to everyone who participated this month! A new giveaway begins one week from today.
About the art: I can't seem to stay away from monsters. This is a larger iteration of a guy I recently made and kind of adore. He's enthusiastic about EVERYTHING! Beginning with an unprimed cradled wood panel, I applied a sparse layer of white gesso (keeping the background a bit like a white-washed picket fence). I used black gesso to create the vertical backdrop for Marvin, masking off the areas for balloon and figure. The rest was a joyful meditation of pen and ink (Rotring Tikky Graphic Artist Pens work well on gesso'd wood) and then a black Posca pen for the ground beneath Marvin.
But back to the quote at the beginning of this post - I absolutely live in the gap. What I imagine and what I paint are two different things. But I am relentlessly determined to have my skills catch up to my dreamscapes. Probably they never will. But there is always the next one. Which is a lot like hiking. What's over the next hill? Around the bend? Across the stream? Always curious about what's coming next. Always willing to go and look. About the art: beginning with a piece of art board (donated by my artist husband while he organized his studio space) I roughed in a mottled sky using a palette knife and thinned oil paint. Using the side of the palette knife and some dark paint, I roughed in a landscape in a V shape with a couple of hills. Working quickly and abandoning preciousness, I build layers of paint until there was some texture to it. Grabbing a piece of butcher paper, I pressed it into the paint to lift some of the layers, then pressed the paint-laden paper in other sections, creating a rocky ground look. Carving back into the paint with a rubber wedge and creating some "treeness", then adding color to those verticals with the palette knife. Inspired by hikes in the waterfall section of the Columbia River Gorge. The June Reader Giveaway continues! Leave a comment on any blog post this month to be automatically entered to win a piece of original art - FREE! And thanks for your comments and your support!
Why? Because making art, being an artist, creating artistic pieces is largely a solitary life. It requires vast stretches of solitude and loneliness, and we may just "go a little mad" as Le Carre says, spending so much time in a world no one else sees. But there is also a sense of community - slim strings of connection and resonance - which allow a little feeling of being a bit less isolated when those strings are strummed (or twanged or plucked). So here's to all of you out there in lonely places of creativity, making magic behind the curtain. I'm sending a geishanaut to your galaxy to check in on you. :) About the art: this is a paint over of an older oil painting. The beauty of it is the instant texture and colorful underpainting (which shows through a wee bit in the geishanaut's uniform). I jumped off from Stoveland's idea with my own AI bot session, asking for a mash-up of Diebenkorn, Moebius and Fritz Scholder as style instructions. Armed with a bevy of painterly compositions, colors and figures, I ultimately settled on this piece. I began with the background, taping off the quadrants and applying thin layers of color. Then the figure, loosely brushed in and then refined as the composition took shape. Carving back through the wet background to create some swirling movement. Adding many many glazing layers to suggest light and shadow. This quiet explorer has been most excellent company in the studio. It's June! A new month, a new giveaway! Leave a comment on any blog post during the month of June to be automatically entered to win a piece of original art - FREE! And thanks always to everyone who reads, comments and shares this blog. It helps make this solitary artist feel a little less like a voice in the wilderness of the internet. :)
About the art: an intuitive piece which was spontaneously created after the crows returned from the murder season and began hanging out and talking to us again. Beginning with a rough sketch of the crow in wet oil paint, working from the outside in with loose strokes and a wide brush, then from the inside-out with a detail brush. Resisting the urge to overly define the background and allowing the mystery of a crow in the suggested nighttime to dominate the piece. The frame is painted in matte black gesso, and the painting itself has been finished with a heavy coat of varnish to provide protection in the event it is used as an altar. Holy macaroons! Is it the end of May already? Many thanks to all who read, listened to and shared the blog this month. And all the commenters - thanks hugely! Your thoughtful words and responses to the art and writing informs my creative process, and I am deeply grateful. :)
Congratulations to Kris and to Dotty! Wonder Mike chose your names at random this month as winners of the May Reader Giveaway! Send your mailing addresses to [email protected] and your prizes will be in the mail lickety-split! A new giveaway begins next month!
About the art: I'm continuing my exploration of incorporating the wood panel color and texture into paintings. It feels very exciting to me ! For this one I began with a sketch and created a stencil to mask off the figure shape. I taped the top and bottom and then put on a smooth coat of black gesso, preserving the wood for Santa's figure. Then some painstaking pen and ink for all of the line work, and a tiny Posca Pen in white for the highlights. Though a figure of this size and detail might seem tedious, it is actually quite meditative. It requires full presence to be in control of every line - no mind wandering when using pen and ink on wood! I'm delighted with this one - grinning every time I walk past it. :) The May Reader Giveaway continues! Please leave a comment on any blog post this month to be automatically entered. The winner will be selected at random at the end of the month, and will receive a piece of original art in the mail - FREE! Thanks to everyone who reads and comments...you provide valuable feedback, insights and confirmation that I am not a voice alone in the wilderness of the internet! Hooray for all of you! Thanks a million! xo
And in that moment of emotional bombardment, in the wave of feeling and even potential overwhelm, we just may see clearly that we are hitched to everything. We think of ourselves as separate, as individual, as apart. But we are deeply interconnected with all of it. All of it. With this may come the realization, and the acceptance, that the present moment is truly all we can reasonably handle. It is all we can feel, all we can see, all we can process. It is a relief to set aside the future and the past for the small (tiny, infinitesimal) now. Oh oh OH! There it is. All I can handle. All I can be. About the art: this is a paint-over of a piece I was quite dissatisfied with. But as with so many things, that underpainting became the foundation and texture of something else. Moving intuitively with a rubber wedge and palette knife, creating a meandering wander through a landscape of bare trees, laying on paint and carving back through it with the wedge to create texture and to expose the under layers. Resisting the urge to overly define. Allowing the eye to fill in the blanks. Have I been here before? The May Reader Giveaway continues! Leave a comment on any blog post this month to be automatically entered to win a piece of original art - FREE! I'm curious this month - how many of you listen to the blog? How many read? Is there something more (or less) you'd like to see? Thanks in advance for your feedback - this community of readers is exquisitely wise and insightful, and your thoughts matter to me greatly. xo
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AuthorLola Jovan 
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