- Published on
We Are the Thing Itself
"We Are the Thing Itself" - oil on clayboard, 14 x 18 inches. (Click on the image to purchase)
Behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern… the whole world is a work of art… there is no Shakespeare… no Beethoven… no God; we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself. VIRGINIA WOOLF
Here we are, near the end of the year, and the full weight of introspection about all that has happened in those twelve months - all that has been said, done, created, destroyed, messed up, built upon, toppled, exulted, celebrated and mourned is upon me.
But maybe we can narrow that down and contemplate just one piece of that big ol' pie: what is the state of the art situation?
Woolf's words grabbed me and plopped me in a chair to face this: we are the thing itself.
Oh. Wait. Hmmm. My own words fail me, even as the thought of this concept has my brain (and heart and spirit) on high alert because THIS IS SOMETHING BIG. The separation between everything begins to fall, and the words of Thich Nhat Hanh softly nudge me:
Oh. Wait. Hmmm. My own words fail me, even as the thought of this concept has my brain (and heart and spirit) on high alert because THIS IS SOMETHING BIG. The separation between everything begins to fall, and the words of Thich Nhat Hanh softly nudge me:
"About thirty years ago I was looking for an English word to describe our deep interconnection with everything else. I liked the word “togetherness,” but I finally came up with the word “interbeing.” The verb “to be” can be misleading, because we cannot be by ourselves, alone. “To be” is always to “inter-be.” If we combine the prefix “inter” with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, “inter-be.” To inter-be and the action of interbeing reflects reality more accurately. We inter-are with one another and with all life."
And there we have it. We cannot be separate from our art or those who see it. The state of the art situation here in December is: I can see how I am the thing itself. And the art is a part of that big ol' pie - it is berries and sugar and butter and flour. Not just a piece of the pie, but the pie itself. And all the things that make it - the inspiration, the paint, the brushes, the paper, the sun through the skylights, the music in the background. I inter-am with the art, and with you, dear reader - we inter-be. Lucky, lucky me!
The annual gesso murder/vandalizing has begun! Take a look!
It's time for the last Reader Giveaway of 2023 Leave a comment. below describing your big AHA of the year. One (or more) lucky reader (s) will be selected at random to receive something free from the studio. Hooray!
It's time for the last Reader Giveaway of 2023 Leave a comment. below describing your big AHA of the year. One (or more) lucky reader (s) will be selected at random to receive something free from the studio. Hooray!
- Published on
"A Preponderance of Pondering" - oil on Yupo, 19.75 x 25 inches. Available here, at Artfinder and at Bluethumb.
Tis the season for pondering.
Brisk, blustery, overcast, drizzly and growing darker as the days shorten. The monsters have left the studio to hang out at the pub, and here at Malarkey Central there remain some random rabbits and this painted lady, who claims to be the spokesperson for contemplation.
Ponderers of the world, do you feel the fall? Are your thoughts deeper, richer, more velvety as winter approaches? Are your reveries more reflective? Do you roll and ruminate, cerebrate and speculate?
A Preponderance of Pondering
Sometimes, my cogitation causes agitation. Deliberation and examination makes a conflagration of my harmoniousness. Yup, over-thinking can make a fine mess.
But channel it down the right rabbit hole and you might just find the lyrics to an as yet unwritten musical about rabbits. Which might lead to painting a passel of lagomorphs. All of whom are quite excited to meet you, dear reader. Just as soon as we complete this particular ponder.
But channel it down the right rabbit hole and you might just find the lyrics to an as yet unwritten musical about rabbits. Which might lead to painting a passel of lagomorphs. All of whom are quite excited to meet you, dear reader. Just as soon as we complete this particular ponder.
About the art: If I haven't gushed enough about oil on Yupo, let me gush a little more. Building layers on Yupo is delicious. And carving back through those wet layers with a small rubber wedge creates the most satisfying textures and lines (for example, the highlights in her headpiece) I wanted to build the background layers to suggest but not define, to provide a slightly abstracted setting and incorporate the figure. Dragging a wide rubber wedge through the wet paint created just the right amount of line, and a little massaging of the paint with the wedge smoothed out unwanted hard edges easily. A few blops (that's a technical term, right?) of liquin-thinned red for the drips as the final touch.
There is still time to check out The Downside of Lycanthropy online and at Unlimited IPA in Portland. This guy has had a particularly hard go of it. He'd love a. hug...just as soon as he washes away the evidence. :)
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"The Thing With Feathers (One and Two)", oil on plywood, each 16 x 15 x .25 inches. Available here, at Artfinder and at Bluethumb.
“Moving on, as a concept, is for stupid people, because any sensible person knows grief is a long-term project. I refuse to rush. - MAX PORTER, Grief is the Thing With Feathers
“Moving on, as a concept, is for stupid people, because any sensible person knows grief is a long-term project. I refuse to rush. - MAX PORTER, Grief is the Thing With Feathers
Both hope and grief are things with feathers.
In Porter's book, a crow represents grief, the thing with feathers, and the thing which landed in our home this week. Our sweet girl, Lilly, is gone, and our tiny tribe of four is now three.
In Porter's book, a crow represents grief, the thing with feathers, and the thing which landed in our home this week. Our sweet girl, Lilly, is gone, and our tiny tribe of four is now three.
The Thing With Feathers (One)
The Thing With Feathers (Two)
I didn't know if or how the art could help.
Silly me.
These two paintings have been watching me, waiting for their moment, which is apparently now. Wild things with feathers, each a set of hope and grief, encouraging and comforting. They are odd birds which began as exaggerations of crows, and then became their own things entirely. Which hope and grief can do, as well.
Porter writes: “Perfect devices:...crows. [They] can do things other characters can't, like eat sorrow, un-birth secrets and have theatrical battles with language and God.” Oh. The power of feathers.
Silly me.
These two paintings have been watching me, waiting for their moment, which is apparently now. Wild things with feathers, each a set of hope and grief, encouraging and comforting. They are odd birds which began as exaggerations of crows, and then became their own things entirely. Which hope and grief can do, as well.
Porter writes: “Perfect devices:...crows. [They] can do things other characters can't, like eat sorrow, un-birth secrets and have theatrical battles with language and God.” Oh. The power of feathers.
Congratulations to Carl S! Wonder Mike selected your name at random to win the September Reader Giveaway! Email your shipping address to thewanderingsoflola@gmail.com and your prize will be on the way! Thank you to everyone who participated. :)
Something monstrous is coming in October!
THE DOWNSIDE OF LYCANTHROPY
opens Oct 1 here and at Unlimited IPA in Portland, Oregon
Werewolves, vampires, monsters and more.
Just in time for the spookiest month of all.
- Published on
Simply Understanding
"Simply Understanding" - oil on Yupo, 19.5 x 24.5. Available here, at Artfinder and at Bluethumb.
What’s one area of your life that you keep trying to “solve” instead of simply understanding? This doesn’t have to necessarily be a relationship either. People try to “solve” their health problems with fad diets, when often they first need to develop an awareness of the emotions that enable the problems in the first place.
In my own life, I’ve often tried to “solve” my creativity by over-planning books and projects, when really I just needed to sit down and create and understand what I was feeling. - MARK MANSON
What’s one area of your life that you keep trying to “solve” instead of simply understanding? This doesn’t have to necessarily be a relationship either. People try to “solve” their health problems with fad diets, when often they first need to develop an awareness of the emotions that enable the problems in the first place.
In my own life, I’ve often tried to “solve” my creativity by over-planning books and projects, when really I just needed to sit down and create and understand what I was feeling. - MARK MANSON
Here in the studio, the love affair with pink continues. This time bouncing off the pink in an abstractscape form.
And Manson's words arrived in my in-box right on time - I am a "solver" - I throw my efforts at solving things before I even truly understand them. In my creative life, yes, but also in my regular life and in relationships. Trying to solve something feels active, empowered, strong. Trying to sit with it and feel it feels risky, vulnerable, exposed, naked.
Manson encourages us to listen to others more instead of attempting to provide solutions, but also (and more importantly) to listen to ourselves. To not fix, to not push away, to just feel it and understand why it is there in the first place.
And so I practice this in the paint, hoping it will ooze out into the rest of my world.
How about you, dear reader? Are you a solver? Or do you sit with and understand things? Leave a comment below. One lucky reader will win a small original piece of art, just for being vulnerable. Yay!
Manson encourages us to listen to others more instead of attempting to provide solutions, but also (and more importantly) to listen to ourselves. To not fix, to not push away, to just feel it and understand why it is there in the first place.
And so I practice this in the paint, hoping it will ooze out into the rest of my world.
How about you, dear reader? Are you a solver? Or do you sit with and understand things? Leave a comment below. One lucky reader will win a small original piece of art, just for being vulnerable. Yay!
Simply Understanding
About the art - beginning with white, white WHITE Yupo and a colored pencil. Lightly sketching some large shapes. Blending neutrals for sky and foreground and loosely adding them with an extra large rubber wedge. Moving the liquin-thinned paint on the Yupo is gloriously tactile and creates lovely textures. Adding pinks, then adding color to the pinks to create hot and cool zones. Using a small brush and some dark darks with restraint. Gamsol-thinned dripping paint added as a final touch. This piece feels like candy. Yum.
- Published on
Under the Morning Moon
"Under the Morning Moon" - oil on canvas, 26 x 31.5 x 1. Ready to hang. Available here, at Artfinder and at Bluethumb.
“The main thing is this — when you get up in the morning you must take your heart in your two hands. You must do this every morning.” - GRACE PALEY on growing older.
“The main thing is this — when you get up in the morning you must take your heart in your two hands. You must do this every morning.” - GRACE PALEY on growing older.
I suppose I am at an age where I spend a bit of time thinking about, well, age.
Time seems to run faster the older I get. And quite a few people who once were are no longer. It isn't a morbid dwelling or preoccupation that I have, just a recognition of what time it is (in my life) along with a sense of preciousness.
When Paley's quote crossed my path, a part of me sighed and thought "THIS!" Yes, holding my own heart in my two hands in the morning - it sets me on a path of cherishing the day and myself within it. Mostly. But it is an excellent start to things.
Time seems to run faster the older I get. And quite a few people who once were are no longer. It isn't a morbid dwelling or preoccupation that I have, just a recognition of what time it is (in my life) along with a sense of preciousness.
When Paley's quote crossed my path, a part of me sighed and thought "THIS!" Yes, holding my own heart in my two hands in the morning - it sets me on a path of cherishing the day and myself within it. Mostly. But it is an excellent start to things.
About the art: inspired by some very stylized and abstracted figure suggestions from the AI bot and then rendered with my own particular twist. Beginning with a toned stretched canvas and sketching with loose, liquin-thinned oil paint. Working from the faces outward and using color and highlights to draw the eye to the intimate moment in the center. Carving through wet paint with a very small rubber wedge to create movement in the clothing and background. Resisting the urge to overly define - letting the paint abstract slightly as it moves away from the figures.
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The Landscape of Our Perceptions
"The Landscape of Our Perceptions" - oil on linen canvas, 26 x 32 x .75. Ready to hang. Available here, at Artfinder and at Bluethumb.
“... art has an effect on our general cognitive state that goes beyond how much we enjoy it, to change the way we perceive events and make decisions.” - Daphna Shohamy
There is a new study out which suggests that viewing abstract art can cause measurable mental changes in the viewer. Wait - what? A little abstract art immersion to nudge your perceptions and influence your decision making - view two paintings and call me in the morning, says the art doctor.
I know how much an abstract painting can influence my emotions. Some cause me to feel extreme tension and unsettledness, others instigate an expansive sense of awe.
“... art has an effect on our general cognitive state that goes beyond how much we enjoy it, to change the way we perceive events and make decisions.” - Daphna Shohamy
There is a new study out which suggests that viewing abstract art can cause measurable mental changes in the viewer. Wait - what? A little abstract art immersion to nudge your perceptions and influence your decision making - view two paintings and call me in the morning, says the art doctor.
I know how much an abstract painting can influence my emotions. Some cause me to feel extreme tension and unsettledness, others instigate an expansive sense of awe.
What I did not know was that we tend to place psychological distance between ourselves and abstract art, associating it with things in the future or things far away. I was unaware that art viewers tend to take in the entirety of an abstract painting in a search for meaning, while focusing on the details in more representational works.
I'd be curious to know how you experience abstract art. Leave a comment below - one (or more) lucky commenters will be entered in this month's Reader Giveaway, and get a little something free in the mail from me. Woot!
I'd be curious to know how you experience abstract art. Leave a comment below - one (or more) lucky commenters will be entered in this month's Reader Giveaway, and get a little something free in the mail from me. Woot!
About the art: beginning with a primed linen canvas and thinned oil paint, marking the darks with loose strokes with a rubber wedge and dragging the paint. Building layers working dark into light, blending with a soft brush, paper towels and fingers. Adding more dark washes of glaze and dragging them to create movement. Ending with lights and hot spots using a palette knife and a small rubber wedge. This piece is inspired by both our adventures in the wilderness and our wanderings in reading books, combining the misty mystery of mountains hiked with the unpredictable tempest that is the ocean of seafaring adventures.
- Published on
Modor
"Modor" - oil on canvas, 26 x 32 x 1. Ready to hang. Available here and at Artfinder.
To join the company of women, to be adults, we go through a period of proudly boasting of having survived our own mother's indifference, anger, overpowering love, the burden of her pain, her tendency to drink or teetotal, her warmth or coldness, praise or criticism, sexual confusions or embarrassing clarity. It isn't enough that she sweat, labored, bore her daughters howling or under total anesthesia or both. No. She must be responsible for our psychic weaknesses the rest of her life. It is alright to feel kinship with your father, to forgive. We all know that. But your mother is held to a standard so exacting that it has no principles. She simply must be to blame. - Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum
Mother's Day is a maelstrom of emotion for some of us. Our own mothers, the mothering we have done (and may still do) - Erdrich gets in my craw with this quote. Oh and oh.
To join the company of women, to be adults, we go through a period of proudly boasting of having survived our own mother's indifference, anger, overpowering love, the burden of her pain, her tendency to drink or teetotal, her warmth or coldness, praise or criticism, sexual confusions or embarrassing clarity. It isn't enough that she sweat, labored, bore her daughters howling or under total anesthesia or both. No. She must be responsible for our psychic weaknesses the rest of her life. It is alright to feel kinship with your father, to forgive. We all know that. But your mother is held to a standard so exacting that it has no principles. She simply must be to blame. - Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum
Mother's Day is a maelstrom of emotion for some of us. Our own mothers, the mothering we have done (and may still do) - Erdrich gets in my craw with this quote. Oh and oh.
I have blamed my own mother for many things. In fairness to me, she was an abusive and critical alcoholic. In fairness to her (the benefit of hindsight, information gleaned after her death, wisdom and the passage of time), she was doing the best with what she had. I now imagine her somewhere being loved, encouraged and held; smiling and content. She might have loved me, had she herself been loved.
As for me, I was not a perfect mother. Not even close. There are many (so many) things I would do differently had I known what I know now. But I loved (and still love) my kids. Fiercely, strongly, over protectively, probably. As the pendulum swings from one extreme in one generation to the opposite in another.
But it makes no difference, I realize, the mothers and their methods. In the case of my mother to me, and me to my own children, she simply must be to blame.
As with most of the pieces that emerge in the studio, I had no idea what this one's story was at first. She stared at me from the wall of finished and drying pieces for over a month. That gaze, that hair, those odd beings hovering near here. What the heck? And then she whispered modor....and I knew.
As for me, I was not a perfect mother. Not even close. There are many (so many) things I would do differently had I known what I know now. But I loved (and still love) my kids. Fiercely, strongly, over protectively, probably. As the pendulum swings from one extreme in one generation to the opposite in another.
But it makes no difference, I realize, the mothers and their methods. In the case of my mother to me, and me to my own children, she simply must be to blame.
As with most of the pieces that emerge in the studio, I had no idea what this one's story was at first. She stared at me from the wall of finished and drying pieces for over a month. That gaze, that hair, those odd beings hovering near here. What the heck? And then she whispered modor....and I knew.
About the art: beginning with an AI bot image from a prompt of "peculiar, naive, whimsical girl" and jumping off into this BIG canvas - toned with oil paint, painted in layers, then (oooooooooh then!) for the hair, big, big BIG oil sticks and big arm movements. This one took several weeks, but was worth every second. She's a force of nature.
The May Reader Giveaway is coming! Stay tuned next week for a reader question and the opportunity to win a piece of original art! Hooray!
- Published on
"Just Let Everything" - acrylic and charcoal on cradled birchwood panel, 11" x 14" x .75". Ready to hang (sides are bare birchwood; no need to frame. Hanging wire attached). Available here and at Artfinder.
Maybe we shouldn't try to understand everything.
And just let everything wash over us.
- BRIAN RUTENBERG
I don't know about you, dear reader, but I spend a lot of time trying to understand things.
That means reading about things, talking about things, thinking about things, making decisions about things, mulling things over, rolling things around on my tongue. Trying things on, turning things over, pulling things inside out. But during these snail-paced pandemic times, I am determined to also try just letting everything wash over me. Which looks a lot like naming a thing and then letting it be. Or not naming it and letting it be. Just feeling it and letting it, well, stay or go or morph or bloom or even die.
Maybe we shouldn't try to understand everything.
And just let everything wash over us.
- BRIAN RUTENBERG
I don't know about you, dear reader, but I spend a lot of time trying to understand things.
That means reading about things, talking about things, thinking about things, making decisions about things, mulling things over, rolling things around on my tongue. Trying things on, turning things over, pulling things inside out. But during these snail-paced pandemic times, I am determined to also try just letting everything wash over me. Which looks a lot like naming a thing and then letting it be. Or not naming it and letting it be. Just feeling it and letting it, well, stay or go or morph or bloom or even die.
Just Let Everything
And what I've learned is this: sometimes a thing will reveal itself when I stop trying to understand it. WHAT? That's some sort of zen magic there. Doing NOTHING and learning SOMETHING? But here's the rub - the reading, mulling, talking and thinking about things opens a world of ways of viewing those things. So that when I do (finally, reluctantly sometimes) just let a thing BE and it reveals or resolves, it is only because I tried to understand that I can recognize what just happened.
Sigh. Life is messy. We might as well be covered in paint.
Sigh. Life is messy. We might as well be covered in paint.
About the art: Beginning with an inspiration photo and a chunky piece of charcoal, working quickly to "catch" the gesture without overly defining it. Coming in with color to refine a bit and then jumping off from there. I got SO excited about the process and the paint that I neglected to film the final color applications. Oy! That's what happens when a painter is in charge of the video. :)
