The Game Breaks Down

The Game Breaks Down

 

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​The Game Breaks Down
oil on Yupo
12 x 19 inches (with a small border for framing)
This item is unmounted and unframed.
(click on the image to purchase)

If all those things -- trust, respect, etiquette -- stop functioning, the rules clash and the game breaks down. - Haruki Murakami, Killing Commendatore

​Society depends on a number of thin strands of tenuous agreements. For example, I won't go around killing you and yours, and you won't kill me and mine. I won't steal your stuff and you will leave my stuff alone. People don't walk unannounced into each other's homes, kidnap them, lob grenades over fences, redecorate other people's houses and so forth. Well, generally they don't.

Or at least, in the past, it was a rare occurence.

But the gloves seem to be off in the world. Trust, respect, etiquette have stopped functioning at all in much of the online world and even in real life. I cannot count the number of times my eyebrows have raised at what people do not hesitate to do anymore. Including killing humans in boats and kidnapping leaders of other countries. 

So to begin this year I am imagining a world where trust, respect, etiquette are cool again. Where we look upon each other with compassion and curiosity, seeking connection and cooperation instead of annihilation.

And with that thought, a couple of unluckly passengers in the pea green boat working together to cross the stormy seas. 

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About the art: beginning with a piece of gesso'd Yupo, I created a mask in the shape of the critters and boat and painted around them with a thin layer of background paint. I use the mask technique when my hands feel uncoordinated (hello, arthritis!) and I want to be sure to get the composition and placement just right.  Once the initial background layer was dry, I worked exclusively on the characters first, building the layers and details from the heads and faces outward. Then the sail and moon, then the boat.  While those layers dried, more pinks and plums in the sky and movement in the sea. A final layer of detail on the characters and the boat, and one more layer on the background. After a couple weeks of thorough drying, a final layer of varnish over the whole shebang to really make the colors pop. 

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The Question Exchange with the amazing Dotty Seiter continues!

Here is my question number three for Dotty, and her gobsmackingly gorgeous response: 

Main Course - if creating was a main course (a sandwich, even!), what would it be and why?



piatto principale

the main course of creating,
according to my poet/artist 
friend's way of thinking,
is not a particular meal or dish but, 
instead,
an actual course--
a flow, 
a pathway, 
a series of illuminating
moments, 
an alchemy, 
a transcendence,
a transformation, 
a lived experience highly
sensory and immediate,
a space outside of time and place,
a threshold consciousness
with which she becomes one,
inhabiting it as it inhabits her,
animated by
generative energy 
and invigorating tension
that resolve at the intersection
of process and product
no matter the process,
no matter the product.

in other words, 
not beef wellington,
not quiche lorraine, 
not shrimp diavolo,
but a life force
that sustains her from the outside in 
and the inside out. 

buon appetito!

--dotty seiter

​And here is Dotty's third question for me,
along with my response in art:


What can you tell me about painting from feeling?
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For this one, an image says it pretty well!
​ A leap off a cliff, a trust fall, but I do it gleefully. 

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While Dotty and I continue our Question Exchange over the coming weeks, a new winner and a new exchange will begin! Congratulations to Diana D. - you're the winner of the December Reader Giveaway! Huzzah! Send a message to me at [email protected] and let me know what method of exchange works best for you. I am looking forward to it!

Many thanks to all who have read, viewed and listened to the Question Exchanges over the last couple of months. Upon reflection, I am certain I personally feel enriched beyond expectation by the entire process!  Anyone who is interested in participating in a future exchange please reach out to me at [email protected] and I'll gladly leap into it with you!

For now, blog comments will be just that - comments! Thank you for them! Your readership and participation make this whole blog space sparkly and so very rewarding! xo