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Whither Shall We Wander?

8/21/2023

4 Comments

 
"Whither Shall We Wander?" - oil on paper, 20.5 x 20.5.  Available here, at Artfinder and at Bluethumb.

If you simply do what everyone else has already done, you will be rewarded with the same mediocre results everyone else has already gotten. The only model for success is to avoid most of the world’s models for success. - MARK MANSON
Here we go a'wandering...but which way shall we go?  Manson gives us a clue - NOT the way everyone else says to go.  NOT the way others go.  NOT the way the books say, the articles advise, the neighbors nudge.  Which means, of course, go the other way.

​It is a massive trust fall to go the other way.  A risk! A dare!  A danger! But there lie the rewards. Things unexpected, something hitherto unseen. 
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Whither Shall We Wander?
Whether it is the direction you point the art you are creating, your professional life, your personal life or your feet on the path every day, going the other way from everyone else is not the easiest route.  There may be catcalls, heckling, judging, name-calling, intentional sabotage or tossed tomatoes.  Once you're standing in the place of wonder,  you may no longer even care what the naysayers are up to.  Let's go there.​

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About the art:  This piece was inspired by the AI bot, which very much loves to give this view of characters - from behind, silhouetted, wondering what they're thinking, seeing, feeling.  It grabs me, this view, which leaves me with more questions than answers.

Choosing a color palette inspired by the artist Fritz Scholder and an illustrative style more like Möbius (Jean Geraud) (I am a big fan of mash-ups, in art and in music) and beginning with a light pencil sketch to delineate the horizon line and the figures.  Working from the horizon line outward with a rubber wedge and liquin-thinned oil paint, adding layers until colors begin to pop off of one another.  Making the darks darker, and darker, and darker even while allowing tiny highlights to remain.  As always, resisting the urge to define exactly what is out there on the horizon, allowing the viewer's imagination to complete the painting.



​Big congratulations to Kyle J and Liz W!  Wonder Mike and Lilly drew your names as winners of the August Reader Giveaway!  Huzzah!  

Email your address to the shipping team at [email protected] to claim your prize!  Thanks for participating - look for a new giveaway at the end of September!
4 Comments
Dotty Seiter gmail link
8/21/2023 04:20:43 pm

I was just today thinking about THERE, about the place of wonder that I often inhabit when I paint. The place of wonder is perhaps more aptly described as a process of wonder. It's movement. Movement towards that which is my essential self. A big piece of the wonder—and it is a huge gift—is the eye-popping heart-opening discovery again and again that I am the only one who can paint what *I* paint. [words are kinda failing me here]

Speaking of eye popping: wow! WHITHER jumps right off the page, dazzling with color and shape and questions. I love it all. Especially the questions.

Reply
Lola
8/22/2023 02:51:52 pm

Dotty!!! Yes and YES! It is a movement, a process, a flowing thing. And so personal - your words are just right. I am right there with you! Thanks hugely! xo

Reply
Carol Edan link
8/24/2023 03:39:13 am

Really LOVE your color palette. Wow, you pulled off that "nothing in the center" rule! Like Frost's poem, The Road Not Taken, one of my favorites. We are all on our own special road!
PS: I have chosen a similar palette, tetrad of green, violet, yellow,red for my next painting. Love how that violet and red-orange POP!

Reply
lola
8/26/2023 02:28:07 pm

Carol!!!! Thanks so much! "Nothing in the center" - thanks for the lovely comment! And I cannot wait to see your next painting in that palette! xo

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Here's the blue wild, where
tiny dreamers ride beasts, speak
​ birdsong, hold the moon.

(by poet Mary W. Cox)
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  • Home
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