risk

“There are no rules, That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about.” -Helen Frankenthaler

In January, 2020 I will participate in a group show titled “Risk: the Art of Uncertainty” at Waterstone Gallery in Portland, Oregon. The concept behind the show is that artists take risks all the time in creating their work, but the viewing public only sees the ones that “succeeded” or that the artist felt were ready for prime time. In this group show we are attempting to show you the vulnerabilities, missteps, and u-turns that artists face before their final triumphs (hopefully!).

One of my favorite artists is Helen Frankenthaler. Here is something she had to say about artists and risk: “I’d rather risk an ugly surprise then rely on things I know I can do.” For this show I am exhibiting four paintings I did for myself, as part of my “playtime” in the studio. They were done over old paintings with used paint (remelted but muted in hue since the paint I save is usually from scrapings that are a mix of many colors) and were exploring a subject matter that interests me but was unrelated to the work I was doing for my show (in April, 2020…stay tuned for more on that). Here is one of them:

“The Weight of Things”, encaustic, 10x6

At the time I did this series I was spending time looking at the way rocks and logs are tossed against one another at the beach, a tumble of sometimes precariously balanced shapes. Then I visited Central Oregon last spring and noticed the way the basalt rock was similarly tilted and stacked and leaning against rocks to either side of it in the rocky river canyons there. I thought of how we are all leaning on one another, holding each other up and helping each other stay upright. It felt like a beautiful metaphor for life. I wanted to express that in paint.

I am still not sure if these paintings are successful or just an “ugly surprise” but I liked them and wanted to share them with others. I know they are different from the more colorful and patterned work I have been doing lately but I also feel they harken back to the time I was working only in black and white and doing still life images. I have a certain fondness for the Martha of that time…

Here is another Frankenthaler quote: “The only rule is that there are no rules. Anything is possible…It’s all about risks, deliberate risks.” Please join me at Waterstone to see some of my deliberate risks and those of my fellow gallery artists.

at the movies

In my last blog post I talked about two artists I discovered whose work and life inspired and moved me. This time I want to mention two movies about artists that I saw recently. The first one is a documentary titled “Nothing Changes: Art for Hank’s Sake”. It isn’t a particularly great piece of filmmaking but the subject of the film is compelling. 87-year old Hank Virgona commutes via subway six days a week to his studio in Union Square, New York where he makes art his way, with little in the way of professional accolades. Interviews with those that know him however reveal a beloved and respected artist among his peers in the building he works in. Moving, humorous, inspiring and well worth the 75 minutes it consumes.

The second film I saw recently was “Never Look Away”. I delayed viewing it since it is an off-putting 3 hours long, but after committing to watching it I discovered a wonderful treat of a movie. A thinly fictionalized recounting of Gerhard Richter’s early life, this film is visually stunning and exceptionally well done. From his earliest childhood with his aunt visiting a museum during the Nazi years to the beginning of his painting career, we see the trajectory of a sensitive and persistent man who knows the truth is in there somewhere and keeps looking (and painting) until he finds it. In German with English subtitles, but with a minimum of dialog, one gets to enjoy the cinematography without having to read too much.

What are your favorite movies about artists?

Eva and Jay

I have come across two women artists I didn’t know of whose paintings have knocked me off my feet. I am going to introduce you to them here.

First is Eva Kubbos. She was born in Lithuania but moved to Australia when she was 24 years old. I saw her work in a museum in Australia when I traveled there a couple of years ago. Her abstracted (and not so abstracted) landscapes had so much emotion in them, and her colors ranged from light and airy to deep and rich. Some of her paintings very obviously referenced the landscape, and others veer into pure abstraction. The one thing that unites them is that they are all an expression of the natural world. She titles all her work, whether representational or abstract, with words that describe her relationship to nature: “The Red Cliffs”, “Earth in Spring” and “Dark Summer” are a few of the titles I could find while scrolling through the internet.

I was delighted to discover that she also was a printmaker. While she was known for her oil paintings she also worked on paper with watercolor, and indeed that was the medium of the piece of hers I first saw at the museum. I was amazed at how dense her color was in the large watercolor that first drew me to her work. You can read more about her HERE.

Here are some examples of her work:

The second artist I just recently discovered is Jay deFeo. She was a contemporary of Eva Kubbos, as it turns out, and they both worked on paper as well as canvas. She was born on the East Coast and moved to the West Coast where she lived and worked until her death at age 60. Her drawings are mysterious and meticulously rendered, done in minimal color, while her paintings have a rawness to them with their rough edged shapes and slashes of color. I admire that she could express herself in both ways, not abandoning one in favor of the other. Her work also references nature so of course I feel a resonance there as well.

She was a contemporary of Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler, two more of my favorite artists. You can read more about her HERE.

Here are some examples of her work:

I am always so excited to find an artist who I didn’t know of before and research them and their work. It is even more exciting to me when I discover the creator of some image that draws me like a moth to the flame is a woman, perhaps one that has been less celebrated than her male contemporaries but is just as worthy. I hope you enjoy checking these artists out too.

the beauty of the book

Lately I have been captivated by the book. As you may have seen in my last blog post, as part of my “play” I took an old hard bound book and noodled around with it and turned it into something else entirely. Still a book, but altered in such a way as to make it very personal and fun. Since then I got a couple of other old books that I have started altering, but have gotten sidetracked by making my own sketchbooks (blank) and another book style that I shall call the spontaneous old print book, or SOP book.

I have a lot of old, failed mono prints and pieces left from cutting up and collaging works on paper. They are nice old bits so I have hung onto them (keeping old, failed work…that is another topic for another blog) knowing that eventually I will be able to find a use for them. So I dragged some out recently and below is a sequence of interior pages from one of the books. I am planning on going back into these SOP books and perhaps drawing or painting back into the pages.

These are full page spreads glued to board to make a sturdy book, reminiscent of a small child’s book. And here is one of the covers, made with another old print and painted tyvek for the spine which is a tough and good for an area of the book that gets handled a lot.

I have also made a number of my own sketchbooks. I like to make my own so I can make them the size I like and with the paper I like. Sometimes I use another old print for the cover like this:

On this one I painted over an old print for the cover, adding some stencil work and some direct painting with casein paint. The blank pages inside are domestic etch paper, which is off white and soft, great for pen or pencil work although you can’t erase too much as the surface of the paper isn’t tough..

And sometimes I just use plain covers so I can doodle and paint on them later, like this:

It takes me days to make one book, since they have to be glued and dried page by page, but it is a nice way to start the day while I am waiting for my wax to melt for my encaustic painting, or for getting warmed up to work on something else. I can work on these books for a few minutes or a few hours. It is more mechanical than creative since I have already done the creative part (the prints) making this is just a cut and paste exercise. I find it relaxing and a great way to get some new creative juices flowing.

play

After my last blog posting about getting stuck, I have been playing a lot in the studio. If I learned anything it is that I need to take some time during my weekly studio hours to make things that have no purpose, no destination, no audience. One thing that got me “unstuck” was just showing up, and screwing around. I had to approach my studio time during those frustrating months with an attitude of “whatever”, since nothing of any apparent value was happening.

The two things I have playing with lately have been altering old books and painting over old paintings using ideas I like but that may not relate in an obvious way with my gallery work. Here are a few examples of the book.

Here is the cover. The contents of the book all relate to trees and nature.

Here is a spread of two pages. Some of the images are of other peoples artwork I have saved because it resonated with me, or I just liked it. You can see I have sewn some of the pages

Some of the pages I just scribbled on. It was fun to doodle with no intent.

Some of the two page spreads included decorative papers I had in my paper drawers and paint that was left over so I used it to paint over pages.

I also wanted to play with some ideas I had of stacking shapes, inspired by looking at rocks and branches while walking on the beach near my home. I used left over encaustic paint from all that scraping off of wax I did when in my “stuck” phase (see previous blog posting) so the colors were more muted and natural and less of my usual bright palette. I also used some old, old painting boards so they had a base of color on them already making it easier to work quickly. Another part of this process that was unusual for me was that I used only small brushes, whereas in most of my regular encaustic work I use larger brushes.

This body of work was done as a way to play, as it didn’t really fit into the studio work I was doing to send off to shows. It was an itch I needed to scratch.

So the takeaway for me from my “stuck redux” is that play has become a regular part of my studio time, not just something I do from time to time when I have nothing else going on. I include it in my week as an important part of my studio practice. And I plan on continuing to play, whether it be in my studio or in my life. We all need a little fun!

stuck redux

I am revisiting the idea of being “stuck” in this blog post, as it seems to be a state I am in from time to time. Perhaps it is common among we creatives. I do envy those who say they have a non-stop flow of ideas, more ideas than they have time for in a lifetime. I am NOT one of those people!

After my last show in May, 2018 I had a hard time getting back to my studio. Partly it was life, and partly I think it was avoidance. I committed the error I had always warned my students against…I hadn’t left some work in my studio unfinished when I delivered my show to the gallery in May so that I would have a starting place when it was time to get back to work. Oh horrors! I returned to an empty studio, empty of unfinished paintings and empty of ideas. I used a variety of avoidance techniques so when it came time to get serious it just wasn’t there. I was freaked out for the first time in a long, long time. Maybe I was dried up, empty of new ideas after my last big push. I feared the worst.

But I knew if I wanted to at least have a stab at getting over this dry period I had to continue to go to my studio and paint, even though it meant making a daily mess that I removed the next day to start over. Day after day, at the end of the day I would look over what I had done and be horrified. And as the days came and went I had to force myself into the studio every day…it became the last place I wanted to be as my “failures” mounted.

The worst part of this was that I really began to believe I had permanently lost my way. I began to think that I had no more in me that was exciting, that was a continuing growth from my last body of work. I began to doubt myself seriously.

Every day would start off like this:

I would paint all day, only to having me scraping off everything I had done so that it then looked like this:

This cycle of adding a days worth of paint only to remove it the next day felt like it went on and on. But as hard as it was I just had to keep showing up. I knew I couldn’t stop trying because every day I missed was a giant step backwards.

So I adjusted my attitude to one where I decided to just work. Just paint. Don’t try to make a series or add content or even do the same techniques from painting to painting. Just make stuff and then edit later. I lost my attachment to the outcome and went to quantity with little judgement as to what it all meant or how it all fit together.

Then one day I spent all day in my studio painting. The first part of the day was the usual: add, subtract, add, subtract, and so on. The morning was a repeat of every other morning of the previous weeks. I took a lunch break and then went back to work, sure it was going to be another “scrape it all off” day again.

But then the magic started happening. I decided to try something I had been curious about, of using pattern created by my stencils in a more abstract way, and using large swaths of opaque color in combination with the patterns. Bingo!

Here is the painting that gave me a thrill, and hope again that I might have more good paintings in me.

So I’m off and running again. I look forward to going to my studio now instead of dreading it. I feel full of possibilities instead of feeling lost. I will remember this experience next time I get stuck. You’ve just got to keep showing up, no matter how daunting it might seem at times. The magic is there, you just have to be patient.

making it

As I ponder the next few months of my art business, I start thinking about ways to reach new customers.  I don't have a show for a year and a half so between shows I need to generate new markets and collectors.  With the internet there are so many ways to market yourself, and to reach out.  Etsy, Artful Home, and Saatchi Art are just a few online galleries for promotion and sales.  Then there is Facebook, Instagram and who knows what other social media platforms for reaching out to the art loving bigger world.  I am considering experimenting with offering selected pieces of my graphic work for sale on my website, work not shown in any local galleries but sold all over the country by my rep.  I will change the offerings from time to time to see what attracts the most attention and comments.  

As I said, I have an artist rep who sells my graphic work around the country.  I am shown in a few commercial galleries, in an artist run gallery, and am in group shows on occasion.  For example, right now I have two glass pieces in a show in Anacortes, Washington.  Here is one of them:

transect, kiln glass, 18x18

I often explain my approach to friends who have never been dependent on commissioned sales or on marketing themselves, friends who have had a job they did at an office or in a classroom, that I have my eggs in many baskets, my fingers in many pies, or whatever food metaphor comes to mind.  So my project for this summer is to figure out other ways of "making it"...to reach new collectors and markets. It is part of my job as an independent business person to think broadly and openly about my business, and to do what I can to make a decent living by reaching out to as many old and new collectors as I can.  Oh, and somewhere in there I will be in my studio making new work, experimenting with new methods and ideas, and seeing where my inquiries take me.  

What do you do to reach new collectors or markets?  Have you had better success in certain venues than in others?  How many eggs are in your basket?

stuck

I'm working on a show right now and find that sometimes I get stuck, and that is not a comfortable feeling when you have a show deadline ahead.  So I started thinking about methods I use for getting "unstuck".

I always work on multiple pieces at once, so sometimes leaving the piece aside that I am stuck on and working on others can give me a new perspective when I return.

Making a bold move on a piece can open it up and get it moving again.  I often do this when I have been trying to "save" a part of a painting by working around that precious spot.  Frequently trying to save a spot while changing areas around it causes the painting to no longer feel coherent.  It's difficult, but if you can make a bold move, even at the risk of destroying the part you are trying to save, it can get a piece moving again.  Once I painted a large red swatch right aross the center of the piece, covering over the part I was gingerly painting around, but improving the piece a hundred fold, and getting me further along in resolving it.

Conversely, another approach when I have no idea where to go on a painting is to do SOMETHING, ANYTHING, even a small thing.  This can work when you have a piece at a point where it needs work but you have no idea which way to go with it.  Getting "unstuck" is the goal here and baby steps work as well as the big bold move at times.

If all else fails sometimes it is best to take a break, leave the studio, go for a walk, read a book, or whatever it is that will take you mentally away from your studio.  Sometimes getting completely away from the piece and thinking about something else, or enjoyng another activity is just what you need to get you back on track.

Remember though that the answer comes from DOING, so if you take a break don't make it too long, although sometimes a few days or even a few weeks can be needed.  The most important thing when resolving a piece of your art is to show up, be present and keep at it!

What do you do when you are stuck?

known and unknown

Home now from my month in Australia and as some images have faded, some have become more vivid.  Travel is a marvelous thing.  You look forward to it for months, or at least weeks, with perhaps a mixture of excitement and trepidation, but at the very least anticipation.  Then the big trip arrives and you experience it with a sense of the unreal and the very real.  Australia was just an abstraction until I went there.  It was in my imagination a land of peculiar animals (kangaroos, koalas) and colorful artwork made of dots and patterns (Aboriginal art).  I knew of the Great Barrier Reef and Uluru in the center of the country/continent.  After being there for a month I have seen kangaroos and koalas in the wild, and visited many museums with room after room of Aborignal art.  My imagination hasn't been diminished by the experience but heightened.  As I sit here in my office in my home in Port Townsend, Washington, the wind blowing and rain falling outside, I know that half a world away it is spring and flowers are blooming, because just a few weeks ago I saw that for myself.  It still seems hard to believe though!

So now that I am back in my studio there are certain images that are percolating to the top, things that while I was there I suspected might hold some magic for me, but as I work towards my May, 2018 painting show I realize they do.  Some of them, like the stands of trees we saw as we walked and traveled about, were mostly eucalypts but held a certain resemblance in their relationships that I recognized from my own home in the woods.  I had been thinking a lot about trees before I went and the stands of trees I saw there only heightened those thoughts.

I also was looking for patterns in what I observed, as the concept of repetition with variation has been of interest to me, and really what a look into the woods is about.  I saw evidence of that in the groves of trees both wild and cultivated.

I also observed repetition and pattern in the Aboriginal artwork I saw at the museums we visited in Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney.  

And yes, we saw kangaroos every day, as well as cockatoos and other parrots.

It is hard to imagine these animals, that to we Americans are exotic pets or zoo inhabitants, actually wander about in people's yards and gardens somewhere.  They do in Australia!  

And lastly we went to an island where there are a bunch of koalas living, as they depend on only one kind of euclyptus tree for their diet, and there are a few on this island, although less all the time as they are eating themselves into extinction there, as they have elsewhere with their specialized diet.

So as the next weeks and months pass I'm sure more images from my time in Australia will come forth and more memories fade, but I am excited to create this next body of work as a way of figuring out what Australia meant to me.  I hope to discover more and more along the way!

What travels have you taken that have altered your way of looking at the world, or made you more aware of something?  Did you discover new artists or genres of art there?  Do you find travel to be important to you?

leaving on a jet plane

I am very excited to be given the opportunity to visit Australia for a month for an artist's residency.  During this month, I will be doing drawings that focus on the natural world, which I imagine will be familiar and yet very different than home.  I will be going with my good friend and fellow artist, Keaney Rathbun.  He and I have very different styles and genres of art, but we both use the natural world as the background of our inquiries.  We will visit  both cultivated gardens and natural areas there, and of course museums when we are in Melbourne and Sydney.  While there we both plan on doing a lot of drawings, in fact mostly drawings.  We will be hosted by a couple who have 7 acres of cultivated gardens so their property will be our main focus.  I know we will find a lot to draw just on their property!

I have never done a residency like this.  Most residencies take place in a certain locale, and you work on your chosen medium in that locale.  They are usually self-directed but don't involve a private home, and aren't as wide ranging as ours will be.  I plan on doing drawings but want to zero in on shapes I can make stencils from when I get home.  But of course, the residency will create its own energy, and I'm sure I will be making work that surprises me,  I can't wait to see what happens, while there and afterwards!  

Usually I include photos in my blog posts, but since I haven't taken this trip yet I am including an image of a print I did at a residency in printmaking 13 years  ago.  It was an experience that really moved me along in my desire to work larger and in color.  As you can see from this print, I was only just beginning to try out my color wings, but what has come since then has changed forever the way I make art.  That residency moved me along.

I will create a blog post after I return to report on the experience.  Stay tuned...

Have you ever done a residency in a foreign country?  What sort of experience was it for you?  Do you find it influenced your art?  Or did you continue doing the same work after you returned to your studio?

learning new things

For this year, 2017, I have less planned projects, and so more time to experiment with new ideas.  I have been trying some mixed media work, drawing and painting over failed prints to see what new energy I can bring to old work.  Those are still just that, ideas in process.  But I have also been creating some functional glass pieces.  

I started out by using scraps of left over projects, and the inquiry has just grown from there.

For the remainder of the year, I plan on continuing these trials and experiments.  Some are ready for prime time, and others not.  I will update my progress over the coming months.

economy of form

I've been thinking a lot about the idea of economy of form that I wrote about in my last blog posting.  It is an important aspect of design.  Economy in design simply means keeping it simple.  If you can remove an element from a composition  and it still works, then leave that element out.  You don’t want to include more than is needed, but be sure to include all that is needed to create an intelligent composition.  This idea is worth pursuing.

Some of the paintings from my last show embrace that concept.  They also happen to be some of my favorites from that show.  Here are a few:

Nocturne #5

Nocturne #4

And this one that captures the essence of a sunset, titled "End of Day":

I remember a writing teacher of mine who taught us to free write, and then take what we wrote and remove unnecessary words.  And then remove more.  And then more.  When we finally got to where we couldn't remove any more words without making it unintelligible, only then was our piece of writing finished.  It is the essence of what you are trying to say that counts, not all the useless words that surround it.  Here is a painting titled "Bonfire".  It is a simple abstraction of the idea of a large, outdoor fire.  For me it exemplifies the best of what I am hoping to achieve more of: basic shapes with an intriguing and mysterious feeling, beautiful and yet limited use of color, and seductive textures.

I have a tendancy to make my work visually complicated.  It is easy to compose this way...it covers up the weaknesses in my composition.  Working with simple shapes, minimal color, and lots of space between things is HARD!  I vow to challenge myself to do just that in the coming year.

Does this idea resonate with you?

georgia

On a recent trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico I visited the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. I had been there once before, many years ago, and even though it wasn't my first choice then for a museum to spend an afternoon in I was memorably impressed with the scope and range of her vision.  So with an afternoon off before a four day teaching job I decided to spend it with Georgia.  

Georgia O'Keeffe is one of those artists, along with some of the greats, who has been over-merchandized and whose work has been trivialized by being placed on posters, coffee cups, and so on.  Two of my other favorites have suffered that same fate: Paul Gauguin and Frida Kahlo.  I have always been enamoured of their singular world view, and the passion with which they pursued their art.  O'Keeffe's work was unique for its time, as was Gauguin's and Kahlo's, and was a personal expression of her love of the natural world.  She always painted her love, whether it was for a man or a landscape.  

My favorites of her work for many years have been the watercolors.  Her fluid mark, and the economy of her shapes and colors are all the hallmarks of a confident artist who is assured of what she is trying to say.  They are simple visually and yet belie a skill I can only hope to achieve.  To express an idea in a few lines and colors and then leave it alone shows such conviction.  They breathe life even in the empty spaces.

I also discovered how often she worked in series, and did larger more finished works from quick sketches done outdoors on site.

But the thing I most zeroed in on were the simple forms and shapes she employed in much of her work.  Triangles, circles and rectangles are the geometries she used to describe trees, buildings, and abstractions strongly rooted in the natural world.  I was particularly thrilled to discover she did a whole series of paintings about the views from airplane windows as I have also painted many works that were inspired by my flights around the country. Here is one she did in that series:

This painting is quite large, and done in oils.  She did this in her later years when macular degeneration was compromising her abilites to paint.  But she, like so many artists have done, found ways around her disability to create works of strength and purity.

Georgia O'Keeffe is most well-known for her large flower paintings.  But the entire body of work she did, from her early days as a young woman drawing abstractions in charcoal to her watercolor sketches to her landscapes and abstractions in oils merit attention.  I aspire over the next years to work towards that economy of form and shape, and to convey through my art, as Georgia did, how to fill a space in a beautiful way.

Are you a Georgia O'Keeffe fan?  If so how has she influenced your work?  Is there some other artist that moves and inspires you?  Who, and why?

showtime!

After many months of preparation with regards to painting and thinking and painting some more, I am in the homestretch of my October exhibition, "A Perfectly Ordinary Light", opening at Waterstone Gallery in Portland, Oregon on October 4.  The work is mostly done (a little tweaking necessary) and just needs framing and labeling.  The month of September will be spent mostly on promotion besides the few items just mentioned.  It is amazing how many small details there are to mounting a show.

A Perfectly Ordinary Light, 13x31

Doing the work is pretty obivous to anyone who has visited an art exhibition.  There are paintings, or some other type of artwork, presented by the gallery and one can see it took months to create a cohesive body of work.  But what about the other parts of exhibiting?  The promotional activities before the show opens, the inventorying of all the art before the work is delivered, the additions to websites, and the all-important selling of the work in order to support the artist and their contining career.  There are a myriad of small and large parts that go into being an artist, and exhibiting your art in a gallery.  

Sparkle, 25x19

Of course all of this is more work for an artist such as myself who shows her paintings in an artist-run gallery as I have to do all the legwork and much of the promotion.  But it is a wonderful challenge, and makes me appreciate all the work that commercial galleries do to promote their artists.

I hope that if you live in the Portland area, or are in the area visiting during the  month of October, that you will get to see my show at Waterstone Gallery.   And if you can't see it in person I hope you will visit it at my website or the Waterstone website after October 1.  It isn't the same as seeing it in person as the surface of the paintings is so important but I am most grateful for any sort of visit you might make.

curating a show

During this past year I have curated a show that will be at Northwind Art Center in Port Townsend, Washington in July 2016 (among other studio-focused activities).  It has been a lot of work, but also immensely rewarding.  The best parts have been visiting and talking with the artists in their studios and choosing the artwork that will be included in an always interesting conversation.  There have been endless emails, tiresome details, frustrating interchanges, but always there is the art.  The art is the reason I kept going, despite moments of hair-tearing irritations. And now that it is almost here, I am so glad I did this.

So how did I end up curating this show?  About a year ago Northwind Art Center asked me to curate an encaustic show.  I am loathe to do anything  medium focused, preferring instead to look at the art for its content and not its material.  So I decided I would agree to curate, but that the show would have a title devoid of the word "encaustic" and that the show itself would have an overarching concept.  I asked a number of artists, and all but one agreed to be in the show.  I threw out a title ("Presence/Absence") that seemed to work with most of the work these artists already did, and they all whole-heartedly thought it a very open and yet compelling theme.  The month got changed (from February to July, thank goodness!) and many of the details got changed (hence the hair pulling) but here we are.  We hang the show Tuesday and Wednesday, and it opens with a private reception on Friday.  The public reception is Saturday.  YAY!

The artists are: Brenda Mallory, Andrea Benson, Jef Gunn, Deborah Kapoor, Kirk Weller, Andrea Schwartz-Feit, Joan Stuart Ross and myself.  Here are three of the 6 pieces I will have in the show: 

The Stars Still Shine, 7 x 8

Sail Away, 7 x 8

One Cloud, Two Clouds, Three Clouds, None, 7 x 8