Lend me your couch and I’ll paint you a picture: a year in the studio

Setting: A slim man and his sister are looking at her artwork in a light-filled barn; sheets of drawing paper are spilled out across the floor; unfinished canvases litter the walls.

Artist: I’m using more color now.
(silence)
Brother: Huh.
(silence)
Do you look at your couch when you paint?
Artist: (sighs) I know. I’m using the same colors.
(silence) I can’t help it.

Somewhere in the back of my brain I knew my paintings and my studio couch were similar. Hell, it’s the only thing with any color in my studio. But I didn’t think I would paint pictures to match it and disrespect the fundamental oath of the contemporary painter: Never make art to match a sofa. Yikes! Not only does it match but I made it match.

This little couch (too small to call a sofa) was the first item I purchased for my studio when I moved in over a year ago. I love the colors. I love that it’s messy, a little wild, and so very unlike my decorating aesthetic. It was a little stake in the ground – my studio is finished, hurray! I survived three years of weekend construction and I allow myself to be creative!

In truth, the couch is rarely used in its manufactured function…I move around too much. I am incapable of napping. But it makes a handy place to store completed drawings, magazine clippings, exhibit postcards, and obviously plays a critical role in determining my color palette.

So if you would like to commission a painting to match your couch I will not be offended in the least. I could use a new color scheme.

Note: After seeing this picture I immediately removed the freaky viper head from the painting in the background that looks like it's going to eat me.

pumping iron to stoke the creative fires

This is the second year in a row that I am preparing for a solo show during the holiday season. It blows. I’m missing out on the yule tide cheer, developing a reputation as the no-show, rapidly losing friends, and even irritating my otherwise understanding, go-with-the-flow, Kate’s-in-one-of-those-moods family members. Yikes!

My bank account is on a dangerous downward trajectory as I desperately point and click, sending presents and art supplies around the country like rapid fire. My carbon footprint is nearing Santa’s.

Yet despite it all, I’m saving just a little time for me to exercise and ensure my creativity index doesn’t nose dive. I’ve recently joined a gym and I LOVE it!

While I’m there I count my blessings:
1.) a sound mind (hey you, stop laughing)
2.) a strong body (I said, stop laughing!)
3.) use of as many towels as I want (think soft sculptures)
4.) free body wash (ooh, la la)
5.) someone else cleans the shower and
6.) one peaceful, yet challenging, hour to myself!

What gift(s) are you giving yourself this holiday season? And I'm sorry if I've been out of touch...

a slight but meaningful correction (indéterminé)

My family is so talented. My sister pointed out that instabilité really means instability. Duh. And while I do like the unraveling thing that is going on, I really am not unstable. Nor do I want to project this image. (Unless it might help my career? kidding.)

So, the new title is Denouement/Indéterminé. Impermanence of the indeterminable variety, not instability.

Merci professor Gilbert!

Denouement/Instabilité

So here I am working my second shift as the evening artist, writing a press release for a show that will open in 6 weeks…at a point in the process where the paintings are screaming, “We’re so ugly, hide us!”.

Ugh.

The upcoming show is about exploring new ways of being, and in the process exploring new ways of painting. I went to France this summer expecting to find this ‘new way’, knowing there was raw energy waiting to burst onto the canvas. I also expected to find something I couldn’t even define…let’s just call it happiness…but somewhere in the process I became unraveled.

It turns out the painting part was relatively easy. Finding happiness is a life-long process and the unraveling, well, there’s nothing conclusive about it...but it is sort of cathartic.

While still in France, I entitled the show Denouement thinking that by January I’d have all of the answers. I am an optimist. Now I conclusively know denouement is purely a fictional device. No problem or spiritual quest can be neatly wrapped up into a final outcome. At least not in real life…in my life…or in a short amount of time.

So I have re-titled the show: Denouement/Instabilité

Definition of denouement from the Meriam-Webster online dictionary:
1 : the final outcome of the main dramatic complication in a literary work
2 : the outcome of a complex sequence of events
Etymology: French dénouement, literally, untying

Instabilité means impermanence.

The new title suggests the balance of two opposites – a final outcome (a fictional device) and the reality of impermanence. It is a reference to life’s continual unfolding, unraveling and state of flux, and a reminder to loosen the grip.

I kind of like it. Vive l'instabilité!

Neurons that fire together, wire together

I’ve been using a sea sponge as a starting off point for my ink paintings since late July. It was a simple prop Meesh lent me during class when we were directed to draw from nature. The rocks I’d been using were hurting my eyes with their severe angles. The rotting fruit I held hostage on my window was oozing a plea to be released back to the earth.

The sponge looked appealing with its countless circles.

I still have that sponge. I’ve collected a few others, but I still like that original one which I’ve folded, contorted into a variety of two-forming-one shapes, and studied from all sides. (As if a spherical object could have sides.)

I barely need to look at the sponge these days to complete a painting. It’s become a reference, a touch stone to keep me on track. Circle, circle, hole. Circle, circle, squiggly. Look at the object. Ad a big swath of white paint to suggest an edge. Circle, circle, circle.

The end result is anyone’s guess. And that’s what I love about these paintings. Is it a sponge? Something growing in a Petri dish? An extraordinarily ordinary doodle?

A brain?

As some of you know, I dabble in meditation. And thanks to some inspired people in my life who encourage me on my path, I continually challenge my own spongy brain. Breathe in, breathe out. Circle here, circle there. Here comes a thought…circle, circle, circle. Slowly, I am rewiring my brain and with enough practice hope to someday get to a point where meditation is as effortless as this series of paintings. As psychologist Donald Hebb put it, “Neurons that fire together, wire together”, and I’m doing some remodeling.

So while I’m working to rewire my brain through meditation and “mental hygiene”, the image of a brain starts appearing in my paintings -- especially since I started adding color. Is it just me, or do they look like brain scans?

Above and below are some recent sketches, testing different colored inks. Today for the first time, I searched “brain scans” in Google images. It’s a little spooky.

Three things I wish I could remember

The following is list of three simple things I wish I could remember while preparing for a show. Sadly, I relearn them every time.

1. The work will surprise you in the frame. Sometimes it looks as if it stepped into its formal wear. It cleans up really well. Other times it looks like the contestants on Survivor when they’re back at the TV set. They looked better in their natural habitat, like the artwork on the studio wall. Leave it there.

2. Do more than you think is necessary. This applies to creating more work than you think you need. (See rule #1 because without a doubt something will not be ready for its prime time debut.) It also applies to framing supplies. Inevitably no matter how well you plan, something won’t fit. Or it’ll be broken (because the FedEx man delivers boxes to your door and then stops on them with a pivot as he sashays down the walkway). Or you hmm, surprise, didn’t measure right.

3. Though it may not be apparent during the height of show prep, you did choose to do this show/open studios/exhibition…and in the end you like a good challenge. (Leave that to the psychologists to figure out.)



The third attempt to have 16"x20" glass delivered to the studio in one piece. Cool to look at. Maddening when it is supposed to be in your frame.

try something rainy. go with the flow

Life can't exist without water. I seem to exist surrounded by water. Therefore I exist...?

I spent the month of July in Pont Aven, France studying at the Pont Aven School of Contemporary Art amidst fresh, undergrad faces. And enveloped in a dampness that permeated my skin, clothes, and soul. (I know I've admitted to liking drizzle, but not drizzle EVERYDAY.)

Plagued by a bronchial reaction to chemical solvents and irritated (exasperated!) by the dampness, both my artwork and lungs took on a watery quality. To keep up with the course load, I was forced to make work, any work, without much thought. I had to forget writing/thinking about my work...there was barely anytime to journal...certainly no blogging...and no time to create studies. I was forced to let it flow. And do it quickly.

Back in the states in the day job I thought I had left my little rain cloud in France. No. It came back with a vengeance on Saturday, October 3rd for Try Something New. Or Try Something Rainy, as we've nicknamed the Greenway fall festival. (Props to ALJ for the moniker.) I learned a valuable lesson that day. Actually, a few. One, waterproof clothing from high school is not waterproof 17 years later. And two, you can't fight mother nature...gotta go with the flow.

Since returning, my work continues to be an abstraction from the same source, executed in the same mediums. Though I am trying new substrates like film which is extremely hard to control. The work continues to evolve. It is about coming into, going out of, falling into and dragging yourself out of. It is about this and that, you and me, us and them. I've entitled the series "denouement" in recognition of the unraveling of life in the rain. And sort of optimistically foretelling the rain's final act. 'Cause it's going to start snowing soon...right?