About the Spark

I have finished refurbishing my web site (see it here) and am now sending announcements thereof to those people who make the sales for me. The last couple of years have been dismal business-wise but this year has begun well and I’m feeling optimistic.

My next task, to be started forthwith, will be to get ready for our annual county-wide open studio event. Today I made the list of the details involved, which are many. I am fortunate to have the help of two of my offspring for the preparations. These include some tasks for which I have little or no aptitude like matting, framing and hanging.

There are some other items on my marketing to-do list but they will have to wait. I have been too long away from the studio, have had my nose in the computer for weeks getting images of new work readied and the marketing updated. Returning to the real work after a sojourn like this will be a vacation.

I invariably have a lot to do. Too much most of the time. I have come to understand now in my dotage, that it is not life that busies me but it is how I do life. I like to be occupied. If I arrive at the dentist’s waiting room without some reading matter of my own, I will gaze unhappily at the assortment of golfing magazines and those that advise about investments and chide myself for being absent-minded. (Isn’t that a nice term? The mind absent? How like so many of my moments.) I am not good at hanging out. If I can be fairly sure that I won’t offend my hosts, I take my sewing with me. I hem pieces of fabric to make scarves; my scarf collection has grown to be an embarrassment.

I don’t understand boredom. There is so much that not only wants doing but would make for a good time. And meditation puzzles me. Why would one want to quiet one’s mind? I enjoy my thoughts. I even make myself laugh sometimes. It will be quiet enough after I croak.

I was once assaulted and did the right thing and got rid of my attacker. Afterwards it seemed as if my brain operated without me. It was over before it happened, no time to size up the situation and make a decision. My brain saved me.

And writing surprises me. I start with some topic and then this unquiet mind takes off in directions unplanned and unexpected. Painting is like that. It grows from itself. One just has to allow whatever this human spark is to take the lead. I am as grateful for still having it after all these years as I am for life itself. I encourage all of you youngsters who don’t yet qualify as elderly, to take courage and take care of yourselves. Old age isn’t as bad as it looks. Though it would be nice if it looked better.

The image above is one of the new quartets. Dusk, ©2011, 26 x 20" each, mixed media on etching paper.

About the Big Picture

I woke up last night thinking of a talk I’d had earlier with a new friend. He spoke of growing up in a family deeply entrenched in right wing values and becoming himself a “flaming liberal” at a relatively young age. I can attest to his self-description. How does that happen, I wonder? I have known so many who inherit the worlds of their parents along with most of the belief system. How does it happen that some of us are able to stand back, see the big picture, and think for ourselves?

I thought it was the domain of the artist to filter the facts through him/herself, sort them out, and then present them either in words or pictures for the eyes and ears of his audience. Would we really know what poverty looks like without photos like those of Dorothea Lange? I have lived far away from the horrors of war but the photos I saw of the death camps of WW ll changed my life.  Picasso’s Guernica, and Goya’s Tres de Mayo are images that once seen, are hard to forget. The “Okies” of John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” are equally unforgettable as are the images that formed in my mind as I read John Hersey’s Hiroshima. The pictures of poverty and war granted an education I might have otherwise escaped. The photos being published now of children with facial deformities, in need of surgery, are heart wrenching. A more complete view of the world is not only about hardship. Nor is it as we would like it to be. But we need to know it or, as I believe, we risk having incomplete lives.

For a long time I was close to a man who never outgrew the learning of his early years. There was a time when he was in his fifties, that he was distraught and feeling terrible guilt for doing something his grandmother would have taken a dim view of. Never mind that it was a situation in a culture and at a time that his forbears had not known.

My theory (feel free to stop reading here) is that if, as an adult, you think of completely revising your perception of the world, you have to blow up the foundations you built your life on. Not easy to do. It is a painful process that some people take on in psychotherapy. The book “Love's Executioner” by Irvin Yalom describes ten people at the end of their lives attempting major changes. Brave souls.

So back to my question. Some of us don’t take on the views that we are handed. We may need some time to sort it out but we can think without bias. For me, this has been tough going. I am still struggling to rid myself of prejudices inherited and the conclusions I reached before my experience had widened. I hope to have enough time on earth to really get to see the big picture.

The friend I mentioned earlier is not an artist; he is, in his own words, “Trained as a scientist with degrees in physics, math and engineering …”. I think the truth here is that he stirred the mind of the artist who had come to some conclusions that needed to be reviewed.

I know, I know. I said I’d be briefer. I tried.

The image above is another painting from the past, long gone. 48” x 36”,  circa 1985, acrylic paint and pastel on etching paper. It is from before the time that I started keeping careful records so I don’t remember the title. 

About Missing Everything

When I think about exiting this life, I think about the losses. There are the great ones, like all the people I love and can’t imagine parting from, and the beautiful and terrible world itself. Then there is everything I haven’t experienced: the countries not visited, the books not read, movies not seen; I could go on to an ever-expanding list. How wonderful and amazing that there is far more to do and see and learn than we can encompass in a lifetime. And how sad. I particularly regret the paintings I won’t get to make. I have more unfinished work and collage materials than I could get to in two lifetimes. I like having all that waiting in patient silence for me. I lament that I won’t ever get to feel that it is done. To feel that my work here on this earth has come to an end and I am ready to lay down my brushes. No, I can hear myself screaming: Wait! Wait! Not ready to go! Food I haven’t tasted! Streets I haven’t walked on! Flowering trees that will bloom! Oh, dear, I am going to miss all that?  

Time marches on and I continue to grow in the power and knowledge I need in order to paint the vision. I think about how nice it would be to go on like Methuselah. Imagine what paintings I could make after another hundred years or so of experience and learning. I would produce miracles. I take more pleasure in my days now and appreciate my world more and more. Nope, not prepared to give up any of it.

The awful reality is that I will soon have to think of reducing my operation. My memory used to be better, but except for that I am still a fully functioning human being. Yet I am thinking ahead to the curtailed abilities that will perforce present within the next years. It behooves me to accept the truth of diminished capacity and to assume a simpler and reduced workload. How hard it is to accept these facts.  And the facts are that I need to stop working to pay the high rent I pay now and to move to a smaller living space and a necessarily smaller studio. Damn, damn.

If there is a life after this one, I am putting in some requests right now. I want to be drop-dead gorgeous, brilliantly intelligent, enormously talented and filthy rich. And to be able to add to that list as the whim takes me. Some superficiality there, you say? Well, that would depend on what I do with those gifts, I say. 

The Image above is Multiple Blue ©1993, acrylic on paper mounted on canvas, 48” x 38”.

About Being Personal

I have posted a new video interview which you can see by clicking on the photo to your right (if you are at my blog site) or right here if you are reading an emailed version of this post.

This interview is more personal than the first (also on my blog page, lower down on the right) and there is more biography. I was hesitant about making it public as it seems that the more one allows oneself to be visible, the more vulnerable one becomes. The feeling is not much different from making paintings available for public scrutiny. And what, I ask myself is this reluctance to be visible about? What is the risk? My brain answers loudly: judgement! And so what? I have committed no crime. Wherein lies  the peril in facing the opinion of others? Are we made of such fragile stuff that criticism can cause us damage? Can it distort or disturb the perception we have formed of ourselves? It certainly could that to me when I was a teenager.

I fell in love when I was seventeen years old and was dating the object of my affections. After a few dates and seeing each other every day during breaks at school, he ended our short lived relationship. He told me he was bored because I barely spoke to him. Well, not only was I devastated, heartbroken and mega-miserable, but I took his comments to be an accurate description of who I was. I had not yet grown into myself; I did not understand that I was painfully shy and new to romantic adventure. God help me, I was boring! It took a while to heal from that blow. Coming to terms with who I am has taken a lifetime.

I have also taken rejection as a painter. Early on in my career some paintings I had consigned to a gallery in San Diego were returned to me with a note: “No luck with these, please send new work”. I could not find the strength to send anything to them or anybody else for a while after that. I have a history of sending images to galleries and being ignored or receiving a “no thanks” letter. Success isn’t easy either. After a couple of sell-out shows, a gallery director told me that there was a waiting list for the paintings that I had not even imagined yet. That caused immediate paralysis that required therapy to remedy. And after all these years the vulnerability remains and I still don’t really know what the fear is about.

I have said here before that I relish praise for my work. I see artists as performers of sorts in need of audience approval. Some form of applause is desired. Several artists I know have tougher skins. They can plough on in spite of being spurned repeatedly. Maybe they’re just faking it. A few blessed souls can work in total isolation. I envy them. 

The image above is one of the new mixed media paintings in the Structures series: Chroma-2, ©1989-2011, 26” x 20”

About Happy Endings

Last night I watched the last episode of a TV series that ended with the guy not getting the girl. I’ve been feeling a vague dissatisfaction, a kind of disquiet since. Happy endings don’t happen in our lives. When the guy gets the girl (or she gets him) their lives don’t finalize with that onscreen kiss. It goes on to whatever lies ahead for them. In real life it happens that serial killers reenact their crimes many time over before they are apprehended, if ever. And, sorry to say, good guys go to prison for crimes they haven’t committed.

So in fiction, at least, I want justice for all, bad guys and gals to get their just deserts and for Clint Eastwood to disappear over the horizon in a glowing sunset to continue to pursue horse thieves until he dies a geezer.

Now especially, after the natural and unnatural disasters that seem abundant lately, I want a place of refuge to rest my psyche and my heart. Give me stories that are real enough for me to sink into as I watch or read, and fictional enough to provide me with diversion. I want music that captures me and visual art that brightens my days. 

And what about sadness? I appreciate music and movies and stories that awaken feelings of sorrow. Women (and many of the men I have known) will voluntarily choose to experience gloom in a book, movie or whatever. What is that about? My guess is that we all carry some of that within us and keep it at bay. Letting it surface sometimes in certain situations provides the comfort that weeping can bring. In the ancient plays I read at school there were choruses of mourners to accompany the tragedies on stage. They cried for us or with us. 

So sad or glad, I want the unreal. I have a hard time dealing with every day’s news. There was a time that I gave up newspapers and newscasts but after a while that seemed irresponsible. One does need to be part of the big picture, to take it all in and deal with it because otherwise you get too disconnected from what everyone else is thinking and talking about. But we need time out; art, be it the written word, color on canvas, or the lovely form of a bowl can provide the respite, if only for a moment.

Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.  ~Twyla Tharp, American dancer

The is image above is Fare Thee Well, ©1996, Acrylic paint on paper mounted on canvas, 44” x 17”.

About the Similarities

After my slide show and talk on Tuesday, Amy, our facilitator, tackled the subject of my last blog About the Differences. Except that, being Amy, who is a totally positive thinker, she turned it around and asked the crowd to describe some of the ways that artists are similar to each other. I thought of a few qualities we might conceivably have in common that would have gotten me booed off the stage, but this audience was more respectful.

Amongst the characteristics mentioned were that we make magic. Like stone soup, give us the materials and we will give you a painting, a book, a song. There was a comment about commitment. I don’t know that we have cornered the market on that, but I know that without it, we wouldn’t go very far. There was discipline also. I sometimes think I’d like to lose some of that. I am a very demanding self-supervisor and have difficulty in taking time off. Too much of a good thing, maybe. Peggy, our fine potter, spoke of how we hone our skills. People in other professions must do that too, but we can make it visible (or audible). Especially when we are doing a retrospective slide show. Becky said we are curious. Now there’s a trait that we might have a corner on except that we share it with children. This might be one of the few ways of life in which it serves us well to use all the child there is within ourselves as we give ourselves over to our task. Someone said we learn from each other. We have that in common with every one on this planet and with the animals too. I used to return to my studio after seeing a new painting by my friend Richard, eager to use what I had learned while looking closely at his work. He did the same to me and we thought we were very clever as we ripped each other off. 

Somebody mentioned our being supportive of each other. I thought at first that was about this small pond we call home. And then I remembered something I wrote of recently. I had emailed a number of artists I had never met to ask what their experience had been with a certain online gallery I was considering. Every one responded with a thoughtful, caring and warm note. That might well happen within other groups but it was, for me a unique experience of the kindness of strangers.

There were other adjectives applied to us: compulsive, obsessive, honest. I don’t think we have a monopoly on any of those but we might just have those qualities in strange proportions. My personal opinion (I use my self-given right to express it here) is that we crave an audience: viewers, readers, listeners — tasters if you are a cook. And we come in all sizes and shapes and colors. The drive and the need to work are crazy-making and helpful. And we don’t retire.

The image above is Blue on Yellow, ©1998. This piece is long gone but I have found a photo of it and plan to make a print for our June, 2011 open studio event here in Humboldt County.

About the Differences

I mentioned last week that I am taking part in a series in which six artists show slides and talk about their work. Next week I will be the last of them. What has impressed me most about these presentations is how different we are. 

When I was at school, during a class called “History of Aesthetics”, I asked how we could be shown examples of a work from an era in history as representative of its time. Isn’t there a great variety in the look of work by different artists who live at the same time in the same place? Well, no, was the answer. There are many more similarities than differences. The art historian can identify the time and place that a sculpture or painting was produced. 

I had a very dear Venezuelan friend during the years I lived in her country. We were contemporaries and we loved each other and we held in common most of the values of the western world of our time. But there were some disparities.  She was born and raised in the Andes and partly schooled in Switzerland. Her family was well off. I grew up in Brooklyn, daughter of a cop and a bookkeeper. She was used to a home kept in order by several live-in maids. I employed maids while I lived in Maracaibo and Caracas but was always uncomfortable with being part of the system that I considered inequitable. I suffered guilt for it but was glad to be able to have a job while my children were small. Carmen did not understand my discomfort. And I was amazed that she, who was one of the most decent and honest of women, would encourage her children and mine to copy from their neighbors when they didn’t know an answer on an exam. In Venezuela, cheating on tests was okay, getting caught was not. These disparities of value systems are minor compared to what they can be when you consider greater geographical distances and all the possible variations in cultures and histories.

But what about us? We are six more or less contemporaries; all born and raised in the same country, whose thinking and approach to art is totally different. Are we more alike than I can discern? Or is it that we live at a time when the influences on us come from many more sources? I will continue to puzzle over this until an answer appears or another question replaces it as my current obsession.

The image above is of two of the new mixed media pieces from the Exposure series, 26” x 20” each, on etching paper.