Open Studio

My sweetie back from Thailand and China…I love the tiny Buddah he brought back.

Finishing a sweater for my son…finally.  I haven’t been knitting much, so this has only taken me…uh….8 or 9 months.  Incredibly patient, that’s what Ian is.

Banana bread….

And my new encaustic panels.  I just made two new ones- 28″x28″- out of a hollow core door.  They seem expansive after all of my little 8 inch squares I’ve been doing.  It has been quite a project, just preparing these.  I am trying to work out how to attach a hanging wire to the back .  Since they are made from hollow doors, they are incredibly light and smooth.  I can’t wait to get going on these.

At least for me it is.  I resisted this for a long time, though.  I think I was afraid that if I let it be too personal, it would not be taken seriously.  So I detached myself from it, instead focusing on experimental landscapes that felt safe.  I was a young woman, trying to be taken seriously (and trying to take myself seriously) while having babies and generally being overwhelmed.  I love a lot of the work that came out of that time period (my mid twenties to early thirties)….. it’s just that it didn’t have that much to do with what was actually going on in my life.  I was full time with kids, and all of the craziness and immediacy that ensues, and didn’t have time to be out photographing and sketching for afternoons, or to come back home and create the large landscapes that I longed to continue with.  Finally, as Julia Cameron would say, the well went dry.  My paintings felt empty and overworked….. the painter’s equivalent of writer’s block.  It was like chewing on cardboard.  

Then I stumbled on a book that tripped me out.  It was Spilling Open by Sabrina Ward Harrison.

 She’s written/painted a few books since then, but that first one is still my favorite.  It is artistically and visually stunning, but what really got me was how personal it is.  It just shot right through me.  This was new to me- the idea that good art could be personal and feminine, and raw,  and just plain tell the truth.  That I didn’t need to distance myself from my experience, and add several layers of hazy intellectualism, in order to make a painting.  It was a new concept, that when I come to the canvas, I am enough.

So then I started asking myself new questions… like if I could paint anything, what would I paint?  If I could use any medium I wanted, what would I use?  I know this sounds silly- like why in the world wouldn’t I be asking myself those questions before?  But I had not let myself think this way in a long time, and it was new.  It has really changed my painting.  And my attitude. Nowadays, I can’t wait to paint.  The resistance I used to feel (you know- that gut churning feeling that procrastination brings on) just isn’t there.

And so much work has flowed from those questions.  The dress series, to begin with, and the nests, and this blog. And I’m finding that if I let my life and desires lead me, the complexity of meaning is still there. Really, so much of desire is universal. And even a dogged kind of intellectualism tags along behind, offering explanations for the symbolism in my paintings.  I like that the explanations don’t come first, though.  The painting comes first. 

I started with dresses.  I think I’ll end with them, too…..

For more about my dress series visit my website.

Some new work…..

I’ve really been enjoying working in this small format (8 x 8 inches) in such an open ended subject area.  The only criteria for them is the dominant color must be white, and that the subject involves repetition.  I’ve been playing with different ways of layering the wax, and applying it.  I also discovered that paint pens do just fine layered in with the wax, and am experimenting with a fine point white paint pen.  I got it for journaling, but it’s opened up another world with the encaustic, being one more way to create precise lines and imagery.  Encaustic is difficult to control, and generally takes a lot of deep breathing and letting go from me, because, well, I can be a control freak like that.  But that is also what I love so much about this medium- it keeps me on my toes, keeps me loose and open to possibility as I work, and it is such a rapidly evolving medium right now, with artists finding new ways to work with it all the time.  Each piece is a wild card.  

Here is another piece I finished the other night- sorry this photo is not sharper.  It is difficult to see the texture here- one of it’s assets, I think. The embroidered circles are doing a lot for these nest paintings, adding some unusual texture and relief to the image.  This, by the way, is the nest I wrote about a couple of posts ago. This is also a small piece.  I have been warming up to this painting small business.  It used to be that any painting under 3×4 feet seemed like a waste of time, but there is something so satisfying about being able to finish a painting in a relatively short period of time, and then being able to hold it in my hands and look at it….. instead of having to stand back 8 feet just to see it properly.  The small pieces are more intimate that way.  

Well, I’m off to make more tea, go to a friend’s baby shower in San Francisco, and then come home and paint sets for the play.  And maybe embroider more paintings…….Whew!

It’s that time of year again!

I’m afraid that painting in the studio will have to take a back seat to this…….

and this….

and this…..

Set painting for the Young Actors play here on the coast.  My son is in the group- it’s an improvisational acting group for kids, and every year they all brainstorm a wacky play and all the parents pitch in to help make it happen.  They are led by an amazing and inspiring teacher, Auri Naggar, and they somehow pull together these plays that are so silly and magical that only children, in all of their uninhibited enthusiasm, could make them possible. When people ask me about it, I always describe it as like one of those plays that your kids and their friends think up on a rainy afternoon of raiding the dress-up box and reading too many books, and want to perform in the living room for the grown ups…and they end up embellishing as they go along….only this time, they are given months to work on it, a big stage to perform it on, with lights and a sound system, and live music!  What a dream.  And there is cake afterwards.  What is there not to love??

It’s a privilege to be a part of it, really.  If you are in the area, the play is the weekend of May 16 - 18, at the high school here in Half Moon Bay. 

As many of you know, I am fascinated by nests. If this nest looks familiar, it’s because I’ve painted it several times…. isn’t it beautiful?

This last winter, as my studio was nearing completion, I noticed a nest lodged in a tree that overhangs one of the skylights.  It was way out on the end, perching there, looking like it should have fallen out long before. It looked stark out there by itself, without even the leaves of the tree to put it into context.  I thought about getting up onto the roof to look at it, but decided that it was out of my reach, a bit too high up for me to get to.  If I stood in the right spot in my studio, I could look up through the skylight and see it. 

One night, the wind picked up, and we live out here on the Northern California coast, which means that it really picked up. It was absolutely howling, all night, with driving rain.  A few times that night, I woke from the noise of the storm, and looked out my bedroom window to check on the nest, and each time was amazed to see it still hanging in there, swaying like a crazy thing on the end of that branch.  In the morning, I checked again, and it was still there.  Amazing.  By then, the wind was dying down, and I was relieved to see that the nest had survived.

Later that morning, I went out to the studio to make sure that the skylights had not leaked.  Everything was fine, and as I was leaving to go back into the house, something caught my eye. There, on one of the wet flagstones by the door was the nest, still clinging to a little section of the branch, looking for all the world like an offering.  

Nice and messy.  Just like I like it……

I’ve been getting a little more work done the last few days.  Mostly painting on canvas.

This first one here is just a detail from a two panel piece I am working on.  I am just working on messy layers right now, building up a rich surface with collage and paint.  My paintings are such chaotic scribbles before I start layering more recognizable imagery on there.  I really enjoy this stage of the painting process, because nothing can really go “wrong”, I have absolutely nothing to lose, and if I do something that I don’t like, it just becomes a puzzle to solve…..”how to work this in?”  Sometimes I just do a color wash over the whole thing, and keep going.  One of my goals has been to try to keep this frame of mind as the painting progresses, and ideally until it is finished.  It is sometimes more difficult, though, as the painting develops, because I become attached to something or another, and start wanting to paint around it, which almost never works.  

I wish this were a better photograph.  I’ve been having some trouble, lately, photographing my paintings because they have so much contrast.  My photos are washing out the whites.  What you can’t see in this photo is the different subtle whites that are surrounding the nest….light blue whites and golden whites.  I am liking the way this nest is coming along.  Maybe I’ll post it when it’s done.  I’ve got quite a pile of almost finished paintings that are awaiting the needle and embroidery floss.  I’ve got my work cut out for me this weekend.

It’s really weird to me how life seems to simultaneously speed up and slow down when I get sick, as I was this last week.  Flu. Not fun.  My tendency to stay vertical and moving doesn’t help things. So much to do!  So, you can imagine, not much going on in the studio.  But I did work a little in my new journal. I’ve been thinking and writing about where “deep well”  inspiration comes from. Where new ideas that pop into my head come from. I think it’s different for all of us, but I think for me it is about creating stability, a base, an internal home, to come back to and act out of …a place where the seed of authenticity and singularity can grow.  Fertile ground, inside. Without it, my ideas seem to lose their initial brightness before fading away. For me, the integration of routine (action) and introspection is key.

Another new thing:  A table for encaustic. It will be so nice not to be hunched over when I’m working anymore. My father built this table when I was a kid to hold his photography equipment. He and my mom are moving out of the house I grew up in, and I was very enthusiastic about adopting this table. It is truly perfect. I’ve been itching to start some large encaustics, and now I have the space!

Also, this week I’ll have new work up in Atlanta.  Huff Harrington is featuring new work by gallery artists in their show, Wet Paint. You can check out the announcement here.

More new work:

Three more little beeswax pieces….

A few influences have come together, along with my own ideas, in these works.  More recently, I’ve been reading  Heather Smith Jones : Art Space.  She does amazing work with the most elemental of materials- paper and a needle.  By piercing the paper in patterns, she creates white on white textural pieces that are really wonderful. She’s got an etsy shop where she sells small watercolor and piercing works on paper. When I saw her work, I wondered if it would work in wax.

 Another influence was seeing Tara Donovan’s show at the Met in February.  I had read a little review of the installation before I went, and promptly forgot about it, until I walked into the room, and fell madly in love.  We spent quite a while there, and I lay down of the floor and just enjoyed it. 

The whole thing was made from mylar tape.  Again, such a simple idea, and so, so beautiful. Each little loop of tape gathered light and reflected it back in odd ways, creating a glow.

 A third influence has been some pieces I saw a good 10 years ago, but have stuck in my head.  A gal I went to school with at UCSC, Reed Danziger,  showed me some works on paper - I think they were graphite, oil paint, and ink on paper, embedded in layers of varnish.  Something about the stark black on white compositions intrigued me.  Again, the simplicity. I was doing huge, messy, expressionistic landscapes at the time, and the quiet intensity of those paintings struck me.  I couldn’t find any links to that older work, but you can see her work from last year on her website.  Quite dazzling.

And there you have it.  Another piece of my process.  As a visual artist, I’m constantly influenced by things I see, or read, different ideas.  Then they incubate a while.  Some things stick with me, some evaporate and are forgotten.  And sometimes it all comes together in something new. 

Green tea is my new coffee.  At least for now…

My family and I have been a bit under the weather this week. I don’t know if anything could keep me off coffee (aka, “The Elixer of Life”) permanently, but I’ve managed to switch to green tea while I recuperate. It’s made for a few blurry days in the studio, but I’ve been getting out there anyway. I’ve made a little progress on the nests, but the big news is….

I’ve fired up the hot plate and have finally started painting in encaustic again. It feels like it’s been so long.  My table isn’t the right height yet, so I’ve been getting a sore back and neck, but it’s worth it.  Totally. I was really missing the smell of beeswax.  I’ve started a new body of work. These pieces are the 8″x8″ pieces of plywood that have been sitting in my studio for a few weeks. They have the look of tiles, and I want to hang them in groups. Here are the first few, I have 21 more to go…

I am, so far, very pleased with the way these are turning out.  I’ll have to write another post about the influences here, but for now, I need to get myself out there and paint some more!

One of the things I’ve been trying to do is look at creativity in a more global way….to try to be more aware of  the creativity that is woven into my life and of the way that feeds into more creativity.  As my awareness grows, so does my tendency to plant little seeds of creative potential as I go, and then watch as they build upon one another- sometimes in unexpected ways. The most obvious way is this:

,

The first is a stack of cut plywood, waiting for sanding, and the second is same plywood, covered with paper, and waiting for the first coat of beeswax.  A lot of the time I don’t feel like doing the prep work, like this. It’s tedious, or boring. Not nearly as exciting as painting.  But if I don’t take breaks from painting to do work like this, I run out of painting supports, and it breaks my painting momentum.But it isn’t always so obvious.

Here is a table in our family room…..in all of it’s glorious, messy, chaos. Talk about creative potential! A lot goes on at this table- worlds are created, characters come into being, objects are built…..and having the space set aside for this creates the potential for that. It’s an important part of our home life.  And my creative life.  It’s viral, creativity. It’s essential. And, honestly, does it get any better than this?