Posts from the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Yesterday, the first of May, I went for a walk with the dog and was in total visual euphoria because it has finally become “peak spring” with flowers and leaves on the trees, dandelions, bright lemon-green patches in the grass, a temperature that is actually pleasant and un-sweaty. It was glorious, a literal breath of fresh air.
Today, the second of May, mother nature has shown her bi-polar side giving us gray cold winter like monotony which we have been having for the last 6 months or so. I know summer will win out and life will go on, but I can’t feeling ripped off by the lack of pretty-comfortable-pleasant-ness spring usually brings.
Maybe that’s why my last two large paintings have been giant odes to spring-like imagery. Maybe I just like flowers. I resolved to keep fresh flowers in my work table the last few weeks. It’s part of my new ambition to care for myself in radical ways that I have not afforded or believed I needed in the past.
I need flowers.
In case you are wondering. I do have some favorites. Lilac, first of all because it smells so amazing and I grew up with lilacs all around my house. Luckily, my neighbors now are kind enough to share theirs. I think roses are intensely beautiful, especially the pink ones. And recently I discovered little white chamomile flowers, like miniature daisies that wobble as I type.
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I have always heard you should carry a notebook around to write down things that inspire you. That probably works well for writers. I try to keep a camera handy for colors and compositions that excite me. Without a doubt the long cold winter that FINALLY seems to have ended also inspired this new painting and its color-palooza. I’m ready for the sun to warm things up and bring life back to the world around me.
I finished a new painting and don’t know what to say about it. Finishing a painting is a pretty big deal and I ought to say SOMETHING even if it’s just “Here, I made this.”
I feel like I’m at a point where I’m proud of any accomplishment outside of (trying to) provide basic necessities for myself and family. When food, clothing, shelter, and love are all squared away it is good to get lost in something.
So I made this painting of tools. The tools came from a picture I took on a family vacation. On our way to Colorado we stopped at an attraction along I-70 called The Garden of Eden. It’s something to see, if you’re into totally eccentric artist/brilliant maniac stuff. Which I am of course.
Of all the creepy strange beautiful things to see there, I was most taken with the man’s tool shed. Everything was organized and hung so perfectly spaced. It was a design lover’s dream. I wasn’t able to get that picture out of my mind until it became a painting in my ever growing stack of large watercolors I don’t know what to do with. (ok, I secretly hope I will get discovered and have an incredible gallery show where rich people throw piles of money at me but don’t tell…)
Here, I made this! Also, here are my feet.
Sometimes objects will have a special meaning and inspire me to put them in a composition for a painting.
Last spring, my grandmother past away and left behind wonderful intangible things like love and spirit that will last forever. I hope I pass those along someday too.
Of course there are objects attached to her life and my memories of her that are here still too. When my mom gave me some of her jewelry I knew exactly what I would be painting next.
It was hard to set up a still life for very long because I kept wanting to wear the things on the table. There are no rings in this painting because the couple that I got are on my fingers most days. After I worked on the jewelry part for several days (weeks?) I felt a push to keep going and include more that reminds me of my grandmother’s sense of style. She was into accessories, she made things, and she was always put together in a colorful way. Maybe I over did it. Maybe I went too far. But in my opinion, I can’t say enough about how much the little things matter.
Finally. My perfect watercolor paper arrived in the mail and within minutes I began to work on a new painting. This one came to be faster than any other. I was anxious.
Birds have always been in my brain when it comes to painting subject matter. I love them, I hate them, I can’t get away from them, I wish I knew more about them, they live around me, they have threatened me, and overall I’m pretty sure they will take over the planet like that Hitchcock movie suggests.
When I was younger I had two pet parakeets that terrified me! They were escape artists and we had to use twist ties to close their food doors shut. When I forgot I would come home from school to find them flying around my bedroom free “as a bird.” I hated that! i felt my life was threatened. My mother, the warrior queen she is, would catch them in her hands and put them back in their cage. I could never do that.
Could I?
Regardless I present to you another (although this time extremely larger) painting of birds. I wonder if people look at my paintings and think that I am horrible and use watercolors in the complete wrong way.
I’m okay with that. As the child in me says, “But that’s how I want it to look!”
It’s day seven million and forty six of not having decent painting paper in the house. So I have been playing writer trying to figure out my life and solve all the world’s problems. So far I have a stupid drawing of myself and a coffee ring on my notepad. If that doesn’t make me a “real” writer than I don’t know what will.
Before I go can I just say THANK GOD it’s February? I have good memories of February because it’s the wintery link to spring. It’s the end of a horrible awful freezing dead story read every year. I know, I live in the Midwest where it will likely snow in April BUT still, there’s a difference…things come back to life, you can smell the world turning greener. It’s great.
Here’s to turning the page.
I had been dying to paint all week. I started a writing class and it inspired me. I began a great big painting but realized I had purchased naughty bad cheapo paper and would have to throw it out. I started several smaller ones and I’m fairly certain this is the only one that will survive my over-excited need to over-paint the paper.
The other day I woke up feeling like I was on death’s door. Every part of my body ached, especially my eyelids. I wanted to sleep. I went into the spare bedroom in my house and buried myself in a fuzzy blanket. I cut myself off from the world and rested.
I wouldn’t say I woke up fresh as a daisy (I was disgusting) but there is definitely something to be said for the “get some rest” prescription people so often hand out.
This little painting is titled Francine, because although I was initially cartoonizing myself, in the end I think this girl looks like one of my first dolls I had as a kid who I treated like hell. She was used and abused, soft to begin with and softened by my early childhood games.
Although my sudden illness took me by surprise it is not especially odd that I would get sick with my tendency to over-work. My grandfather, who is very ill at this time, once cautioned me about burning the candle at both ends.
Unfortunately many of us feel that it is necessary to work as hard as possible, and the results can be mixed. Living takes its toll.
I recently finished another large painting to add to the growing pile of artwork I have no idea what to do with because I can’t afford to frame them and they are too personal to sell (well, too personal to sell for next to nothing, my going rate for art).
This one is especially impossible to do anything with because it’s a portrait of my family. I don’t think anyone wants a portrait of my family, except my family, and there’s no way the kid can afford it on her allowance.
But I like to think of these large paintings as future gold mines for my kid or her kids or her kids’ kids. If she decides to have kids…which I assume she will (please god, let that not be in the next 15 years).
I was feeling all depressed and sad about my lack of enthusiasm for selling artwork and the feeling of being broke that comes with it.
So I turned to Twitter, where in less than 140 characters one of my favorite writers, Anne Lamott wrote that “creating art is a debt of honor.”
So there ya go, Lauren, appreciate the fact that you actually made something. OK?
Ok.
Part of my childhood Christmas tradition was reading The Night before Christmas. By some small miracle that little red book has resurfaced after a few years hiatus in my cluttered home.
I’m delighted the last line of the story invokes my favorite Christmas song by John Lennon (I know this story is much older than that pop song, so what). It’s not only the use of the word ‘happy’ for ‘merry’ but the use of the word ‘all’ that really gets me in the spirit and makes me want to sing;
And so this is Christmas for weak and for strong,
The rich and the poor ones, the road is so long.
And so happy Christmas for black and for white
For the yellow and red ones let’s stop all the fights.
A very merry Christmas and a happy New Year
Let’s hope it’s a good one without any fear.
Sending my warmest wishes to you, dear reader, and I will see you again in 2013.
This morning there was a sticky fog that lasted all day long. I am sure it is sunny somewhere in the country but this gloom seems to reflect the mood I know many are feeling after the loss in Connecticut.
There really are no words but people seem to be saying things anyway, naturally.
Tomorrow I’ll go back to my classroom and to be honest I am scared. Not because I think something bad will happen but because it’s hard not to imagine the “what if” scenarios and then there’s the inevitable comments of children trying to process the un-processable.
This morning my husband and I talked to our daughter about some of it. She took it well, although unusually silent for a very wordy girl.
I guess we all just have to keep doing what we always do; mundane routines and small strides forward.
But I know as I go forward I will with deeper meaning continue to move in the direction of , empathy, tolerance, and with any luck a little clarity.
