Posts tagged ‘artist’
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.
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.
(Acquiescence is a term used generally to describe a permission given by silence or passiveness)
I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out the story of my latest painting. What inspired it? What was going on in my life? It’s almost too much to try to squeeze into a snappy blog post.
The short story is that it was created start to finish in a month of big personal change. About a year ago I realized that I wished I had not changed my last name at the time of my marriage. This year I decided to do something about it. 
On a Friday afternoon I went to the county courthouse and filed all the paperwork. Three Fridays later I went before a judge who asked “What is the reason for your name change?” 
I simply and shyly (not the brave warrior of independence I wish I were) said, “My decision is based on an understanding I have now that I did not have at the time of my marriage.”
I realize that leaves things wide open for assumptions. But the fact remains that this was a personal decision I made because it felt like the right thing to do. It’s about having the courage of my convictions. It’s about being a reasonable person. It’s a beginning of a direction I want the rest of my life to go in.
And so is this painting!
What did people do before cell phone cameras? Or digital cameras for that matter. I mean, did we wander the world noticing beautiful things and simply commit them to memory? Stupid little things like a leaf on a wind shield… the shadow of your dog…a really great home made pizza…how did we record such non-events?
In a book about writing I remember one suggestion for finding and recording inspiration was carry note cards and a pencil to take notes on good ideas or observations that appear at inopportune times. The book was written before the term “smart phone” was invented.
I think the note card system is sound advice. As a painter I think my camera phone is my note card and pencil. It’s with me all the time. It’s so handy for just about anything that piques my interest…good or bad.
Several weeks ago I forgot to bring my lunch to work and bought the “chef” salad from my cafeteria. The lettuce was brown and soggy. Very slimy. I took a picture, but I’ll spare you.
Later I had a work-related meeting at an art college. You have to see the bathroom doors:
In case you don’t have eagle vision that’s a sign on the ladies room door about not putting paint down the drain. What…..so….. is it cool if they dump the paint down the men’s room drains?
An-ee-way I just thought it interesting to come to the conclusion that I am using my 21st century skill (carrying an electronic device in my pocket that governs my life) to find creative inspiration for things I may want to paint some day.
For now, I shy away from painting gross salads and stupid bathroom signs. Back to that leaf on the wind shield …I was on to something with that…
*If you want to know what book about writing I am talking about don’t think just buy this.
At the library I picked up a book with a catchy title, Who Cooked the Last Supper; the Woman’s History of the World by Rosalind Miles. Recently, a paragraph jumped out and pulled me to my studio to paint;
The extraordinary continuity of women’s work from country to country and age to age, is one of the reasons for its invisibility; the sight of a woman nursing a baby, stirring a cook-pot or cleaning a floor is as natural as the air we breathe , and like the air it attracted no scientific analysis before the modern period. While there was work to be done, women did it, and behind the vivid foreground activities of popes and kings, wars and discoveries, tyranny and defeat, working women wove the real fabric of the kind of history that has yet to receive its due.
That paragraph reminds me history being made every day. People fight and survive (or die) in conditions I never knew existed. Thank goodness there are writers who will tell these stories.
I started weaving “strips” of paint together. I love textiles and fabrics. I love the idea that there is always a story behind every person and the things they make or do are part of a bigger picture.
Here’s the final result. Not often will I start and finish a painting of this size in a weekend (and I’m sure I’ll touch it up here and there) but something about that paragraph pushed me through.
I confess. I have the uncontrollable urge to re-arrange furniture. It’s how I cope with stress. Over the weekend a series of unfortunate little things had me moving everything in sight. When I got done with the living room, the dining room, and my studio I turned to the only thing I hadn’t messed with in a while; my website.
I know there isn’t furniture on the internet to move but there were things that bugged me about my blog and my store and stuff in between that made me want to push it all together into one perfect spot. A place where everything flows like wine into my glass…
And it was going to take a lot of wine in my glass to keep me sane from all the meticulous inter-workings of web site building. I think the WordPress support staff is more than a little annoyed with my non-sensical badgering about linking this to that and how…
It’s worth it, right? Look around…click on something…find something that doesn’t work and let me know so I can go back and fix it.
And even with all this link-mania I managed to get a few new paintings done. I’m showing off these owls because they are not only adorable but also available for you to buy now. NOW!
Sorry – that’s my crazy side creeping back in. Hey I haven’t re-arranged my bathroom yet….gotta run.
Just a quick shop announcement. All my limited edition prints will now come with a Certificate of Authenticity. I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time but with over two hundred prints in my old store I would have never been able to sort it all out and keep good records. Now that I am starting over in my new store it feels much more manageable to provide this service. Now you can be assured that if you buy an art print from me that it is the real deal. I like a little extra security, don’t you?
Also, sad news. The day has finally come when I closed up the original Lauren Alexander Art shop. Started in 2006, I spent 6 years polishing that shop and although I thought about keeping it open for my digital collage sheets I decided to close that door too and focus on just one shop with high quality hand made art.
Lastly, I’ts SUMMMERRRRRRR time. Sorry for yelling in your ear, but I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to be kicking back, sleeping in, traveling, painting, doing as I please for approximately 10 weeks.
Needless to say, I plan on making a whole lot of ME time.
This is the latest thing I painted and the first thing that I finished in 2012. It felt really good marking the back with the first day of the new year. This picture came about after a trip to a history museum that focuses on the evolution of the suburban life. I rode there in a minivan with another family and as we drove to the museum we stopped and called out to some horses that were by the road. Normally I wouldn’t think to stop a car and try to talk to some horses. They don’t talk back after all and if they did, what would I say to a horse?
Anyway the whole thing was surreal to me. Visiting an entire exhibit detailing the takeover of American Indian territory and the systematic separation of races. It’s a complicated history. I started to see my personal history differently. I think I see my choices from a broader angle. I don’t’ know if that will reflect in the kind of paintings I make or drawings I start with. But I know it will reflect in the choices I make in my life from this point on.
Oh – I called this painting Pastoral. It was a word that kept running through my head the whole time I was working on it (and this one took a while to come out). I read up on it and realized that in literature it is used to describe a complex idea in much simpler terms. I think I’ll borrow that meaning for my painting.
