Improvement over time - LOTS of time.

A much better try at the backyard laundry line. I don't have it yet: in an attempted to merge the dark shapes and dramatize the sunshine, I turned the wooden clothespins into rock, with mud on the sides.  In an odd way, they  are putting me in mind of the Easter Island faces.   But the patterns I invented in the sheets are making me VERY happy.  I  need to try again, and have already started the next version.  Same composition, better choices of color and handling of the background and the pins, I hope.

"On the way to the dumpster" (who posted that just recently?) I discovered my original laundry line image - already chopped, and the middle section is missing (woe is me). Apparently I'd been utilizing the back for something else.  Anyway, this is what's left - even worse than I remembered, but I'll share it because it IS almost 20 years ago, after all.  And then I'll get these really awful little disasters into the recycle bin.  Isn't it nice to know we can all get better EVENTUALLY?

CIRCA 1995 -NOT new !!!!!

Donna Zagotta on Georgia O'Keefe

This blog post by Donna Zagotta is so dead on for me, I hope you will all take time to read it.
    Here is the .LINK.

The phrase that resonated: "this thing that is your own".
The action with which  I could identify : analyzing my work to recognize the (many) influences that are NOT necessarily my own.

What could be more important than finding the thing that is your own? 

Simplify, focus on what I like

I probably already said that landscapes are not my strength. I quickly determined that a page full of the backyard's contents would not even hold  MY interest, let alone anyone else's.  It would certainly just turn out to be a "depiction" of a place.
So I focused on what attracted me in the first place, the laundry line.  In this first little watercolor sketch, I caught the feeling of the wind blowing through my sheets. But I've lost the warmth of the sunshine.

My next try may be to drill down even further, to the clothespin holding the sheet to the line.  I tried for a source photo this morning,  but of course as soon as I had the idea the weather changed: no sun (I want those shadows), and WAY too much heat.

Trite, trite, trite

Oh, my next painting is going to be SOOOOO trite.   But, in keeping with my resolution to go back to having FUN while I paint, I'm going with an impulse.  I do love our little suburban back yard, and can't get enough of it when there is a line of laundry hanging there. . I've been known to stand at the kitchen sink window and just smile at the yard when the sun and breeze are tossing my sheets and making them smell wonderful.

Here's my sweet little back yard

So, this week I sketched for a while (until the mosquitoes drove me back inside), then took a bunch of pictures and am now drawing the various elements of the yard that truly make me happy. Trying to reorganize the elements into a good composition, as I think most landscape painters may do (yes?).  Many years ago, as a new painter,  I succumbed to this same temptation and ended up with such an embarrassing mess, it's been painted over with gesso and re-purposed long ago.  No images remain, except in my head.   The memory of that one has kept me from trying again - until now. 

And here are some first sketches.

By the way, we live in an OLD suburb, thank goodness:  

none of those snooty neighborhood association rules  - I hope YOU, dear reader, are not a laundry snob.  And while we are on pet peeves, does anyone else have issues with neighbors with lawn services that use (loud) blowers to "clean" off lawns after mowing, throwing all the dirt into the air, onto clean laundry, and through open windows?

Okay, end rant.

Too many workshops, too little time

Workshops are so rewarding. Sometimes.  Especially after the last two, I have come home full of new ideas, new plans, new attitudes towards my artwork and painting.  Ready to spend hours in the studio pursuing these ideas.

 However, with summer upon us, I generally have little time to paint until fall, and, this year with elder care responsibilities taking first priority, the time to paint has shrunk and, more importantly, splintered into little shards of time. 

I find that the bits of time do nothing for my ability to reclaim and revisit the lessons I thought would guide my painting for the coming months. I’ve  ruined so much paper in recent weeks, attempting to do that.  And not had time (or energy) to analyze the failures to learn from them.

So I’m surrendering (for now). I need to recapture the enjoyment of  painting time, regardless of any progress I may not experience.  I’m going back to flowers and cats, painted from my own source photos.  I made the decision a couple of days ago.  And am a much happier woman, even if not a better artist!

What do YOU do when you have the ideas and the energy but not the time? Is there a way to keep a new spark alive other than shutting yourself away in the studio for hours?  Ideas and suggestions are welcome!

 These three images represent my recent stuggles, in sequence:  getting worse and more confused with each one.Don't even ASK about that third mess, on the right.  Ideas from every place stuck into it!

Finding a new direction?

You  should know that anyone who has seen my work in recent years will not, I think, recognize this as mine. I’ve been painting blossoms, and occasionally cats.  This is neither of those!   For me, though, it is very MUCH mine.  And very much the product of a chain of thoughts I have been entertaining since the workshop at Kanuga with Mike Bailey.

The painting in my last post was my first post-Bailey project.  As it neared completion I found myself satisfied with it,  for how I managed to keep a mood,  used  design principles, and even included content and narrative.  But at the same time I knew it was not feeling like MY work.  I spent a lot of time thinking about that as I painted, and as I slept (or didn’t sleep), trying to understand what it was missing, why it didn’t “make my heart sing”.   My good artist friend Pat has used that term more than once during our group critiques, and I know that when I’ve made her heart sing, it’s one of my GOOD paintings, and when I haven’t, it’s not a keeper.

I realized, looking at recent (pre-Bailey) paintings around my studio that DID break into song, that this one was missing components that are important to me.  High contrast.  Dramatic colors.  Interesting shapes that fill the page. Patterns.  The more I thought about this, the more I decided that these things were a constant in ALL of my own paintings that I like the most.  In fact, I decided, it was time that I realized that they were not my style, they were my subject matter – or should be. Not flowers or botanicals. Not anything else.  Dramatic Color, Contrast, Shape and Pattern.

So, I stretched some paper and started out to paint my new (old) subject matter.  And this was the result. What it will lead to is still to be determined. A second attempt is already in progress, and a third idea already sketched. And, when I look from this new painting to my recent floral paintings, it is indeed from the hand of the same artist.  Compare it to these - to me they absolutely relate to the one above:

I’m very excited. Feels like I’m changing my whole relationship to my art.

A Thousand Dreams

This is the first painting  I’ve started and completed after my workshop with M.E. (Mike) Bailey at Kanuga this month.  It has stirred up a lot for me.

I’m not sure it’s the start of a series in the way Mike hoped we would work for a while.  But I learned a whole lot just doing it and thinking about it as I did it, and thinking about how I felt about it when it was done.

I had decided that if I DID do a series, I’d cheat and work with the morning glory images I’ve already used twice recently, before the workshop. Both paintings abstracted the leaves into shape and patterns, so I thought I’d be able to let go of the ‘pretty picture’ and work on the design.   Having recently heard the song Something Wonderful, from The King and I,    I chose regretful as a mood or emotion to portray, and settled down to use the seven elements of design (see earlier posts – I won’t shout them at you now) to support that mood. 

As I worked through a plan, including maybe a dozen value sketches, the theme of regret (and those heartbreaking lyrics: “ he has a thousand dreams that won’t come true”)  kept nudging me, until I realized that, all unintended, I had a meaning, and content too (I wasn’t PLANNING on tackling that until June when I take a Marilynn Derwenskus workshop).  What brought it together was hearing the song.   Aren’t unrealized dreams one of the hardest things to accept?   This painting is for my mother, Margaret, who died fourteen years ago, with a bucketful of dreams that never did come true. I like to think that a few of them did – those are the blossoms that are still full of color. The others have withered and sunk back into forgetfulness.    

But already,  this is just the Last Painting, and I am already embarked on the Next Painting.  And very excited about it.  It’s a whole ‘nother animal altogether.  No peeks just yet, give me a couple of days to succeed or fail, and to think some more about what this newer idea means to me and my art.  I think it’s a very good thing, though. . . . more later.