Inside Out...About the process

Ever the observers, artists in a sense do rob from people. Their experiences may translate into a line from a book or play, a song lyric, a photograph or a painting, etc. That's usually okay though, and why is that?  I think it is because the artist has interpreted it from within their own personal experience and it has become a part of themselves.  They are not separate from the work but speak from within it.  Too much detachment and the work is a lifeless intellectual manipulation, and the subject is like a bug in a jar.

I've been thinking about Austin, the landscape painter in Jane Urquart's provoking book The Underpainter. He reduced his life to the controlled rectangular views contained on his canvas.  These narrow, precise windows enabled him to keep his life and his anxiety about human emotion at a distance. His intimate studies of his model/muse are in his own words an " intimate violation", cold and calculating. Austin takes himself and his "work" very seriously, never letting it conflict with any personal attachments. Yet as he searches for passion in his work,  he doesn't realize that he has missed his opportunity again and again because of his unwillingness to accept love in his life. Sounds great, huh?  Yet it is a heartbreaking look at the interior of an artist's life.

I've known artists like that.  Somehow in dedicating themselves to their work, they take themselves too seriously. In their desire for success they set themselves apart and above the rest of us. Austin shows us the trap inherent in that position.  Life is messy. Period.  It seems to me that profound meaningful artistic expression comes from entering the fray, getting bumped around, usually a lot, and coming up for air from time to time.  Art comes from within us, is translated through our beings. For me, making art is an experience in itself, filled with struggle, exhilaration, fear, and the pure pleasure of seeing images emerge from chaos.  That is the joy of it, to feel my ideas, experiences, inspirations, and observations reorganize and synthesize into one unique visual image.

ArtWorks NW 2013

Umpqua Valley Arts Association opened their annual juried awards exhibition ArtWorks NW on Friday with an evening gala. The juror Martha Morgan, curator of the Portland gallery Chambers@916, selected 35 works representing 27 artists from the 171 works submitted by Pacific Northwest artists.

I was honored to have three of my paintings selected for the show, as the competition was stiff. I was so surprised and pleased when my name was announced as the first place winner with a cash award of $1000.  The juror selected my painting Adaptation as the winner. Hooray!

 



 

The setting for this piece emerged from one of my many sojourns to Summer Lake Wildlife Refuge near Paisley, Oregon.  The sheer magnitude and inevitability of bird migrations inspire me. If anything is sacred it is the way these beautiful avian creatures mysteriously appear and then disappear from the dormant late winter landscape. The piercing beauty of the birds in the stark cold neutrals of this desert oasis moves me into a deep peace.

 

I feel the history of this fragile place in an almost tangible way that leads me to thinking about the future. Relentlessly, the growing populations of people with their subsequent need for development threaten this ancient system. What if there were no birds left? How can we decide whose world is more important, theirs or ours? Or perhaps a better question is, are we really separate from the rest of the inhabitants of this earth?

 

 

 

 

 

As big as the wind....

The other day my friend's young daughter told her that "the kale is as big as the wind". I love the way small children leap over fences and boundaries in their minds to make fresh  associations and comparisons.  Their brains have not yet been fenced into separate sets of ideas, isolated rooms of thought, rigid pathways, halls of connecting fragments trapped in houses of ideas.

In another life I taught Kindergartners. I fit right into their free world of suggestion, imagination and innovative association. We were kindred spirits.  The "kale" girl's mama is a poet.  I am a painter.  One of my sons is a musician, the other a sculptor.  Different mediums but artists just the same.  What is an artist but someone able to venture far into the abstract and away from conventional thought. Artists reorganize the world in new ways that spark recognition in other people and reflect the world back to them. Often artists provoke thoughts and questions that people do not realize they have. Artists use words/sound/images/objects to express things others don't know how to say. Picasso said, " It takes one a long time to become young."  Is that what I am doing?

Gardening

I am at a difficult spot in my current painting. I have thrown everything I know into it and now I just have to try different things until the direction emerges. Every painting seems to have this place where I have to step out into the abyss. It's painful, takes everything in me to do it, but at the same time I love the process. It's the crux of the painting for me. But, I have to take breaks.

And so, I have been out in my garden. You may say that gardening is my main hobby, but hobby isn't the right descriptor. That implies dabbling in something that you can pick up or put down.  Growing up on a farm wove the cycles of the earth deep into my inner being.  When spring comes along I feel the awakening in my core. The soil in my fingers, the sound of the bees and birdsong, the energy of the growing plants put me in the absolute timeless present. It is as essential to my well being as breathing.  When I am in my garden, I open up in ways that I can't put into words. My thoughts go silent. I am very small, and feel my place in the complexity of nature. And when I am very lucky, fresh perspectives settle on me like a warm gentle rain. Rather than a hobby, I would call my gardening my zen practice. And any gardener knows that there is lots and lots of practice!

Home at last

It is so good to be home from vacation. Leaving my studio for a time has made me appreciate it that much more. I treasure the life I have carved out for myself here beside the river with daily time to reflect and practice stillness, to listen and wait, to explore the moment through visual imagery. It keeps me in tune with the universe, whole and grounded. My life as an artist allows me balance, such a fragile state of being I find.

While I was away I learned that three of my recent paintings have juried into the ArtWorks NW show May 10-July 5, 2013. This is the annual juried awards show sponsored by the Umpqua Valley Arts Association.
These three pieces were selected for the show:

The Certainty of Change, 30 x 60

Adaptation, 40 x 30

 

 

Within You Without You, 40 x 30

 

A Shift in the Weather

Like I was saying, the rain forest is a product of rain and lots of it. With the intense heat, somehow I forgot that part.Oh my gosh, even though it's the dry season we have it in buckets. It really feels like home now, sans the wind and cool temps. And just like we do in the Pacific Northwest, people get out in it and go about their daily business.  I confess that it's a bit easier to do it here in shorts and flip-flops than at home with insulating layers, boots, slickers, etc.  But it's relatively the same sort of endeavor. Suddenly I feel like an experienced local...not really, but it helps.

Rain Forests

I am sitting outside our vacation rental in the jungle of southern Pacific Costa Rica and thinking about rain forests.  I live in a rain forest, but northern and cool.  This tropical rain forest has many similarities to my temperate rain forest, but everything  seems to be magnified by at least ten. It's the driest month of the year here so the cicadas are deafening, like summer crickets on steroids. The forest has a palpable presence, a huge organism, mysterious and overbearing. The eerie sound of the howler monkeys floats through the dense growth. It is the stuff of stories and legends, primitive and foreign.

The forest is warm and moist and so very fertile. Life seems to spring from this perfect set of conditions in endless variety. The insects and birds, the flowers, animals and vegetation: all are so flamboyant compared to those in the muted and foggy forests of the Pacific Northwest. I have been here before and I will visit again. Feeling this intensity around me is invigorating and at the same time humbling.
I think I could get used to the forest here if I spent enough time to become comfortable with the plants and animals, cycles and risks.  But today I admit to a healthy caution and respect for the unknowns out my front door.