Giving Thanks

                

Wild Turkey I, II, III, IV, 2014. Graphite on paper, Graphite & chalk on paper, Graphite & oil on paper, Graphite & oil on art board. Each, 10x8". (These Wild Turkey studies were part of my Thanksgiving feast back in November, 2014.)

I have been feeling so grateful following the Open Studios I recently hosted. After two long years of repairing and remodeling my house, it was a joy to throw open the doors (even in the dead of Winter.)

The experience has given me much to reflect on. I have been thinking about gratitude itself. Gratitude may be associated with contentment, a sense of belonging or good fortune. I enjoy that, but more than ever recognize gratitude as a force, a source of motivation. All this stimulation and affirmation have not only "re-warmed" my home, but kindled my creative fires. I want to live up to my blessings. I want to see them repeat and multiply in all of our lives.

As children -and adults- we are often chided to "count our blessings". Sometimes we do need to be prompted in that way, to appreciate what we have, as well as what we have been spared. But rarely does forced (or enforced) gratitude bring us into the inspiring dynamics of giving and receiving. I'm so glad to be in that virtuous cycle with friends and neighbors near and far. Still and again, THANKS. 

Heroes

     I was delighted to receive an invitation to write about one of the 120 art works selected for The Art of the State, the current exhibition at Montana Museum of Art & Culture. It was difficult to chose from the diverse images and objects on view. Ultimately, I chose Kathe Kollwitz's etching, Conspiracy. Kollwitz (1867-1945) is an artist I hold in the highest esteem. While her work can be deeply personal and intimate, this print demonstrates the power of her socially-concerned art.

     Curator Brandon Reintjes notes that this print from The Revolt of the Weavers series was completed in 1895. "Kollwitz was inspired by.... Gerhart Hauptmann's play The Weaver, which explores the failed revolt to the Langembielau weavers in 1842. The series was exhibited to acclaim in 1898, and at the Great German Art Exhibition Kollwitz was nominated for a gold medal." However, Kaiser Wilhelm II was so infuriated by the six print series, he prevented the award.

Conspiracy, 1895. Etching, 11.25x6.75".

    

      What so infuriated the old Kaiser? What makes this image provocative today, and how is that accomplished? 

     In Conspiracy Kollwitz uses the force of linear perspective to sweep viewers back from the starkly lit foreground to a more remote darkness. There figures merge in shadow, as they also join in secret purpose. Yet within the gloom we can make out their serious and haggard faces, hands clenched in fists and gnarled by labor.

     Conspiracy depicts a moment in an historic drama (the 1842 Weaver's Revolt), but also reflects the anguish of economic disparities that repeat from generation to generation. With this image Kollwitz provides a vision of the courage and solidarity required to attempt profound social change in any age or place.

     I apologize for the mediocre reproduction. I hope you will take the chance to find this etching in excellent company at MMAC, or perhaps in the context of the entire Revolt of the Weavers series elsewhere.

Montana Museum of Art & Culture

Learning

Snatch Studies, 2014. Graphite on paper, 10x8".

Beyond the incidental and much-sought thrills of discovery in the artistic process, I prize art as a means of inquiry. I learn so many things in the pursuit of images possessing both naturalistic fidelity and allegorical significance,

For example, I became intrigued with barn owls as stealthy, ghostly snatchers in the dark. In a search for references, I came across diagrams illustrating how the degree of darkness influences the hunting owl's posture in flight. I never imagined such slight differentiation mattered!

In copying those illustrations, I drew the owl and its varied strategies for survival into my mind's eye, my memory. In addition to their artistic usefulness, these sketches broaden my understanding of, if not empathy with, other living creatures. Yet another reason to celebrate and devote myself to art as an endeavor.

Snatch I, 2014, Mixed media on art board, 1x8".

Snatch II, 2014. Mixed media on art board, 10x8".

Snatch III, 2014. Mixed media on art board, 10x8".

Snatch IV, 2014. Mixed media on art board, 10x8".

By Day, 2014. Graphite on paper, 10x8".

By Night, 2014. Graphite & chalk on paper, 10x8".

Weltschmerz

Weltschmerz |ˈveltˌ sh merts|nouna feeling of melancholy and world-weariness.ORIGIN German, from Welt ‘world’ + Schmerz‘pain.’

"A Study on 12.14.12", 2012. Combined media on paper, 14x11".

I doubt I would be an artist, or be so devoted to art, if it did not allow me to explore and express grief, anxiety, dismay -mine and ours. In the quiet of image-making I contend with disquietude. In solitude I reflect on social events and conditions far beyond my circle of influence. With empathy, curiosity, outrage, admiration... I engage with sorrows I cannot touch in any other way. 

There is room in art, and in my art, for the whole spectrum of human emotion. I do revel in it, celebrate and marvel through it.  But I believe art will always have particular value to me as a place for concerns and confusions that are difficult to bring to light elsewhere. It can be, in this way, a form of prayer. 

This is not melancholy, nor pessimism, but a way of creatively responding to the unwelcome, the difficult to embrace. More and more often I am called to make beauty and meaning where beauty and meaning seem lost or hard come by. As I mature in life and art, I feel all the more confident that I can answer that call, that it is one that must be answered.

Flow

"May what I do flow from me like a river -no forcing, no holding back- the way it is with children."

-Ranier Maria Rilke

Deep & Wide, 2005. Oil on canvas, 14x18".

It has been nearly two months since I mused on "nesting". These past weeks have been full of the unexpected -both pleasant diversions and troubling distractions. And still it surprises me that I have yet to find a flow in the resumption of my studio practice.

After thirty years of steady drawing and painting, it is not difficult to pick up the pencils and brushes. It is not hard to put the tools to use. What seems to demand more time and patience is regaining intimacy with the entire process. Image-making still feels more like an activity and less like a state of being.

If there is a gift in this prolonged and awkward transition, it is the revelation of just what the alchemy of art requires, not just materially but spiritually. It demands undisturbed solitude for sustained concentration and effort, adequate time to savor and assess the work, to be "at home" with it.

This experience confirms my devotion to guarding that solitude and its productive routines in the first place. But as possible, whenever, however possible, protect that fundamental connection with the work, the flow.

Distances

Through close observation I sometimes feel as if I have traveled great distances, when in fact I have only covered fractions of inches. The cup formed by petals is experienced like a dell. Single leaves rise like giant sails, wind-tautened against the sky. The circumference of a stem has monumental girth in the world of a small composition. While it is not my intention to render the world -or any part of it- in microscopic detail, these efforts inform the spaces of my imagination, and also alter the way I see actual the world I wander through.

Pin Cherry, 2012. Graphite & Oil on Art Board

In Rose, 2014. Graphite & Oil on Art Board, 8x10".

Honeysuckle Study, 2013. Graphite & Oil on Art Board.

Nesting

"Energetic space begets energetic space."

Jeanette Winterson, Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery

As an artist who works at home, I have a distinct relationship to my environment. A certain degree of visual order is essential for concentration on the spaces I create in the flat, white blanks of pages and panels. A certain degree. 

Right now, after the Summer's beautiful renovations, I am still attuned to (if not distracted by) changes in this setting. And I keep wondering how, as the seasons turn and light shifts, those revisions will alter my vision. They are bound to, aren't they?