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?

Passion & Pragmatism

Plow & Reap, 2012. Oil on canvases, each 16x12".

I often say that my life and work are powered by the dual forces of Passion and Pragmatism. These forces, however, are not always in stride. For months now, as I have renovated my home and studio, Pragmatism has held the lead. Now in a period of transition, I want Passion to pull ahead. It takes some discipline to enter and remain in the studio. The ordinary intrusions of the ringing telephone, a bill to pay, laundry to do, are now joined by all the "loose ends" of remodeling. So it is with great determination that I devote myself to the exploration and expression of imagination.

These two draft horses, adorned with "P" medallions, are emblems of those two forces joined, working together in the furtherance of my visions -here at home and in the vast fields of creative endeavor.

Knows One Thing Well

"The fox knows many things. The porcupine knows one thing well." -Russian Proverb

Knows Many Things, 2001. Oil on paper, 16x20".

Knows One Thing Well, 2001. Oil on paper, 16x20".

I like to think of myself as a porcupine, but I'm not so sure that is true.

At the beginning of Summer, this swiftly passing season of flowering and fruiting, I embarked on an extensive process to renovate my home and studio. During this labor-intensive period I have used virtually every tool in my tool box. I am glad to have them. As I celebrate the changes I have made (not entirely alone), I also feel gratitude for the ability to perform these varied tasks. I've sawn and sanded, primed and puttied, sewn and varnished.... I have been acting like the fox.

I long now, at Summer's, to get back into the studio. I yearn to be once again, the porcupine, knowing one thing well.