midway

one of my studio mates is listening to Fleetwood Mac.  every now and then, he sings along as he paints.  every now and then, we all do.  it's monday night.  i'm sipping beer from a wine glass and we've all got our doors flung wide.  we walk in and out of each other's spaces whenever we want.  i can hear the music as clearly as if i were playing it in my own studio.  it's like art school but without papers to write.  it's like science camp but without bedtimes.

this is all such a big damn beautiful gift.

 

 

 

 

 

one pencil scratch at a time

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getting there.

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signify

the little icon i use as my "picture" here - the severed rope of braided hair - is my hair hung on a lonesome nail. i chopped it off three and a half years ago.

i caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror the other day. my old self. the self i know. the self i remember and feel lonely for. slender from The Almighty Jog, not skinny. and my hair, already grown long and wild with curls again. a fast growth. a fast return. perhaps my hair missed me too. :)

and what a happy glimpse it was. a moment of safety. security. something true. i am returning to myself- ideas i had been discouraged away from, fallen beliefs, poems. they sweep in like dust, like glitter, like hair across the eyes. it is a welcome warmth. a deep quilt full of ink stains and promise.

i know the face in the mirror again. i know the direction of the eyes. i know the lines at the edge of the smile.

i've been crocheting again. making new banners. messages. preparing for winter when i can use my body as a billboard. i will don the signs and signifiers. a quiet(er) performance. a true performance. drape my form in the ideas and modes i cling to. use the structure of skeleton and muscle as if it were a gallery wall. it seems honest. it seems necessary.

and as i twist the yarn through my fingers, over the hook, i return to my previous wide-open definition of ART. i return to the deep knowledge that a painting is no more important than a quilt or poem or necklace. it is all ART. the differences between are just a preference of form. a way to capture the signifiers, harness them, bend them to desire and need.

it is a cold day here. a day for doing the laundry and then returning to bed with my coffee and crochet hook. a day for a quiet(er) happiness.

in progress...

yesterday...


today...



and the day's still young.

---

i haven't eaten a thing yet. inside and out, it's been oil as sustenance: coffee, paint, coffee, paint. i'm finally heating up some soup to steady my hands and comfort my stomach. this close to the finish line but still so far from satisfaction. i lose myself in the paint. my eyes hunt the details, the shadows, the folds of the dress for any small mishap or overlooked moment that needs to be defined, lulled out of it's dark corner, caressed in to being, begged at and fought for and loved beyond compare.

this is one of three canvasses i took outside to work on in clear light. neighbors, construction workers, unknown men came by and looked, watched. they loved the fact there are no faces. they stared and smiled and said "good job, kiddo!" i'll eat my soup and head back. days like this are days you don't quit. eating is secondary. cleaning is irrelevant. sleep seems stupid and erroneous. days like this you don't let up- you pull the sails taught.

progress...

yay for saturday! all week, i got up at 5am with my sweetie. that's how early he gets up for his job. my thought was that (1) it's always easier to wake up when there's someone else banging around in the kitchen and getting ready for the day and (2) i'd have the whole house to myself for a solid 9 hours and could use that time toward much better things than catching zees. and, in a lot of ways, waking up that early feeds productivity. ever since i graduated, it's been somewhat of a struggle figuring out how best to manage my time and energy. i mean, i'd been in school my entire life and so my class schedule was what kept me in line, kept me moving, kept me productive. and it isn't that i've necessarily been any less productive since finishing school, i just haven't felt as serious as i used to. i figured i'd try out an early morning schedule again and see how i fared...

i got so much done! oh my god! like, by NOON! amazing! i've got 6 canvasses going and a huge collection of headless paper dolls floating through the whole house. i'll have pics soon, i'm just stunned by how much i got done. i even painted wet in to wet on one of the canvasses which is something i never do... but i sorta like it. partnered with the more photographic, realist work, there's a definite charm to that painting approach. i still buffed out all the brush strokes but the "painterliness" of the method is still super prominent in spite of that. we'll see if i end up keeping it or making it as realistic as i possibly can... the thing i usually strive for in oil paintings which is why it's taking me so long to get them wrapped up.

today, i got up at 8:45 but come monday morning, i'll get back on my new early morning schedule and will definitely get the big canvas finished. i can't wait. i'm going to have to stop myself from working on it soon it's just that with each new layer of paint i put down, the more realistic and complete it appears. it's hard to stop when you notice that happening but i don't want to end up overworking this piece. normally, i'm nervous about posting in-progress shots but here's what i mean:


layer 1


layer 4


layer 6


layer 7

see what i mean. but i've really got to make myself get this one wrapped up. i need to put the buttons back on her dress and work out some of the highlights and fix her hand... other than that, it's almost done. :) it's pretty big- 44" x 38" so it takes a couple hours to get a single layer of paint down across the entire surface and i'm trying to be really careful at this point too... i really don't want to mess this one up. i like it too much. :)

proof... (in progress...)

i haven't posted a picture of work in what feels like an extremely long time. i talk and talk and talk about painting but where's the work, right? walk the talk, art jerk! here you go...


(untitled for now because i think it needs more work maybe, possibly, probably)
15" x 11"
graphite, erasure, and acrylic on paper
2009

back on the anonymity trip (as if i ever got off) and am very happy with the results. i'm definitely going to keep working on this one and do a few more drawings like this in order to experiment further with redaction techniques. i bought a roll of black duck tape today to see how that would read rather than the painted stripe across the eyes... plus, duck tape connotes violence and that's pretty much what i'm trying to get at: forced anonymity, robbed identities, stolen lives, victimization, murder... bad stuff.