Foxwood - Done?

It may be finished. If I do more it won't be anything drastic. Youngest suggested that I lose more of the pencil lines, and it was good advice. I spent half an hour painting out edges, which heightened some of the colors and made the whole painting more fresh.

This went like mad, and it was on my mind all the time, like a background soundtrack or a hum behind everything else. I was playing nine ball with Alex*, and having some great conversation with him and with his wife last night and the painting got louder and louder in my head until I came home and nearly finished it, all in a blur. The other photo here (below) is of my paints laid out before I started. Simple, small palette, with the colors laid out analogously for easy blending. And everything will end up tinted with white, so several spots of white were needed.

These brushes don't have names yet - the whole thing (this last layer of acrylics, that is) was done with the smaller one, which was one of my Nana Emery's brushes. She would have used it for oils, but it was still brand new when it got passed on to me. I was happy using it, producing another painting in the family line.

This reminds me of a wilder incarnation of the same idea that drove Hounds. And I'm reminded, too, of what I like about Fauvism, particularly Andre Derain.

*Alex's Kigoheart recently adorned a t-shirt created to wear for Gaydaze at Disney. Check out Alex's Deviant Art page here.

Foxwood

I'm not sure where this is, but that doesn't matter. Here is the preliminary pencil drawing, after whiting out the parts that needed to be gone.

I knew this piece contained foxes, but I had to look at a lot of fox photos before I could "get" them. I had to both understand fox postures and fox markings, and I had to see where they were. The top center and top left are still unresolved in my mind, but I think I will begin the bottom and right hand side and see what is needed - let the painting grow into the rest, organically.

I'm taking the steps I can take.

The Garden

I've been more enigmatic than usual lately, talking about a garden I can't get into... Linda asked what I was talking about, and I replied to her comment - but I'll repeat it here, with some embellishment, editing, and conclusio and then some:

I am trying to get into my inner world, my heart, to paint what is there without rules like perspective, or gravity. That much I've said before. What I came to feel trying to set up the last painting (the one that is now last night's mess, and was four different drawings, none right) is that I am outside an extremely large garden, with a high wall (no peeking) and I can't get in. Inside is that land without rules, where my inner child can paint. That's my Hundertwasser place, where flies my version of the Twittering Machine, the Jabberwocky, etc. I know I'll get in there, but not how or when, yet. I wasn't content with any of the four drawings because they weren't THERE, and I wasn't interested in painting something else outside the walls. I feel like that's what I've been doing - painting my way closer and closer... Finally I just plunged in and painted, resulting in last night's highly colored mess. I'm not sure this painting is going where I want to go, either, but at least I'm not sure it isn't. And I'd rather move than sit still. The painting Coming Home (above) is like a shadow or hint of the place, and I think it was also part of how I at last arrived at the walls.

I can see the garden walls so clearly I could almost draw them. They are bathed in ruddy end-of-day sunlight (my favorite, the last hour before sunset), and they are of sandstone, almost mauve in color, but enriched and warmed by the gorgeous light. They are about ten feet high, blocks laid on blocks without mortar showing anywhere. They have lots of corners and turns; the outer boundary is an interesting shape. I have not tried to climb them - it doesn't feel like the right thing to do. Ivy and vines festoon the top, but there is no chink or gap or gate anywhere, and I know my inner artist/child has walked miles around this wall without finding a way in. It's beautiful outside the walls, and I know it's even more so inside. I've been there a few times before in dreams. And some songs send me glimpses, too. Like Bruce Cockburn's lyric, "Had another dream about lions at the door; they were not as frightening as they were before."

The last time my inner vision was this clear was shortly after I'd become unblocked, when I found out several things. First, my inner artist doesn't have a beard. I think I already knew that. He had been very still, pale, cold, and not breathing, under a lot of scrub in a hilly place above a sea. At first I tought he was mute beacuse he was so newly awake, and had been like a corpse for so long. But now I realize that he doesn't speak with words - only acts, gestures, and pictures. He's well and quite active now, and I don't usually see him - we're more integrated than that. I'm often looking at things inside me through his (my) eyes. The last time I did actually see him he was on the shore, where the sunlight was incredible, and he was going out sailing every day, alone, out of sight of land, looking for something. Then the paintings started coming more frequently and I lost sight of him.

To sum up: I want to paint from a different part of me - deeper within me. It's a longing and an anticipation and a comfort all at once, to know I'm moving towards this, to want it. And I'm not all that interested in painting anything else, or any other way.

Figure drawing feels like part of this - I don't anticipate that stopping. But I see the figures and even the method of drawing them changing as I explore this.

This is the artistic equivalent of a spirit quest. I'm Pellinore chasing my questing beast. Only it's a place, I think, and my brushes and I will eventually live there.

Someone Else's Art - My Addiction

That title could apply to all kinds of art work - Hundertwasser, Nolde, Klimt, Schielle, Filer, Klee - but no, I'm talking about my first series 5 blind pull Dunny. Today I ran four hours of chauffeur service for various family members (our Wed schedule is tough, and Dearest usually gets to run it, not me) so when I got home I decided I was finally going to treat myself to opening a Dunny (I had four of them in the boxes).

So Youngest and I (he's almost as interested as I am) went to my art table and I took one box out. First we looked at the box, seeing the odds of getting different ones, and trying to decide which ones we might want. This prolonged the anticipation, which is most of the point, to me. Youngest said, "The thing you like the most is the thing I like the least - not knowing which one you'll get!" Then I opened it and was delighted to find it was one of the mystery Dunnies - not shown on the box except in silhouette. It can be distinguished by the little scarf round it's neck. It's called Pierrot, and it's by Devilrobot.

So then Youngest and I looked up the web site for these, and did some research and discovered that this design is selling on e-bay for less than the price new, and people with multiple blind boxes get multiple Pierrots because they are possibly the most common Dunny made, certainly the most common in Series 5. Anecdotes on-line show the chances of getting a Pierrot could be as high as 1 in 3. In the Dunny collecting world they are viewed as something like a plague. I laughed. I like him just fine, and he will go on the shelf with the others and the other oddments that adorn my art table's back fringe.

Odds are good there's another Pierrot in my other three boxes - if so, I promised Youngest he can have it.

The Latest Mess

This is the latest mess (19 x 19, hot press). Abner and I did this as a celebration of his naming, and because I had a hunch that I could not draw my way inside the garden walls. I'd done four separate rounds of drawing, and erased the entire surface all four times. So I just started painting. I finished the first round this evening, and immediately saw all sorts of things that made me get out the white acrylic to erase, and then the neon orange pencil to swipe at it. The image above was between the acrylic and the pencil. Next, the big puffy brush (no name yet) was brought out and lots of water all over with the new luscious rose paint and a little bit of green and ultramarine.

And voila (as Grenouille would say). A mess. But a mess with possibilities and nothing sacred anywhere. ("Precious" as one of my art professors used to call it - the little pretty thing that's too nice to paint over, and so it skews every decision after that - do yourself a favor and paint over it right away, that was his advice. Good advice, generally, in my experience.)

I have no idea what this will become. I'm still trying to get into the garden. (Surely there won't be Mr. MacGregor there, do you think?)

Guilty Musical Pleasures

I may have a painting post later, but right now, while I wait for the big mess to dry, and the brownie to finsh baking downstairs (Daughter cooked and baked), I want to talk about some guilty pleasures. Some stuck up part of me feels like it shouldn't like these things, hence hte title of this post, but I do like them... a lot...

I am stuck on Prince's songs Little Red Corvette (tune AND words), and Raspberry Beret (tune AND words)... I picture them both very long and leggy - not my type, actually.

and Amy Winehouse (just about anything) particularly Back to Black and No Good...

and Avril Lavigne (the brattier the better, it seems) but lately it's The Things I'll Never Say, where I'm fascinated with the words of the refrain because she so freely mixes sweet girly longing and sex...

and P!NK - also nearly anything, but particularly U + Ur Hand and Cuz I Can which have the most attitude...

and Christina Aguilera, the entire Back to Basics album, and for her AND for P!NK I love it when they laugh dubbed over the song...

And I never liked Prince when I was younger. What's with that.

Painting this Weekend

I am trying to get into the garden. I have been all around the west walls on the outside, late afternoon light shining over my shoulder and casting my shadow on the stone. I can't find a way in. I have drawn and totally erased the same 19 x 19 inch square three times in the last two days. I'm on drawing four, and I'm not sure it's going anywhere, either. I've had two paintings I could have done, but they're still outside the garden. And I'm going to get in there. It may take some time, but I know my way all around the edges of this place, and I know it's where I need to go next.

I know what kinds of rules I will shed in the passage, but I still don't know how to get what I want on that page. Lot's of other things happen, but not what I'm really after. I could randomly fill up the page with stuff, but that's not what I crave to put there. I'm holding out for the big thing, the garden, my internal Eden, my Chocolate Room*.

Meanwhile, though, the image I had layered with so much color (to the left) finally yielded part of its content. I discovered this man, looking into the light, hand up as if to knock or to shield his eyes from the brightness. The hand (fist) in the upper left was the giveaway - maybe you can see it in this photo? After several weeks of gazing into this, turning it every way, it was wonderful to get a hint and then to watch it progress. I couldn't understand why he was wearing a suit, though.

I showed several pieces to Dearest today - I was framing Glee 1 and Coming Home to hang at work (they looked great all dressed up), and I showed her the final version of Flight which was almost exactly like the last version I showed over a week ago.

Then, on an impulse, I ran to get this emerging watercolor to show her. She liked it right away and said the man wasn't knocking... "He's more engaged than that." Then after a pause, waiting to see if I got it on my own (nope) she said, "He's conducting."

Wow - so he is. That explains the suit, and, as she added, it also explains the lighting.

So now I wonder what will emerge in the foreground.

This is my first attempt to work with this much pigment and color, chasing a little of Nolde's method. The reality is richer than the photo looks - but also less blue. His jacket is more understated in the original, but that also means the light looks warmer and brighter in the original, as well.

Dearest and I also looked at one of my older pieces (Cliffs and Squalls photo taken behind glass, so you'll have to mentally edit out that white spot in the center!), done back when I was in the gallery, and compared it with the two I was framing today. It looked so light and tentative that it felt unfinished. It's a nice piece, and I like many things about it, but I wish I'd USED MORE PAINT.

This review of pieces, though brief, was good for me, showing a lot of the journey I've taken to this spot outside the garden wall. And it was priceless to get Dearest's insight into The Conductor.

* from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory - the version from the 70's, with Gene Wilder.