A Pouch of Seeds

My shadow reminds my soul that as a young teen it lived in the woods and fields. The pouch I slung over my shoulder caught up seeds and stones, cones and dreams. I invented a rolling gate I called the mile-eater, which I used on old dirt roads at dusk, hungry and afraid of the dark. My hat and my stick had a pact to fence my heart and hold my head together when the light was too beautiful or the trees bid me disperse and fly up into them like a drunken swarm of bees. I was filled to bursting with linden leaves and emptied by the distant calls of crows, like respiration. Striding between the landlocked sycamores, the portal to my principality, a young mage caught in the tidal flow of my own longings.

Where Have I Been?

Not here, that's for sure. Dearest mentioned to me today, as we took daughter to a dance audition, that it had been over a month since my last post. Where did the time go?

There was a little 4 day trip to Charleston in there (with a boat trip to Fort Sumter, and staying at a cottage on Folly Beach) - and another overnight trip to Asheville for another college related thing. But mostly it's been work and work travel. Keeping me too tired and talked out to post and making the time fly by. It's a critical point in a very large project, and I need to stay engaged. But I finally caught a cold - symptoms started last night.

Caribonsai House

I can't seem to get down into the other painting yet this morning. I'll probably throw some paint around to break the impasse.

But I also finished this one, and wanted to post him. This is Caribonsai House, and is grouped in my mind with Mistletoe House, though the style isn't much the same.

A number of things came together in my head - bonsai (we photographed an exhibit of them last year at the NC Arboretum, and I had reviewed the photos a few days ago), baobab trees, caribou, and the house in CA called the witch house (I love the assymetry, height, and curves of it).

Watercolor - 19 x 19. Here is a detail. Click either image for a closer look.

Starting Over

After more than six hours on a watercolor portrait that did not capture the likeness, I gave it over and covered the image with acrylic paint. I love the squirt bottles of Lukas paint I bought last year. They make it alarmingly easy to make a mess in a hurry. Five minutes was all it took to bury six hours of watercolor painting, leaving not a trace.

Then this evening I took a jar of white and painted out everything that I found irritating or ugly, things that would interfere with any image emerging.

Next I'll look for what this wants to be.

This is how Foxwood and The Storm were painted. It's like how I imagine scuba diving - a trip through a different element, silent, colorful, disorienting sometimes. Patience and daydreaming are the most important parts of this process for me (I understand that daydreaming is dangerous when scuba diving, so the similarities go only so far...).

With the Winter Olympics on television this week I am reminded that this painting process had its origins with the discovery that the Carnival of Venice theme of a pair of ice dancers was the key to one of my earliest watercolors. So it's been a little over four years that I've been painting again. Seems a lot shorter than that...

Oh - I've completed another painting (a watercolor) - but that's another post.

My Totem Portrait

I recently visited the National Museum of the American Indian, part of the Smithsonian Institute, and a national treasure trove. I have always been deeply moved by the art of Native Americans. The work of the tribes of the Pacific Northwest have a special appeal for me.

After that visit it's been on my mind to try some totemic art, working with the essence of the item depicted, trying to illustrate its spirit, communicate something of its deeper meaning.

Half humorously, half seriously, I combined this urge with another self portrait... I don't think this is a good literal likeness, but this does capture some of what I'm about, from the laughter to the bowtie, from the monobrow to the fish (a visual lark I like to slip into paintings). And naturally my image would have paintbrushes and eyes to look even when mine are closed.

Hatching

I'm painting this week, while I'm of work, trying to get back into a deeper place with that - more involved with the creative and visual side of me. Trying to shut up the left brain and let the right brain out more.

This is a small piece I had started weeks ago, and finally finished over the weekend.

Today I started two new paintings, finishing one (that will be another post - maybe) and getting the preliminary drawing done on the second. That's more than I typically get done in a month, lately. The first painting was almost entirely done in one long heat, which felt like about two hours to me but turned out to be more than five hours when I looked at a clock. I was surprised, sore and hungry.

"Hatching" is mostly watercolor (a little Prismacolor and a little acrlyic). 10 x 14.

Where did this come from? Birds

This painting came along over the last few weeks, stretched out like a conversation that wouldn't ever finish and wouldn't go away, either. I have no idea what all the birds are doing in the bottom of this - nor why there are loose flowers strewn through the middle. I painted this because it would not go away. It wasn't until this evening, when it was nearly done, that it finally set up some static in my head, like most paintings do. Then I owned it, I guess. I like some things about this image, and not others. Paintings are kind-of like people that way.

Watercolor and India ink - 19 x 19.

This image is in the same series (comes from the same place) as:

Coming Home

Home

Roofs and Birds

I like it there, and I hope I can spend time in more parts of it. I've noticed that it's always the last hour of light there.