My favorite bead store in Friday Harbor is having huge sale this week. So on Tuesday, I hopped on the inter island ferry and came home with this stash. Clearly one of my winter projects has been determined by this purchase. But I can’t think of a nicer way to spend the rainy days and nights of January and February in the Northwest. For me, working with these beautiful, bright colors and with beads that sparkle in the light is clearly a way to fight the winter blues.
Tag: creative process
Beginning Again
I made this drawing a while ago and found it this morning while looking through one of my sketchbooks. In the bottom right corner, I had written the words, “and so it begins again.” Because of this it felt appropriate to use it here, as one year is ending and another is about to begin. The colors seemed to also reflect the spirit of the holidays. And the imagery felt celebratory as well.
It has long been a practice of mine to use words in conjunction with form. Sometimes the words come first and then they determine what the imagery will be. Sometimes it’s the other way around. Using words helps me to understand my feelings and why I am creating that particular piece. Sometimes the words remain visible, and at other times the imagery obscures, or partly obscures, the words. It’s all good. Using the words is more for me than the viewer. I don’t really want to pin anything down too much.
At home, at last
After being on the road for forty five hours, I am finally home. You’d think that I had been somewhere truly exotic, for all that travel time. But a combination of cancelled flights and late flights and no late ferries made this a two-day voyage from Delaware Water Gap to Orcas Island. And oh, it feels so good to be here in the beauty and the quiet that is Orcas, and to breathe into the idea that I won’t be going anywhere (at least not on a plane) for the next three months. I’m sinking into that with joy and gratitude. So happy to see Dennis and the cats!! I’m already planning the many projects I want to do in the stillness and grayness of winter. Hoping that I get at least some them crossed off the eternally long list of things I want to do in the studio, for the house and outside in the garden. More mandalas. Work on half-finished baskets. Learn more beading techniques. Paint a lot. Organize my office. Clean up the garden. Make beautiful winter comfort food. And exercise to counter act all that. My work is clearly cut out for me.
For today, I’ll unpack, do some laundry, go through the mail and rest a bit. The projects can wait. And so can I. But not for too long.
I was so sure
“Painting is more about a way of not knowing, and of not knowing for as long as possible while still working. It’s not something to brag about. But it is very important to me and crucial, I think, to making good art.”
David Reed, artist/writer
I just read the quote this morning, and it felt very powerful to me and very appropriate. It is from an article by Reed which appeared in the September issue of Art in America. He is summing up what he learned from his mentor, the Abstract Expressionist painter Milton Resnick.
What felt so right to me was the idea “of not knowing for as long as possible.” Of remaining open to the process of painting itself and getting out of my own way and free from my own mind. To not over think. Just to paint. To feel lost, and then found, and then lost again until the painting itself tells me that its time to stop working and start looking at what I’ve done. And then pause until it’s time to get lost and found again.
I was so sure that I knew where I was heading after completing the paintings I did over the summer. Now I am not sure of anything. Even making the mandalas can be filled with a new sense of potential. On the edge, on the verge of “not knowing.” So delicious!!
Once Again
I’m remembering what it’s like to be in my wonderful studio. To have six paintings and six paintings on paper and two sketch pads going at the same time. To see drips of paint on the wall and the floor and my clothing. To come back into the house with paint-smeared hands. To connect with the work in that way that can only happen when I’m in there every day. It is so powerfully motivating to have a show coming up once again. But I want to be thinking ahead in that same way, beyond the show and to keep remembering, and not to get so mental, and not to think too much about what it is that I’m going to paint, but to get out of my own way and out of my own head and just paint. And work in the garden and paint some more.
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