Chaos and Order DC

‘Chaos isn’t a pit.  Chaos is a ladder... Only the ladder is real.  The climb is all there is”.

-Little Finger, Game of Thrones 

Well, how appropriate that I should run across this quote from one of my favorite stories of all time as I was doing research for this week’s Drawing Challenge.  And how fitting taken into my own  personal context, painting, where at the outset, chaos is always the order of the day.

'Chaos' - water soluable crayons, casein, and pigma pen in 8x6 sketchbook

chaos: silk organza ready for wash-out

order: silk (dupion and raw) after wash-out and dryer, folded for use

Thanks to Barbara Bee for this interesting challenge.  Please make sure to stop by her eye-popping blog to catch a glimpse of other interpretations of our theme by a variety of highly skilled artists. 

 Wishing you a week of which ever you prefer.  
For me, I'll take the ladder.

Resolution: Elizabeth Murray

I have been looking a lot at the work of one of my favorite painters again recently.  Elizabeth Murray's (1940-2007) use of humor, color and form endlessly inspire me.  Here is a video clip of Elizabeth talking about resolving a painting.

I am so excited to get back to work at the studio tomorrow.  Hope you are working well this week and finding resolution.  See you over the weekend for the Drawing Challenge, presented this week to us by BarbaraBee.

(Artistic) Nature - DC

Although I do enjoy being in close proximity to the Forest and beach and am mostly grateful that I live in splendid isolation here on this Alaskan Island, I feel like I tend to inundate you, Gentle Reader, with scenes of Nature.  Therefore, in response to Tiny Woolf’s Drawing Challenge this week I want to talk about a region of the soul’s landscape – artistic nature. 

'The Nature of Love' 8x6 pigma pen and prismacolor pencil

Artistic nature is a quality all people possess in varying degrees.  It’s the place from which comes our impulse to stop in jaw-dropped awe at a sunset, a rainbow, a rock formation.  Some people, artists, are lucky (and/or tortured) enough to spend much of their time translating such feelings and experiences into tangible form.  

study for large painting, 8x6 pigma pen and inktense pencils

My artistic nature follows a pattern as regular as the seasons.  The first couple of sessions on any new painting or body of work are inevitably torture as I lay down chaos on canvas and endure a barrage of relentlessly negative self-talk to the effect that I have forgotten how to paint, am never going to make anything ‘good’ again, am wasting my time… but then just as surely as the tide rises, something happens in the action of working and I get a glimmer of form, an idea of where this thing I am slashing away at with my animal-hairs-on-a-stick is heading.  Magic!  Soon I am dancing in the creative moonlight, all angst replaced by excitement and pure joy of the making.

 

28 yards of silk organza ready to be cut down to size for my library commission

The past two weeks have been exactly like that at the studio as I began work on a couple of new projects including a big (for me) acrylic collage on an approximately 60”x44” canvas for my museum show in November.  Here is a little glimpse of where I left things yesterday at the end of week two.  Still a long way to go, but I am dancing now!

work in progress, acrylic and paper collage on canvas, about 44" x 60"

 Thank you to the extraordinary Nadine for this week's always-stimulating drawing challenge.  Please take a wander over to her part of the Forest for a look at wild Nature through the eyes of some exceptional artists.  Happy week!

silk organza panels piling up on my ironing board