Post Open Studio

Well another successful Open Studio, a lot of people came from all the different areas in my life and much discussion ensued. I do find talking to people about my work very interesting. Often it will send me on a tangent that could be a totally new exploration for me. I put up the seven Chakra drawings explaining that, I finished them right before the start of almost a years worth of Chakra Workshops. In a way they are the  what I knew about chakras , so inevitably I have some of the stuff wrong, for example in the relationship between the seventh chakra and the planetary chakra system , it in terms of the workshops new information, the crown chakra is represented by the moon. In these drawings I had thought it was the outer reaches of the universe. Also the use of the octopus for the third chakra is totally my decision and many other discrepancy's.

People seemed to really like the latest drawings of "Heaven" and "Hell", and have very distinct reactions the them. One of my book club lady's really reacted, preferring "Heaven " over "Hell", this may be a product of innate conditioning, I didn't get a real chance to hear her explanation.

I also had a very interesting reaction to my "Creation" piece, one person asked me if the purple cloud was an alien space ship. Then someone else had a whole theory about the aliens sucking up the babies to their space ship. I had a long conversation about whether we are indeed products of Aliens mating with the original apes on the planet. How strange it is that still we have holes in the fossil record that would be explained by the appearance of aliens. I need to reread "Chariot of the Gods"  by Eric Von Daniken, this is an old book now, where the author uses a lot of examples from human history when mankind really didn't have the technology to build say, the pyramids and suggests that humankind benefited from alien intervention.  This led to a discussion that possibly the Chakra system in the human body is the part, that the Aliens created. Are we being used like the ants use the aphid farms? Will we be harvested at some point or is it already happening.

I may have to explore this idea in some future work. Anyway thanks to all for coming especially the surprise visitors who drove up from San Diego, you know who you are.

Cleaning up the studio , ready for my Open Studio

 Its the annual Open Studio , therefore the annual clean-up, although to be fair I did get three extra shelves to store my drawings and a  sweep of the floor to go with this awesome Christmas present. I tend to work in a bit of a mess, not sure why, but I refuse to spend my valuable time cleaning. It is nice therefore when I finally find the long lost pair of scissors hidden beneath the piles . I also got caught up, photographing all the new work , I want to update the website and keep it current. Its a great chance to assess where I am and get a fresh start, sort of like New Year , I just happen to wait until the Chinese New Year, which incidentally will be the year of the Horse.

I have already started a new series of Chakra drawings, this will be a set of seven drawing done after doing workshops about the Chakras all year. The last series of Chakra drawings were done before I really knew that much about them. I also have two triptychs started, they are part of the "Heaven" and "Hell" series, drawings trying to make visible, the process of having contamination removed, from the mind and body. I am calling them the "Vortex" triptychs. Then I have also started two pieces that have the title "Karmic Wheel". I don't often start with a title, so its a little unusual for me . All in all its looking like an interesting start to 2014. I will show some of the drawings for the larger Brain-mind pieces, below.

Musing about Henri Matisse

When I was a lot younger and in art school, Henri Matisse was one of my hero's. I particularly loved his drawings, also the drawings/watercolours of Auguste Rodin. Maybe its being French , but they both excelled in the simple line, "European line" as my sculpture teacher at RISD used to say. At the time I had no idea what he was talking about, having lived now in the US ,for half my life I do get it, in a way.

There is a seemingly effortlessness in a Matisse drawings, you know of course that he did many drawings, who knows how many, it took to achieve the one we get to see.

Having lived half my life in Great Britain, there seemed to be a heaviness in a lot of British artists work, exemplified for me by Frank Auerbach. He did a lot of portraits and would use oil paint squeezed straight from the tube. I assume the model sat and posed for weeks, as he would go over and over, making different lines and building up a belabored painting. One would never look at an Auerbach painting and say effortless in the same way as a Matisse drawing.

As you may realize, I prefer the lighter touch of Matisse, although to be fair David Hockney, patently a Brit also has something of the light touch in his drawings, so maybe being French is irrelevant. Anyway what I am trying to say is that in my work I aim for effortlessness. I want to see the fresh original ink drawings, overlayed by a more thoughtful image, building to a balance between the two.I aim to always keep a freshness in my work, I want to be a see-saw (British vernacular) or teeter-totter (US vernacular), Matisse -Auerbach.

Here are some links to Matisse drawings and Auerbach paintings. A disclaimer comparing drawing and painting is probably ridiculous anyway.

http://berlindrawingroom.blogspot.com/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-features/9652339/Frank-Auerbach-in-his-own-words.html

Heaven and Hell Finished I think

Well after all the agonizing of the last "Notes" I went into my studio today and finished the drawings. I had one plan to try going in which was to paint a thin wash of purple paint over most of the two drawings. Well as soon  as I had  done this everything looked better, before it was a bunch of disparate parts now, a blended whole. It feels like a miracle. Of course I now have  put them on my finished wall , where I will leave them for a while to see if they really are finished . First triptych is "Hell", the one below it is "Heaven" ,they are very painterly to me and remind me of the drawings and watercolours of William Blake, particularly his Dante's Inferno series, which I have always loved and which when I am in London ,I try to visit when they are on display at the old Tate, along with the Late Turner's.

Heaven and Hell Drawings are proving complicated

 I started this series of triptychs a while ago . I really wanted to show in a drawing the experience of being in a workshop with my spiritual teacher and having her extract some of the contamination from my mind and body.This particular series came from one workshop where I saw very clearly a visual of this,black shapes were spinning out of my mind. When I initially did the ink drawing of this experience, it didn't seem right,so I added two wings on either side of the drawing and it turned into a triptych.

I have kept working on them and realized that I could do a Heaven and Hell piece. The beauty of this in my mind is that they would basically be the same drawing, but the hell  one would show the sides going down and the heaven one going up. Lets face it heaven and hell do not exist in my opinion, except in people's minds. I did a stencil of a woman right side up for heaven and upside down for hell. Then I added the symbols of the chakras, deciding heaven could have the 4th,5th,6th,and 7th and hell would get the 1st,2nd,and 3rd.

Oh my , my mind was really on a roll now, I got all involved with thinking of how we are all like a drop of water that joins in with the rain and then the river and then the ocean. It is a much used spiritual metaphor and one that has a lot of validity. I then found an old drawings where a giant cloud was depicted and others where the wing symbol was linked by a circle. I had decided that heaven was silver and hell gold,so I added that to my drawing. I also added collage shapes darker for hell and lighter for heaven. 

Now I feel like I am all tied up in knots with these pieces, too  complicated. I will have to put them away for a while. I took some photos of the center of each piece, see if you can guess which is heaven and which hell?

Open Studio Saturday 1st February 2014

Would love to see you all

Longitudinal Waves

So I am continuing with the series of triptychs I started using one of the brain drawings and combining it with some imagery that feels very familiar from an old drawing. I started to wonder what exactly am I doing here. I am working with images from inside the brain, but I also want to think about the mind .  I think we all assume that the mind is located inside the brain, but where exactly.

I showed Kyle my latest drawings, he is now a Physics major and started to tell me about Longitudinal waves. Apparently my drawings reminded him of these waves also called L-waves or compression waves.I know that spiritually speaking everything is frequency and vibration, and that when science and spiritual knowledge combine ,human beings will be a lot better off.

I looked again at the drawing and realized that in a way the inside the brain part of the triptych also has a part where, whatever the brain is actively engaged in is being put to use. In other words maybe I have found a way to depict the brain and hint at its workings.

Triptychs

After bringing the triptych home  after Thanksgiving, it inspired me to do some more triptychs. I love this format, not quite sure why. I had done six drawings of various inside the brain imagery. Originally I was going to use them in two triptychs, when I put them together, it was too much. So I took each drawing, using the position of each in the plan for the two triptychs, added two more pieces of paper and now will have six triptychs. I have finished the first two and will show an image of one of them below.

There are definitely visual references to the drawing done at the end of the 1980's in Houston, these new drawings are a kind of homage. The colour I find interesting, it made me think of how much colour plays a part in my work, in more recent years. I was wondering about the influence of living in California for more than twenty years. I think its bound to have affected the way I look at colour, the quality of light here is so particular.

I seem to be on a roll

Another set of twelve diptych drawings finished. I can't believe I have so much to say visually with these works. For me its partly about how can I get two pieces of paper to relate successfully together. There is something very satisfying about turning a drawing that doesn't work into four that do. There is alchemy involved for sure. As I am working on these smaller pieces while I do some larger ones there is a freedom that's apparent . I am not really sure of a deeper meaning, but I do think about the duality of mankind's experience, it sounds rather grandiose, but we do live in a world of opposites. the diptych is the perfect metaphor for this.

Return

While I was in Phoenix over Thanksgiving with my husbands family, staying with my father-in-law, I looked again at a triptych I had given him a long time ago, He had it pinned to his wall every since, he never framed it, so I was happy when he said he'd like to return it. He seemed to think it was a loan. Anyway  I made this work at the end of the 1980's, its so strange to see a piece of old work. Sometimes although I can't remember exactly my thought processes. I can see what I was attempting.

I was fascinated at the time with trying to see if I could make three pieces of paper relate together, using the lease obvious visual means. The underlying structure of this piece is from a sculpture I was doing turned on its side. The middle is densely worked, and the two surrounding pieces more graphic. I love the way the space in the almost ovals in the center seems infinite and circled in white, they are picked up again in the two outside pieces in black ink. Now I want to see if I can use this idea again in what I'm working on now.