The Rhythm of Working

 Each time I finish what feels like an epic series of drawings, there is a feeling of triumph with  a little loss thrown in. I have to regroup and begin again, except I almost never start from scratch. I seem to always have work started in various states of completion. As I finish the "Heart , Fetus, Octopus" series I have two wing drawings that were discarded in the process, to complete. The second series of Chakra drawings need to be finished and now "The Eye behind the I Am" these two huge triptychs need rethinking.

I sat down and looked through all the sketchbooks of the last few years, so interesting to see and understand my rhythm of working. It is mysterious to me, observing how different concerns pop up to be explored and resolved. To see myself a year ago worrying over a visual problem, that I know I manage to resolve, is satisfying somehow.

I certainly could not predict this rhythm and I am in awe of its complexity. My sketchbooks are certainly the way to understanding my work. I show below a sketch from a 2008 sketchbook.

The Visual Difference between Illustrating an Idea and Embodying an idea

This issue is indeed a conundrum. I recently thought I had finished a piece called "The Eye behind the I Am". I kept looking at it knowing in my heart of hearts it wasn't yet done, but I couldn't face that fact, as I could see nowhere to move the drawing forward.

My son recently on Spring Break in a visit to my studio confirmed that it wasn't finished. How is this knowing arrived at? I look at the piece and get pleasure from thinking of the idea the piece was trying to explain. However it looks hollow and shallow and doesn't allow my mind to wander off to other places, I am stuck with this one idea. This is an illustration.  Now the eye shape that is behind the "I am " is I think a brilliant concept, but visually it needs more fleshing out.

How to be the thing ,rather than to illustrate the idea of the thing. This is such tricky territory, yet we all know it when we see it. I will show two of the many drawings I made to help with the  work, and then its back to the drawing board, or I may put the piece away for a while.

"If I could put it into words I'd be a writer"

These words spoken by me, at a recent camping trip to Joshua Tree in conversion with another artist installing a sculpture at the event we were attending. Understanding and being able to express visually is a whole other language. It is so difficult to convey this to people as no one seems to look anymore, My old studio mate from RISD is having an opening at a gallery in Portland tonight, he recently posted this comment.

"Painting will be dead when looking is dead, when we start receiving all visual input from video transmissions sent to the chip implanted in the visual cortex of our brains rather than through our eyes. Then the physicality of an image won't matter because nothing will have physicality. Since those days are coming soon, I will look hard at my subjects now, and paint!"

                                                    by  Tim Flowers

To some extent we are all selective viewers otherwise our heads would explode, with all the visual input, so our brains successfully block out a lot of stimulus for us.Is this form of looking training us to look less deeply? My husband now only watches TV while also looking at his I-Pad. With all this extra looking or maybe scanning we seem to see less.

It makes me wonder who actually sees my work?  I suppose requiring the viewer to be present in the now, is almost like asking a pig to fly. Has it always been so? Maybe , after all to really see art requires a commitment from the viewer, a willingness to be present in the now. We are all trained by the media to receive instant gratification, art  requires a slowing down a willingness to be open.

I have finished the three pieces I was working on and have tried an alternate positioning of two of the finished pieces.

New Triptych finished almost

Today I have almost finished the triptych, I still need to work on the center part. I think the circle is too big and irregular in a not satisfying way. I had this idea to add a heart and an octopus as collage and see if it would finish the piece.Now I see the work almost as a flag, which country would this work for, an island nation maybe. Its such a strange process working on a drawing , each one is so totally unique in its requirements. I have learned to listen to the heart of the work and proceed sometime with caution, sometime with wild abandon .I found this quote recently

For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. Its shell cracks, its insides come out everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.                        __Cynthia Occelli

As I have done some work with seeds in fact I have a whole series, it seemed very appropriate to really understand what a seed goes through to achieve its goal of becoming a plant or an idea that ends up as a stage show or a drawing. Everything starts as a seed.

The Longest Journey

As I wrote in my last "notes" I am working on the "Heart ,Fetus,Octopus" triptych again. I started this piece in 2010 or 2011, not long after I first rented this studio, its the largest drawing I had begun at that time. At first it was a diptych, "Heart ,Fetus" , than it needed another piece of paper, hence the arrival of the octopus. I  struggled with this drawing,  couldn't make sense of it .

Now here I am getting it out again and working on it mostly because of comments made at my Open Studio. I added lots of small collage shapes which made me think of the Ocean we all came from as evolution developed. In a way the Ocean is a little like the Universe, both vast and unknowable. I just watched a video about how we literally have the DNA of the universe inside our bodies, "From the Stars" we come and yet we also come from this watery place too. I read a piece that attributes the patterns of human hair growth to the time we lived in water and explained that women had long hair so their babies would have something to hold onto.

The triptych is now separated , the left and right side of the original are diptychs with additional paper and the middle is a triptych. I love the way my drawings seem to multiply in a very organic process, it reminds me of mitosis or cell division. I feel as though I have been on a real journey with this work, almost as though the drawing has a life of its own, and its not over yet.

The Human Touch

It occurred to me today working away in my studio, how much a lot of artists have deliberately moved away from the mark making traditions of earlier artists. If you look at Picasso's work there is plenty of evidence of his touch . Now we have Jeff Koons who does everything he can to remove his personal contact , literally having other people make his work for him. What is going on here? I can only surmise its another example of humanity going away from what is inside in favor of the other, the outside. There is more than a little indication of some kind of self hatred going on here.

I remember years ago making Christmas ornaments for the tree, we cut out shapes and put glitter on them. One of the group, voiced her active dislike of these homemade efforts. She would rather purchase Hallmark ornaments made in China. I love the homemade look and still put these decorations on our tree each year, once I'd rescued them from the trash.

I always value the touch of humanity in my work and strive for that strange mix of characterful mark making, balanced with the effortlessness of a finished piece.

At the moment ,I have again taken a drawing that has been around for several years, out of storage and put it up on the wall. I had started to think about it again, with all the comments from my Open Studio,about did Aliens come to our planet and interbreed with humans to form another strain of humanity. The piece is a large triptych and features a heart ,a fetus and an octopus. I had put it away because I couldn't finish it. I started to think maybe the octopus was the Alien creature, they always seem so intelligent when I look into their eyes at aquariums, where they are usually squeezed into  too small tanks. I thought maybe I could fit the piece into the title of "Primordial Ooze ". I started to cut out other creatures from tracing paper and attach them. I did a lot more to the triptych and have come to the conclusion that its too worked so I have separated it and added another half piece of paper. I do this quite often and have come to think of this process as letting the drawing breathe .The journey with this work has been a long one, hopefully I am near the end.

Warped Human Perfection

This desire for perfection has become very warped in humanity. In a way its a reflection of not being able to look at ourselves as the  perfect beings  we are, we think we need plastic surgery or fashionable clothes or another accent. There is a billion dollar industry dedicated to turning humans into what they think they should be, instead of accepting what they are.

Similarly I see a lot of art gong in this direction. I call it the lure of graphic perfection, that is the obsession with the surface, ignoring the underlying structure. Humans at this time seem to be impressed with the impersonal lure of the machine rather than the skill of the artist. Maybe I am being too general here, maybe its the result of seeing too many Yoda heads made from a 3D Printer, really people aren't there more interesting things to use a 3D Printer for.

I have finished the large triptych "The Eye behind the I Am", at least I think its finished. There were a lot of things that intrigued me about this drawing. It reminds me of a Darwinian Diagram of Evolution, little creatures crawling ,ever upwards . I also like the eye at the center and the eye being looked through , hence the title , who is the observer looking through our eyes .I like the way duality is represented, with the male and female on each side of the universe. I also like the way the images continue around the larger eye shape, so that there is the idea, that even when our eyelids are closed we feel the world around us.

Warning to Other Artist's

I was the victim of an attempted internet scam, let me say firstly I did not suffer any actual loss, except feeling less trust in my fellow humans. Let me explain what happened. Someone out of the blue emailed me saying they had found my web site and were interested in a particular piece. After a couple of weeks of emails back and forth, they said they wanted to purchase the piece. When I received the cheque but before I mailed the work, I took it to the bank. Luckily for me the teller that helped me was the Service Manager, she had some questions about the cheque. She told me she suspected it was fraudulent and would send it to the banks fraud department. The person who sent me the cheque put more money than we had originally agreed, when I questioned her about this she said her husband got the amount wrong. It was $1500.00 over the agreed price, this was really the ruse , I would return the overage plus the drawing, quite a haul for these criminals. I was able to stop the scam from going any further, yet I am left with a scar. Ironically the piece, shown below ,that they were interested in "In the Blink of an Eye" is really about the short span of our human lives. They pass before us so quickly, too quickly to waste them perpetrating scams like this. Be warned. Afterwards a friend commented , "well at least the criminals have found your website!"

New Start

 With all of the interesting comments from my Open Studio, I had some time to reassess what direction I want to go in. I started to look at images of nebula's online and also found an amazing photograph of the entire night sky taken by an amateur photographer who actually went around the world to take the many photos that were then pieced together. I started a large triptych with this information, then added an upside down man and woman. right now I am at the stage of wondering where this is going. I thought I would show the pictures in the order of what I have done so far. TB said it would be interesting to have a time lapse photo when I work. This drawing may take a while. I will post it when its finished.

Spinning Vortex

So my studio is back to normal, still clean but 2013's work all photographed and stored away on my new shelves. Its a wonderful thing to go through the annual clean up and review and restart, plus I have all the comments from my Open studio to ponder. Now I have to take all the strands and move forward.

I have finished the two spinning vortex triptychs, the center of each piece were the original centers of "Heaven" and "Hell". I wanted to simplify the triptychs so I added wings either side of the spinning vortex's . They are curious to me, as they are so characterful, like the craggy face of a human being. The idea of the pieces was how to visually explain the sensation of going to a workshop and having all the contamination removed from my chakras. One time, when this was happening. I had a visual of me as a spinning vortex with stuff being pulled out of me. I was somewhere way out in the universe.

Some new thoughts mixed with some old ones, I want to explore this idea of are we descendants of aliens? Do we have stardust in our DNA? Are the Chakras a remnant of this mating of Alien and Ape? I want to re-look at the "In the Blink of an Eye " piece , it has more to mine, I feel. I love the analogy of the span of a persons life flashing before them. Also want to look at the nebula's, there are some amazing photos taken by the Hubble Telescope. When we were at the 3D Printer world expo, I  talked to a woman in the medical application area, she was describing a use for the 3D printers in making a model of someones nose, to help with treatment, she also mentioned a nebulizer, which is a way to get medicine to the nose. I love this weird link, the use of this word to describe a medical application as well as a cloud formation in the universe. It mirrors the idea of the microcosm and the macrocosm.