Are artists the world's Think Tanks ?

 While on my recent trip to England and Wales, I thought of a simple way to describe the difference between male and female energy. Be assured each human being has a share of each . My Mum and I were talking about Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the UK and the 70' and into the 80's. My Mum has a great deal of admiration for her and thinks she did a great deal for Britain. I tend to disagree, but really who knows. We were talking about how sad it is that there have been no female Prime Ministers of the UK since. I said it really didn't matter that she was a woman, as she used male energy to ascend to the top.

Male energy is like a pyramid, its hierarchical, a few lead the many and those few, reside at the top. Female energy expands in a more linear fashion, more like moss growing along the ground, less interested in being the stand out one , we want to spread power to all. I explained how Nanny , my Grandmother was such a powerful woman, not for her personal glory , but for the ripple effect she had in touching others. Many benefited from her efforts. 

We are so out of balance as a human race, we can literally only think of this hierarchical structure of power. We have not had the experience of linear female power structure in so long. We cannot expect women to behave like men although some do, like Margaret Thatcher.We will always shake our heads that there are not enough women in positions of power in this current structure, female power is not even recognized , let alone supported. Until this balance of male and female power is in balance there will be no harmony on planet earth.

"I often feel that artists are the world's think tanks. Most of us just work and run and work and run-so we rely on artists to do all the thinking" by Stefano Tonchi

Archaeology- uncovering and exploring the process of art making

As human beings we are complex creatures, so much  real learning is not so much acquiring extra information as uncovering what we already know. A truly wonderful teacher is able to bring forth our own inner wisdom and knowledge.

I was listening to the radio about a new crime, wine fraud, apparently bottles of wine  came on the market from Thomas Jefferson's supposedly secret cellar. These were sold to the other Koch brother, for vast sums, he began to suspect they were fake , when Jeffersonian  scholars said the year of the wine was historically impossible. He hired an FBI type investigator who with some help figured out how to test these bottles, because of their age they should have no radioactive cesium inside, a test with a geiger counter could verify this. This should give us pause, everything in our universe after the nuclear age has cesium in it , including us. 

Anyway it started me thinking of how amazing our bodies are, we are a living record of everything we have lived through, its all inside our bodies not just the scars, but inside our deepest tissue.

This reflects the process I take when I am drawing, a successful drawing takes any mark I make and uses it in the finished drawing. Its a bringing forth of  what was already there , these marks becomes a record of the history of its own making. The trick is being able to stay with the process through the transition ,when the elements in the piece look so wrong and out of place. Somehow magically these same marks when the drawing is resolved look so right , and it becomes possible to see the record of that journey.

Simple Complexity

I have a friend who seems to think I am conflicted about a lot of things. I am not a hundred percent sure what she means by this, because each comment, has been a particular moment, in a context. However, it has come up enough times for me to want to look at this . I think she means, that in general I do not have an easy time deciding which direction to go in . I  have realized that rather than being torn in two or more directions, which is somewhat true, its not the whole story . The truth is I find a lot of complexity in my world,  more than makes it easy, to make  a simple choice. Some of this is from my experience, I lived in four countries by the time I was ten years old, Libya where I was born , England, Wales and Lebanon where I lived for three years. In the UK I lived in five different towns. After moving to the US, I have lived in three different states and attended overall, four different colleges.

This perspective has coloured my life in many ways. I do not have an easy answer for most things, I do not see things in black and white, life for me is complex and sometimes needs a lot of explanation. I have a lot to say and live in a time when people do not want to listen , attention spans are short. People do not really look and yet,  I continue to make visual work. Am I a fossil from another age, or maybe a repository of complexity and paradox.

This complexity is reflected in my work, in my use of layering. I chose this process of adding more and more to a drawing a lot. Often I will go back in, to the drawing to simplify, so that the viewer can, at the same time  see many layers of information close up ,yet from a distance there is clarity. This is a tricky business and takes a lot of patience. Started a new series of Chakra drawings, below is the first Chakra.

Transformation

Staying on the theme of life and death from my last "Notes", my father died in 2007 and after attending his funeral, I was lucky enough to get to see Louise  Bourgeois's huge and amazing retrospective at the Tate Modern in London.

What an incredible artist she was, not given enough recognition in my mind until she was really quite old. So much work was on display that I had never seen, a whole room of smaller, often sewn pieces, dealing with women going though the birth process and female  reproduction.

I came back from this sad trip where I said goodbye to my Dad, so inspired by Louise, it was like a transformation. I remember thinking, well I don't have a lot of equipment to make sculpture right now , but I have a sewing machine and I can draw. She woke me up to my birthright of creativity and I am very grateful.

Below are two drawings from 2007, right after seeing the Bourgeois  show.

Rebirth

I have been in  a reflective mood lately, feeling so grateful to be healthy again. I suppose thats the benefit of being laid low, I get to look carefully at my life. This idea of rebirth is something we all go through all the time. Some part of us may no longer be useful, this allows a new part to come into being.

Looking back on my triptych called "Creation" , I was thinking about the title. The piece is  very particular , about my personal creation. There are three fetuses, one looks connected to the universe , but the other two are not connected. My Pilates partner is a nurse who works in the maternity part of a hospital. We got talking about the secrecy of miscarriages, most women of reproductive ages who want  to have children, have experienced the sorrow of a miscarriage. Why is there such a veil of secrecy about  this subject ? At her hospital there is a wall of remembrance for all the names of the babies that didn't make it to this world. I gave her the names of my two , I think of them as my girls, they are a special, still sorrowful memory for me.

So what is the act of creation, it is a process that encompasses successes and failures. The process of making art is very much like that, except the artist doesn't normal expose the drawings that didn't make it, in my case they are often drawn over. I wish more people realized the necessity, for feeling free enough to make those failures, in all areas of life.

I have started to work on a new series of Chakra drawings, this is a sketch for the first chakra, trying to work out the larger drawing.

Art Stars

I watched a small film of Julian Schnabel working on a series of huge canvas's recently. Schnabel was one of the art stars that came into the forefront while I was at RISD . I saw a couple of exhibitions in New York during the mid 1980's, his broken china painting. I never could really relate to his work. In this film he talks about mark making and freedom and relating to what is already on the canvas-- looked like the canvas's were already loaded with huge silk screened images. It was a bit of a circus watching the "Master" given long brushes by his assistants, while he performed for the camera.

This idea of reacting to what is already on the canvas, is interesting, its part of the process of all art making. For me its more like a chess game, for Schnabel he seems to be in such thrall of this process that for me his work never achieves transcendence. To be fair this may not be his aim, he's so busy reacting, he never really takes it to the level of transformation. Truly there is room for all under the art umbrella, I just wished I saw more substance, less grandstanding in his work. Methinks the emperor has no clothes, I did like his movie "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" however , so not all is lost and I would go see a show of his if only to marvel at the scale.

I have been suffering some ill health for the last couple of months, the piece below took a while and I just finished it, not completely sure how I feel about it. 

Solitude

Solitude is an essential part of creativity. I have been rereading Rainer Maria Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet" again. What a repository of brilliant advice for all creative people. The letter number six addresses solitude in a beautiful way.

"What is necessary , after all , is only this : solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours- that is what you must be able to attain"

How true this is, I feel his words keenly. I must delve into the mystery that is myself  , and get to know what lies within. This takes time, patience and a lot of courage. Is this why marriage and family life is so tricky to balance with the creative life? There is no need for the all or nothing philosophy. As a woman/wife/mother, my family is always first, or at least equal to my work,  I  create and flourish in my own way. May explain why I have no worldly success currently. The business of getting one's work out into the world is a full time job. I will continue the balance, and hope to chip away on all fronts.

I wanted to show some older work this piece "Birth" is from 2009. At times I like to look back at older work and see the threads of connection.

Duality

I am struck by how much I need to work in a series, the obsession with diptychs and triptychs, why? One explanation is that we are all stuck in  the world of duality, we cannot escape it, black/white, male/female,up/down,day/night etc... My pieces reflect this to the point that I rarely do a singular piece, it almost feels naked when I see a lonely piece with all its ideas within its own borders. I prefer to have at least two, so I can compare and contrast.

Reminds me of those drawings in the puzzle section of the magazine or newspaper that ask the viewer to spot the differences between them. I loved doing those visual puzzles, still do.

I thought I would make a note of the dictionary definition of the word, see below. This question of duality  really feels like an existential dilemma , do we want to be "One", and how does that singularity in humans actually look. Here we are, always looking for the other to make us whole. Is this the  spiritual dilemma of every age?

duality (djuːˈælɪtɪ)

n, pl -ties

1. the state or quality of being two or in two parts; dichotomy

2. (General Physics) physics the principle that a wave-particle duality exists in microphysics in which wave theory and corpuscular theory are complementary. The propagation of electromagnetic radiation is analysed using wave theory but its interaction with matter is described in terms of photons. The condition of particles such as electrons, neutrons, and atoms is described in terms of de Broglie waves

3. (Mathematics) geometry the interchangeability of the roles of the point and the plane in statements and theorems in projective geometry

Here are some sketches made while doing the three large recent drawings.

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.