Medium

Medium   oil on canvas   30 x 24 z .5

was painted from life.  The subject:  my friend Mo.  We ran into each other last week for the first time in months...we are both busy, busy artists.  This is a prime example of commitment, I think...when your love for the subject reveals itself in your strokes.  I have always loved this work...the symmetry of the pose supports the theme, I think.  Only the hands break the concentration, with the right pinkie finger lifted revealing a sense of motion, of life. 

Quite frankly, I am surprised by this work, its patterns, its feel.  The muse must have been on my shoulder during this one.

Thank you, Mo.

Nurse Jackie and Anna Deavere Smith and Uncertainty

Kevin   oil on canvas   14 x 11 x 1.5

Synchonicity...it hits like a bolt of lightning! My current read is Letters to a Young Artist by Anna Deavere Smith, which is a spin-off of Letters to a Young Poet by Rilke, a profound work with creatives in mind.  Smith's work is more geared toward  actors, musicians and visual artists of all kinds.  Smith states that while confidence and certainty are the preferred states-of-being for most careers, questions and uncertainty are the stuff of artists.  I have recently been floundering.  Realism becomes stagnant, boring.  My alterations are sometimes scary and always risky.  Being reminded of the value of uncertainty, I felt completed renewed and at one with my work. Standing alone is difficult at times.

AND THEN..........imagine my surprise to see Anna Deavere Smith appearing at hospital administrator Gloria Akalitus on Nurse Jackie!
All coming together.

As far as Nurse Jackie.....she is definitely in a profession that values confidence and certainty.  She is tenuous on both counts.....lots of gray area.....lots of flaws....perhaps that is why she is so very interesting.

Kevin represents a new spin on "portrait"....a interesting turn of events.  For me.

Cathy

Cathy   oil on canvas   12 x 9 x .5

is an amazing woman who posed for our class....and also the wife of one of the group artists.  She is and has been a teacher, a wife, a mother. an ardent supporter of her husband's work and a minister.  Her open and inquisitive nature provided a bond for me that allowed for a tender interpretation.  Before we painted, a genuine and positive observation was made by Sharon, another artist in the class.  Her observation:  Cathy is rosy.  That simple statement led my process.  Generalizations can be good...they take us away from the mass of detail before us and lead the way to the "gestalt".  After all, detail + detail = just more detail....and often too much.  I am grateful for Sharon's simple observation and also to have met this wonderful woman.

And....she reminded me of the inspirational book I read when my children were small about Alva Myrdal who postponed her career until later in life, after child-rearing responsibilities were somewhat lessened..  She was a Swedish sociologist and politician who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982. You go girls.