Sand + Water

S and K   oil on canvas   30 x 40 x 1.4

 Spending a week at the shore with dear ones alters one's perspective!  Beach life is indeed a bit of altered reality.  People play with reckless abandon...sand filters into your swimwear, your hair and your ears.  Castles are created and then abandoned to the tide....creativity and energy and time spent with the realization that nothing built is permanent.  Waves surfed send you speedily to the shore.  Heavier waves send you tumbling as you recognize the greater, much greater, power of the sea.  Marine life is appreciated without being caged.  Imperfect shells are collected as treasures.  Momentary sunsets grace our lives.  It mirrors a wabi sabi existence:  

Nothing lasts

Nothing is finished

Nothing is perfect

Wow....heavy duty.  I am hoping that this notion filters into me and into my forthcoming work.

Drawing, Doing Dishes and Pulling Weeds

Drawing is the seed...the start of it all...the place where your love for a subject begins to express itself.  Amidst the daily chores of doing dishes and pulling weeds, I often find the search for large chunks of time for painting to be relentless and nagging.  After all, it takes me at least an hour to get into the zone, to shed the obsessions of life in hopes of arriving at the mindless freedom that painting is....at least for me.  Drawing takes less time.  Drawing requires fewer materials.  Drawing requires less commitment. Drawing can be more mindless, as imperfections and misplaced lines reside comfortably next to passages that are more truthful.  I enjoy their unfinished, unpolished, wabi-sabi qualities.  Drawing is where my soul finds peace.

Drawing is where I find the excitement and commitment to pursue the subject in paint.  Or not.

 One's art goes as far and as deep as one's love goes.

                                                                                                                        Andrew Wyeth

One's art goes as far and as deep as one's love goes.
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/andrew_wyeth.html

One's art goes as far and as deep as one's love goes.
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/andrew_wyeth.html

Things that Become Tangled...

Pepper Party   oil/canvas   6 x 6 x 1.5

should be a category on Jeopardy......strings, hair, thread, and, yes, vines.  I have painted many tangled vines before and find a special delight in it, actually.  It appeals to my sense of hidden rhythms and puzzle solving as far as prioritizing.  If all of the pieces/parts are equally described, the work becomes very difficult to read visually.  In "Pepper Party", I subdued the leaves and the vines, for the most part, even though they are oh-so-appealing in order to give dominance to the peppers themselves.  Still a tangle.  But then,  I also like frayed things, things marred by age and plants and bushes grown a bit out of control.  I like the wildness.  Wabi Sabi.

I think that I'm getting the hang of it!

Dappled 2   oil/canvas   40 x 30 x 1.5

....making slide shows, that is.  Painting will always be, I am hoping, a bit of mystery with unknowns to resolve in playful resolution.  My progression of "Dappled 2" can be seen at the right.  This painting was rather straightforward...8 frames.  8 sessions.  8 passes.  Some paintings are done pretty much on the spot, with perhaps some fine tuning when dry.  Other paintings morph and morph and morph over the months and represent quite a struggle....but I always learn something.  Dappled is a series that I will be dipping into over the next few years.  Wabi Sabi.  Imperfect.  The opposite of purebred, thoroughbred.  Inside/Outside.  Tattered.  Comfortable.  Unpressed.  Wrinkly.  Patinaed.  Scratched.  Me.

Click on "Some Paintings" to see a larger version of the finished work.

The Bundt - it's not just for cake anymore

Bundt Pan...a sketch

Yesterday, I spent a wonderful day with my friend Jo wandering through the Medina Antiques Mall. It is a pleasant adventure that we love but, with our busy lives, have not found the time to do for many years. What's not to like? Air conditioning....music....and plenty of visual stimulation....almost to the point of overload. It is not nostalgia that drives me, but the true visual pleasure of wabi-sabi-one-of-a-kind items, the counterpart to what we see in most market places. I am always drawn to items with visual texture....old architectural elements and cooking utensils. Lots of muffin tins, old boxes and relief carvings. These old pans are a perfect way to learn much about "the nature of things", which improves and refines drawing skills. We have to deal with perspective, two-point and ellipses, as well as the way light describes the many indented surfaces. The pans are rarely perfect, which adds a quirky element to the drawing. Fun. For an interesting drawing problem, then, we need not look any farther than our own kitchens. The rest is just cake.

Wabi Sabi Holes

Longing...Detail

Holes in all kinds of things offer the possibility to learn so much about drawing! Holes are the places where light is gradually denied. Here we can learn about the values of surfaces. In addition, holes are completely wabi sabi....the imperfect quality that offers up the genuine, the used and the loved. Holes can also add a touch of quirkiness to an otherwise staid drawing. Holes in trees, holes in clothing, holes in implements and holes in shoes. What a great drawing experience! Holey moley.

Dappled and Wabi Sabi

Happy   oil/canvas   10 x 20 x .5

I recently read a few books on the Japanese notion of Wabi Sabi. The three important principles are: Nothing is Permanent. Nothing is Finished. Nothing is Perfect. What a relief! I believe that these principles further the connection to process over product. One of the books was a children's book done in beautiful collage work about a calico cat.....named Wabi Sabi. For me, this whole notion cemented the connection to my appreciation of The Dappled. The French have a notion of beauty called "jolie laide". This translates literally to pretty/ugly. Perhaps this is all tied up with Joseph Campbell's notions of paired opposites.....where the marrow of life can be found. The plastic notions of perfect beauty are discarded in favor of a more honest, more imperfect beauty that can be found just about anywhere we look....any small visual that gives pause. Happy, my friend's calico beauty, died this year after a long happy life. My painting of Happy is a celebration of her life, my friend and a tribute to dappled, to jolie laide and to wabi-sabi.

William Morris

Daisy Tile   watercolor/gouache   6 x 6

William Morris has been another inspiration for me, especially during the years that I designed greeting cards. The swirling patterns of flower shapes and leaves are both flowing and mathematically designed. The father of the arts-and-crafts movement, he promoted simplicity as a reaction to the overly-ornamented and sugary-sweet decor of Victorianism. He believed that beautiful things were in accordance with nature. Much of his wisdom was borrowed from the Japanese, including his use of restrained color so as not to tire the eye. His designs and fabrics are timeless. William Morris is Wabi Sabi. He found value in the uncomplicated.