You're Painting with the Spatulas Now!?

My dad makes it his mission to keep us well fed during their stays. So when he popped up to visit me in the studio during a week they were here helping out he likely came directly from the kitchen and, skipping a beat, asked with some incredulity: You’re painting with the spatulas now?!

Below are a few progress shots of pieces that are mostly made with these tools, rather than brushes. It’s a new-to-me technique that I’m enjoying for the challenge of keeping it simple.

Hotel Henry Lounge, in progress

Docked Dinghies, in progress

Docked Dinghies, in progress detail

Arroyo Pool 2, in progress

Stonegate Sunshade, Progress

Special thanks to Kristen and Allie for helping me capture photos for this image. One perfect summer evening they took me out idea-hunting, but I am always so glad of their company. They also were able to work the mechanics of the sunshade for me; awesome to have artist’s assistants. Better yet to have compassionate friends!

before its color

loving friends, better than two Vanna Whites, to help with throwing shade, just right

Umbrella Works, Progress Shots

Umbrellas provide some shelter, and a finite area of relative stillness. But yet you are still out in the thick of things. Umbrellas do not negate the heat or prevent the next storm, but provide a small space of peace. Sit, take a breather. Like the wings of a bird over its hatchling.

These umbrella pieces are dedicated to CM & RD, who have provided for me on a countless number of occasions such moments shelter and peace.

Jermaine's Elk Crossing, Progress

Anyone who lives in Del Norte County has multiple encounters with the elk, particularly harrowing experiences when the giants amble across their territories, now etched by our narrow highways.

As a teen, I recall vividly jolting awake, hearing our high school basketball coach behind the van’s wheel swear. As we drove home from an out of town game, the van gave a lurch and my eyes flew open to meet directly the gaze of an elk, narrowly passing on the road’s shoulder.

This painting is based on a photograph by my talented neighbor, Jermaine Brubaker. Thanks again, Jermaine!

Winters Pool, Progress

This piece is dedicated to dear friends, D&K&T, serving as angels for many in the Yolo area angels with their profession passion and with their personal generosity. Accordingly, they’ve created a slice of heaven to live in and share.

The Echoes Series, A Statement

Narcissus is one of our most celebrated villains, the great granddaddy to many we love to hate. Easy to love, easy to hate. True to form, Narcissus himself could dash off a list of the top ten reasons he is supremely lovable—that is, if you’re not too self-involved to notice what’s so obvious. Thus, it took just a split second for Echo the mountain nymph to be won over by his good looks when she spied him in the woods. 

At this point in a psychodrama, a more pragmatic lover might take caution: hunter in the woods, lost; a professional outdoorsman, yet lost. From Echo’s perspective, no points needed subtracting from this Greek with his god-like figure, though he was failing in his one vocation. Her whole being reverberted the moment she saw his physical beauty. The hunter became prey. Echo the stalker was born, as was an early case study of codependency.

Narcissus’ immediate and definitive reaction to Echo’s desperate efforts to woo him was to reject her firmly, as he had every other hopeful lover. Points for consistency there. To be fair, Echo’s pursuit was also hampered by the curse of a former lover’s wife: Echo could only utter the words she had last heard. This was her particular punishment for being a renowned chatterbox who had used her prattling to deceive (read: protect herself) in her previous tryst (read: exploitative relationship). Whatever your perspective on misogyny, this gal came with baggage and the bellhop wasn’t having it.

But his sound rejection of Echo was to be his last. The gods, watching Narcissus disparage all who offered him love, cursed him for being so…  well… just so narcissistic. From then on out, Narcissus would only ever be enamoured with himself. This is where finding his reflection in the pond comes into play, and it doesn’t work out in the nice, incense-scented, “Elephant Journal” self- love sort of way.

To set the scene: Here is Narcissus, whispering sweet nothings to his image in the water, while Echo tentatively hovers, repeating his every word. Her matching his romantic playlist of “you’re simply the best’s” and “all of me/loves all of you’s”  and “I found a love for me/darling just dive right in’s” obviously didn’t cure his self-obsession. Let’s call it as we see it: Echo was an enabler. She was right there triggering, as Narcissus dove over the brink. 

Both characters ultimately die longing for love, all the while clinging to the belief that they'd found their One & Only. Various plots conclude with Narcissus starving, too self-infatuated to eat; drowning; or blooming gloriously into a garden variety perennial.  Keeping with the genre, our leading lady’s story is left comparatively undeveloped; she is described as wandering, withering in her own disordered eating, and eventually fading away in a cave.  

Her resting place is rather appropriate, given the easy application here of Plato’s illustrious Allegory. He’d suggest that Narcissus and Echo were our fellow cave prisoners. Rattling our chains, we too watch the flickering on the walls of fake news and shadows of truth. 

While it’s easy to hate on mythical figures, particularly Narcissus, Echo and ghosting friends, we do so because we can more easily recognize when others are not in touch with reality. But we’d do well to include ourselves here. How and when might we come fully to our senses, the philosopher Kant asks. How do we get out of the cave and more fully experience the real world? Narcissus’ and Echo’s intense desires and fears hindered them from truly experiencing love; just so, many of us are holed up in the cave, yet audaciously lay claim to knowing a whole lot more of the world. So, what are we missing?  

Here are the spoilers in my soapbox opera’s playbill: Self-reflection, while a vital starting point, only gets us so far on a path connecting us with others; it provides for a shallow understanding of the depths of human experience. On the other hand, obsessing over what could be or what might have been in our lives, sulking in the shadows of that grief and desire for others, is also a very limited way of existing. To truly experience and grow in the human’s capacity for love, we lift our eyes and step out into the open. No matter how afraid, or self-conscious, or lonely or hurt we already are, we pick up our baggage and greet one another with a welcoming, compassionate heart. Easy to love? Not so easy.

The Echoes Series simply is exploration of how objects and light gambol—bouncing, blocking, blinding. I am fascinated by the relationships between what is concrete and ephemeral; belief and doubt; skepticism and insecurity.  I like patterns repeating and dissolving. Nothing is solved by clinging to any of it. 

Special thanks to Camille for editing.

Worth It?

For what its worth, starting a query here: monetary worth; self-worth; “you know I’m worth it”; was it worth it?

At what points in your life do you have the sense that what you are doing is “worth it”?

Welcoming your two cents-worth: What were the prices you paid? What were your benefits?

All Is Not Still

how do we describe our visual experience of the shimmering boundaries of things- from the violent stirring of wings or steady swaying of masts or lines- where fluttering limbs are here and there in a heartbeat ?

detail from Birds, Shore. 2016. Oil on Panel. 16 x 24 inches

detail from Harbor, Rigging. 2018. Oil on Panel. 16 x 24 inches

This poem begins in a way that reminds me of the shimmying, shimmering surfaces all around me. Gerard Manley Hopkin’s use of language sets up in an almost onomatopoeia-ic way the quivering, quick movements of the world’s elements. And ends with the ecstatic, exultant state in which many of us find ourselves upon appreciation of this.

That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection 

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows | flaunt forth, then chevy on an air- 

Built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs | they throng; they glitter in marches. 

Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, | wherever an elm arches, 

Shivelights and shadowtackle ín long | lashes lace, lance, and pair. 

Delightfully the bright wind boisterous | ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare 

Of yestertempest's creases; | in pool and rut peel parches 

Squandering ooze to squeezed | dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches 

Squadroned masks and manmarks | treadmire toil there 

Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, | nature's bonfire burns on. 

But quench her bonniest, dearest | to her, her clearest-selvèd spark 

Man, how fast his firedint, | his mark on mind, is gone! 

Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark 

Drowned. O pity and indig | nation! Manshape, that shone 

Sheer off, disseveral, a star, | death blots black out; nor mark 

                            Is any of him at all so stark 

But vastness blurs and time | beats level. Enough! the Resurrection, 

A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, | joyless days, dejection. 

                            Across my foundering deck shone 

A beacon, an eternal beam. | Flesh fade, and mortal trash 

Fall to the residuary worm; | world's wildfire, leave but ash: 

                            In a flash, at a trumpet crash, 

I am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am, and 

This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, | patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, 

                            Is immortal diamond. 

Living with Art: The Importance of Collecting

https://mozhaifoundation.org/a-passion-for-art-and-life-lessons-learned-from-jung-ying-tsao/

The Most Courageous Thing

“The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.” Coco Chanel

Does a True Artist Care What Her Audience Thinks?

Process of "North F, Orchard"

One of the reasons I love painting light coming through branches- but even light coming through the framing of wires, masts, leaves- is that it accentuates the way light shifts. Even in our truncated experience of the wide sky and spectrum, we have our “ah-ha” moments . We appreciate the way the colors change, the direction and redirection of rays, the playful cast of shadows. This piece “North F, Orchard” hopefully shows my exploration of that.

These lights are like facets of a gem to me.

Mysteries, Yes!

Mysteries, Yes!

by Mary Oliver

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous 
to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the 
mouths of the lambs. 
How rivers and stones are forever 
in allegiance with gravity 
while we ourselves dream of rising. 
How two hands touch and the bonds 
will never be broken. 
How people come, from delight or the 
scars of damage, 
to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those 
who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say 
"Look!" and laugh in astonishment, 
and bow their heads.

detail of Creek, Grasses, in progress

I enjoyed how quickly and like a final punctuation, was the process of pulling out the sharpness of the grasses and leaves overhanging the creek waters in this piece.

detail of Creek, Grasses

Literally, Holding my Breath

Despite the absence of power lines and other of my oft-referenced sources for definite lines, this depiction of the mountains and shoreline along Point Saint George required me to be so steady that I found myself holding my breath- to the point of being dizzy. The process of painting is definitely a physical task.

Detail of Beach, Blue Puddles in progress

Process of "Couple Walking"

Music video by Jack Johnson performing Further On Down The Road. (C) 2010 Jack Johnson

Process of "Nature Trail"

Entitled

For the last three shows my works have all been identified by the official names or adjectives descriptive of the physical place upon which they’re based. This I’ve done under advisement of those long established in the art world, and while I’ve submitted to the practice, it is a deliberate reversal, a choice that is antithetical to how I naturally approach and participate in my own paintings; each piece for me is a celebration of an ephemeral, and largely an emotional experience and not entirely dependent on the exact degree of latitude and longitude.

With the most successful pieces, my viewers have a similar experience in reaction to my depictions as well. The best case scenario is that my work draws a sense of familiarity, whether or not the viewers are correct in their identification of the real place. With satisfaction people say, “oh, I know that place.” The more timid want to be affirmed by leading with “Isn’t that…. such and such….?" Yet their questions also come from their personal connection to how the painting <feels> or refreshes a sensory-laden memory.

So, why am I told by several in The Establishment that the purpose of a visual artwork title is for identification and organizational purposes only. Anything else “gets in the way of” the viewer’s experience. We ought not predispose, lead on, or narrow their own experience of the work.

Why then do we not apply the same standards for titles to other forms of art? Movies, books, music? Are their titles ever meant to be identifiers only?

Does Fight Club need to be more blasely titled “Adult Men Experimenting with Anger Management” or ought we suggest to Rowlings that replace the chamber in Harry Potter: Chamber of Secrets with something more general and contemporary? Perhaps “MPR”? Yes, in fact more children have direct experiences with MPR’s. That would be better. Let them connect more quickly with that they know. How many of us have actually been in a chamber?! I feel locked behind stonewalls at the mere mention. How can I read the book with an open mind?!

We make songs our own when we say “This is OUR song” or “This is MY theme song”; we pay little attention to song titles, nor do we expect albums to be simply organized by “Track 1”, “Track 2”, and so on. Timberlake’s Cry Me a River has nothing to do with rivers! I feel misled. Sound of Silence sure has a LOT of sound to it; I was expecting something more John Cage-ish, after all the musicians were contemporaries.

Trends in titling visual artwork range all over the place, from references to the widely-recognized cultural tropes they depict to meaningless numbering systems. Some artist’s work is hugely dependent on its title, the title being key to the irony or allusion. Some artist’s work is done with the intention of giving the view no hints for interpretation whatsoever.

So, who “deserves”- who “retains the rights to”- the process of interpreting an artwork? The maker or the viewer? Which party has primacy? The artist making the meaning or the consumer’s meaning-making?

How much ought viewers be trusted with any information the artist wants to give? If non-prejudicing titles are the current trend, what is it about our culture that is asking for/requiring this? What about other cultures allowed more informative titles to be used?

Any thoughts?

Process on "Illinois Valley"

If you want to buy this song or album: http://amzn.to/KGLp5k Gillian Welch - I Dream A Highway; # 10 from the album Time "The Revelator" (Acony 2001). I was blown away by this soothing song and it's enchantment. Time (The Revelator) is the third full length album by Gillian Welch.

The beginnings of Illinois Valley. 2018. Oil on Panel. 22 x 24 inches.

This particular stretch feels to me like the definitive edge between inland and coast when I travel between highway 5 to 101.

"I Don't Get It" = "I Don't Wanna"

Mothering young children and teaching teens gives me some great insight into Grown A$$ Adult behavior.

There’s a particular tone of voice my kids use when saying “I don’t get it!” or “I don’t know how!” <Sometimes> the frustrated confusion is genuine. But plop most young minds into a new situation and they engage with delightful wonder-full curiosity. This is why I so enjoy exploring the world with them.

Conversely, when they don’t want to engage, are feeling overwhelmed or tired, or if the the odds are stacked against their success, then these same kids will balk. They hesitate to immerse themselves and do not even want to try. This is when we hear the resistance in their voices.

All too often I hear that tone with adults when they approach a difficult to interpret artwork- from poetry to avante garde music and movies, and especially with abstract or non-representational visual work. How often they stand in a gallery tipping their heads nearly upside down in feigned exploration, declaring as a way of dismissing the challenge: I just don’t get it"!

Adults who are afraid of being judged or (gasp) wrong, -people who are beaten down into or in fact beating down the path of Correctness -these are the people loudly proclaim. People who are too tired to engage with their own feelings, or fear that emotions aren’t a worthy or acceptable means for connecting to the world- these people have fewer resources for exploring and understanding art.

When they say “My 5-year old could’ve made that!” or “That doesn’t look like anything to me!”, their tone implies is in fact unworthy of their time and energy. Or that, really, given their maturity and intellect, this means that the work is impossible to derive meaning from.

Really, however, I think the adults are expressing fatigue and fear. Such artwork defies rules and objective answers. Engaging with such work is personal, subjective, and inventive. Tired, scared adults don’t want to do the work of feeling their feelings, putting words to these, and the discomfort of sharing them. Maybe they need a hug and be sent in to take a nap!!

Two Rope Swings in process

upon returning from illness

Returning to work after being ill is likely a challenge for anyone. I find that it takes me a few days to reassess where I left off. Now that the paint on panel and palette is fully dry, let alone the bestilled physical rhythm, the flow of brush stroke, it feels like all that was in process now must be abandoned and a new piece approached. There is pleasure in being back to the profession of my heart, but also a sense of letting go of what may have been and having so little time to explore what is here, like the dog in Kenyon’s poem.

After an Illness, Walking the Dog

by Jane Kenyon

Wet things smell stronger,
and I suppose his main regret is that
he can sniff just one at a time.
In a frenzy of delight
he runs way up the sandy road—
scored by freshets after five days
of rain. Every pebble gleams, every leaf.

When I whistle he halts abruptly
and steps in a circle,
swings his extravagant tail.
The he rolls and rubs his muzzle
in a particular place, while the drizzle
falls without cease, and Queen Anne’s lace
and Goldenrod bend low.

The top of the logging road stands open
and light. Another day, before
hunting starts, we’ll see how far it goes,
leaving word first at home.
The footing is ambiguous.

Soaked and muddy, the dog drops,
panting, and looks up with what amounts
to a grin. It’s so good to be uphill with him,
nicely winded, and looking down on the pond.

A sound commences in my left ear
like the sound of the sea in a shell;
a downward, vertiginous drag comes with it.
Time to head home. I wait
until we’re nearly out to the main road
to put him back on the leash, and he
—the designated optimist—
imagines to the end that he is free.how hard it is to reenter, and to redo- now dry paint

The Tough Get Going

On the best of days there is just painting. Just painting through the doubt, the pride, the mistakes, the overstepping, the timidity. There is just the endless wandering toward je ne sais quois.

Many artists talk about all the terrible work you’ll end up doing before getting closer to what you really want to accomplish. But the point is, you have to just keep working… or as Eliot said, wait.

Anne Lamott’s famous take on Shitty First Drafts.

Ira Glass on knowing your own work isn’t good enough, yet.