Days Thirteen And Fourteen: Favorite Things-Painting and Poetry

A Few of My Paintings and Books of Poetry

Even though I disappeared for a few days and this is technically day 17, I wanted to finish this series with two more of my favorite things, Poetry and Painting.  By the way, day 13 was spent  perusing aisle after aisle of books on fiction, poetry, geography, field guides, crafts, and cooking at a local used book store.  My neck hurt a little after over two hours of craning it to the left and right to read all of the book spines.  I left empty handed but with a head full of ideas and headed to a craft store to pick up a few tubes of paint and a new canvas.  On my way to the check out (after fighting the "I want's" for new journals and more paint I didn't need but wanted) I spotted two books on painting and stopped to check these out.  I had heard of both of these books (Brave Intuitive Painting by Flora S. Bowley and Daring Adventures in Paint by Mati Rose McDonough) and have been eager to check them out.  After flipping through both books, I decided I would get Flora Bowley's book since I had taken an online painting class with Mati already but was new to Flora's work. I had a 20% coupon that made the purchase even more attractive and decided this would be my birthday gift to myself.  Day 14 (my birthday) was spent enjoying the gift of time with my family over a shared meal at my mother and dad's house.  We had lasagna, a huge fresh salad and chocolate cake with chocolate icing topped with roasted hazelnuts.

Both the reading and the writing of poetry have long been a favorite of mine.  After years of dormancy I began writing poetry again after attending a retreat and taking a workshop with the most wondrous Susan Wooldridge.  What a gift she gave me in finding this lost piece of myself!  Reading poetry is a balm to my soul and a reminder that I am not alone no matter how wretched I may feel at times. I initially fell in love with Whitman and then Rumi through the translations of Coleman Barks.  These days I find joy and solace in the works of Mary Oliver and John O'Donohue. It is hard to explain how a poem can move you and change you, but it can, and will.  This poem by Mary Oliver is one that stays always near the surface of my thoughts, the last two lines a question worth answering again and again :

The Summer Day

by Mary Oliver

 

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

I began painting about 2 years ago when I signed up to take an online painting course, Get Your Paint On, taught by Lisa Congdon and Mati Rose McDonough.  With the exception of a few items (a mannequin face and wooden boxes) that I painted for a friends store years ago, I had not painted since high school.  I loved the techniques taught in this class and the images that began to appear in my work.  While my work is not purely intuitive (I generally go in with an idea) I still see in retrospect how the subjects I painted were reflective of what I was feeling at the time. Two of my favorite paintings, the Seahorses, were reflective of our struggle with fertility.  The dragonfly that I painted around the same time symbolized not only how these creatures were appearing everywhere I went but also served as a totem of sorts for the change and deeper thinking that was taking place in my life.  The painter that has long inspired me for his brilliant color, texture, and emotion is Vincent Van Gogh.

These days I have been contemplating combining words and paint on canvas because there are quotes and lines from poems that I want to have in front of me as a reminder and prompt.  The last two lines of The Summer Day poem will be my first combination. 

I would love it if you shared your favorite poets and poems and painters and paintings too.

Week 5~Get Your Paint On

Week 5 of Get Your Paint On took me into weeks 6 and 7 for completion.  I think this one took me the longest to paint because I honestly had no idea what on earth I wanted to paint, because I wanted to try to incorporate pretty papers into the piece (which I had never done), and this piece seemed to require a lot of time to sit and steep.  The fact that this took me 3 weeks to paint does not make this a staggering work of genius either-I realize that.  This piece is rather simple in fact.  It did however allow me to play and experiment and really listen to what I thought should come out of this and that for me was simply wonderful.

Here is the evolution of the piece from painting that first coat of petal pink, to thinking I would cut out a design that I would incorporate into the piece (it inspired swirls) that led me to cut out a simple heart instead, to a sketch in my idea book of a heart and grids and words, and from landscape to portrait and laying more paper on top of it all.  Even the original words that came to me originally when I sketched out the idea grew into new lines of their own. 

I don't know that this painting is really done yet, but what I remembered from this process is that neither am I.  I truly believe that we are all works in progress and that everyday we have the opportunity to grow, stretch, and move in new ways...ways that change us...ways that give us those ahhhhh ha moments.  Sometimes I forget this and am thankful for the reminder this painting gave me.

Get Your Paint On meant so much to me and was just what I needed.  I cannot thank Mati and Lisa and all of the my lovely class mates enough for sharing your talent, inspiration, kind words, ideas, skills, and camaraderie with this beginning painter. I cannot wait to meet up with everyone again in the fall for part 2!!

While our class is over, I am inspired to continue painting and hope to share more with you in the future.  I have an idea for two paintings that I want to paint for my bedroom that I plan to begin within the week.

Just a few things...

Source

I wanted to check in lest you think that I have forgotten this special place.  I am still finding my way around and determining what to write here, what exactly is appropriate and how much do I want to share.  I actually share a depth of emotions here, but I want it to feel safe, for me and for you the reader, and more than that I want this space to bring us both light.

                                                                                                                                

So to catch up on things I have been working on my last Get Your Paint On painting for 7 days now.  Working is really a stretch of the word as it has been sitting more than being worked on.  I was almost finished with it last night when I became unhappy with words that I was painting and rubbed them all away.  For now the painting sits and I will get back to it later.  It is so different from the other paintings and I am looking forward to sharing it...when I get it finished.


Alan is on Spring Break this week so I am enjoying being able to have conversations with him and hear him laugh again.  He has quite a bit of pressure on him with these last two classes (Calculus 2 and Linear Algebra) on top of working full time.  He works so hard and goes-goes-goes all day long from 7 AM until after midnight every night.  This break could not have come soon enough and I am enjoying this week with him and the extra minutes in the day we have together.  We have watched Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson and Freakanomics  Both movies serve as a reminder of the magic that some poeple possess to see with a special eye into this world and for lifting the veil for the rest of us to catch glimpses of what is real.


I have also been working on my resume and preparing myself to re-enter Corporate America.  There have been a few gentle reminders from the Universe that I have some waylaid lessons to learn in preparation for this re-entry and for my journey in general. There has also been the reoccurrence of the fair weathered friend named Fear.  Fear's visits leave my stomach and spine in knots.  I really do hold my breath and all of my body in check and so writing these words I breathe in deeply and then exhale slowly releasing some of the pent-up particles that have accumulated.  The difference I see today is that I am not trying to push fear away (although I want to), but today I am looking fear in the eye and asking it what it has to tell me.  There are lessons here.

So while it may be quiet in this little corner of the world for the next week, I will be back and will check in as time and inspiration allow to share a few words or pictures.

Week 4 of Get Your Paint On

Week 4 of get your paint on was all about Composition.  This week's lesson intimidated me more than the past 3 weeks.  I got nervous because in other areas of my  life I choose symmetry over asymmetry.  If there were two candlesticks and a bunch of flowers I would put the candle sticks on either side of the flowers rather than put the candlesticks side by side.I ended up with symmetry in this painting too and I am hoping for a lot of feedback from my classmates on how I could have made this painting more  interesting.

The subject matter came to me while I was in Michael's picking up more white paint.  After last week's paint mixing exercises I ran out of white.  I was walking through the aisles and came upon this beautiful display of birds and butterflies and beautiful soft pastel colors.  It was kind of like my artist date (I am reading Julia Cameron's book Walking in This World right now) and I was thoroughly enjoying the colors and ideas and just the infusion of spring everywhere.  Oddly enough though my idea was not really spring inspired and I was struck by the idea for paper lanterns somewhere between the wedding favors and scrap book paper aisles. 

I knew the painting would be at dusk/early evening but I was not too sure after that.  Then I had the idea to paint a green door in the background and paper lanterns strung in the foreground.  When I started sketching, a tree filled with lanterns came out instead. 

 

I did play it safe with this painting too and would like to learn to take more risks.  I let some of the paint drip for the grass and did have fun playing with that, but I still played that safe by using more water than paint to keep it more translucent.  Again, intentional and not happenstance.  I also had an idea for all kinds of creatures to be gathered under the tree.  Particularly I saw an owl in the tree, and a teddy bear and a baby elephant under the tree.  I sketched out the baby elephant and even drew one on the canvas but erased it and decided to leave the painting as is. 

I think the lesson for me was twofold this week. 1) Don't feel like you always have to produce something and turn it in on time.  In other words, be ok with taking risks that may mean not even having anything to turn in, or turning in something that looks real wonky that I am unhappy with. Take the risk when you have an idea.  2)  Go back to painting on paper.  I feel more open to taking risks on paper.  The canvas feels more permanent and also takes up more space and costs more money.  I like painting on the canvas because it does not warp and I feel like an artists painting on the canvas, but I see the value in the paper when it comes to taking more risks with my ideas.

Our assignment was to choose one or two principals of composition and use those in our work this week.  I honestly had no idea what they would be before hand though.  Did anyone else in class know what principals they would use before they started painting? 

The principals of composition that are found in this weeks painting are:

• Elements varied in space and size:  Trees have varying limbs and branches and the left and right side of the tree are not completely symmetrical.
• Warm or Cool Colors:  There are warm colors found in the lanterns and fireflies but because the intention is that the scene is at dusk I used primarily cool colors to give the impression of evening.

Week 4-Final

Week 3 of Get Your Paint On

Week 3 of Get Your Paint On was all about color.  The assignment was to choose 4 colors from your environment, re-create those colors in paint and use just those colors in your work.  I immediately thought of a new throw rug that I had just purchased that reminds me of the ocean. 

Since the colors remind me of the ocean I thought I would do an ocean scene with a huge swirly sunshine and a quirky whale.  On Tuesday the whale turned into a whale shark and I thougt it would not be quirky but realistic. When Wednesday rolled around I thought of jellyfish and figured I had better get started painting. When I actually started painting I realized that my swirly sunshine did not match the overall feel of the painting and so the swirly sunshine turned into a moon.

The color mixing process was an eye opener and while I admit I did not get each color dead on (they dry much different then expected) I was still pleased with the results.  My seemingly simple color pallet was Butter Cream, Slate, Light Blue, and Dark Turquoise.  And here are my findings on these colors.

Light Blue:  First I wanted to cover the canvas in Light Blue (yippy I did a canvas this week).  When I started mixing this color I added too much blue and not enough white so I ended up adding a ton of white throughout the mixing process.  After the first mix I held up the paint to my rug and realized there was black in the light blue so I added black next.  After mixing black I did another check and saw a purple tint to the light blue so I added red and more white too. The mixing process for this color took me so long that the paint got really dried out and clumpy.  I was begining to wonder if paint was like bread dough and that I had ruined it by "handling" it too much.  In the end I had some clumps that I had to sand off of the canvas but that gave me practice in sanding. The final mix for the background of Light Blue was:  Titanium White, Primary Blue,Mars Black, and Primary Red.

Butter Cream: Secondly I painted the sunshine (that became a moon) and jellyfish Butter Cream.  I started with white and yellow on this one (thinking of butter and powdered sugar by the way).  From there I added brown and then saw a red undertone in the original color and added a red brown.  The final mix for Butter Cream was:  Titanium White, Primary Yellow, Yellow Ochre, Raw Umber, and Burnt Sienna.

Slate:  When I first saw this color in the rug I really thought it as a blue-black color.  When I started mixing this I realized it was closer to slate and composed of blues, greens, and black with white added to dull the color.  I added two different greens and yellow to get to the final color.  The final mix for Slate was:  Mars Black, Primary Blue, Titanium White, Phthalo Green, Hooker Green, Primary Yellow, Yellow Ochre. 

Dark Turquoise:  My eye originally saw this color on the rug as turquoise but I see now it is much darker then that.  This color came from  taking the above color mix for Slate and adding more green and white.  Maybe it is because it was the last color that I mixed but this one was actually the easiest.





From Inspiration to final Painting

 

Close-up

In Due Time

This morning I finished my painting for Week 2 of Get Your Paint On.  I love different aspects of this piece but feel there is something lacking that is needed to pull it all together.  I almost took it outside and flecked it with pink, white and black paint but was afraid that may take it further away from what I wanted.  I do however love the hummingbird, the tiny caterpillar, the flowers on the umbrella and the cherry blossoms. The hummingbird came to me this morning and is in honor of a friend.

This work was inspired by the artist Caia Koopman. I am drawn to her lovely doe eyed females but even more so to the stripes, flowers, animals, birds, and insects found in her work.  While I used several elements here, the key works of reference used were Blossom and Mockingbird 2 from the Sacred Space Collection.

I kept feeling like this painting needed words and at first I thought it might just be one word Spring because that is how the cherry blossoms made me feel.  But when I was finished painting I propped up the painting in front of me and got out my journal.  There the words revealed themselves.

There were still parts of her
hidden
even to herself....
Slow to be revealed...
Bursting open in due time.

Week 2-Painting