Fresh and Free II

At left is a painting I did back in June and at right is my revision, adding a little more color and contrast.  It's still entitled "Fresh and Free" because that's what I feel when I see it and what I felt as I was creating it.

I don't know if I won't go back and do some more differences in value on the flowers.

Oh it's Saturday, I'm in my room doing art, my husband is watching politics, the sun is shining and I am grateful for everything in my life...mostly my breath which connects me to my joy.

Yosemite View II

Working on this Yosemite view and placed some hills in the background and simplified the painting a bit.  I may add a few touches but other than that I think it's done.

I am going to work on my painting of two girls that I did about a year ago, here it is.

Something is not right with it, so have been studying it for a few days and I think I need to change the table color and the background.  Anyway that's what I'm going to do

Now off to Aaron Brothers for some turp and white paint.

Yosemite View in Progress

So here's the painting I referred to about a week ago of a Yosemite view.  I have reworked it and now i like the color better but need to still do some work on it as the water needs more color up close and the mountain in the background needs less color.  I didin't intend to change the tree color however it happened and I'm not unhappy with it, it's just different from my plan.

Maybe I'll have time to work on this later this evening.  Right now I'm just awaiting my peeps that need to do the upkeep on this house!

In the Pink

So six of us attended a luncheon put on by a Placer County breast cancer fundraising group at our Timbers Lodge. Decor was all in pink and mostly people wore pink, but I didn't think I had any so I wore a boring green dress but I was still cute.  We had champagne and pink mashed potatoes, colored with beet juice.  So, a lovely day for all and we felt good about ourselves for contributing to a good cause.

Haven't done any art lately.  Reading and playing with my husband since I was away for a few days at the Kondos workshop.

Our rainy season is beginning, so I'm going to get some good art time in soon.

Out the door for lunch with a friend in MidTown Sacramento.

A Yosemite View?

88 degrees?  It's October.  Can we get some Fall weather in here sometime soon Universe, so we can then complain about the cold weather?  Haha

In my art room today assessing what is what.

I find this little canvas I did in local color a few months back, it is from a photo that I took on one of our Yosemite trips.  I never have shown this piece because while I like it, there is something not quite adequate.  Today, I feel color might be the problem.  I've got it on my easel and am going to do some work on it and see where I can take it.  I might just hafta gesso over the whole thing and start fresh, but maybe not.

For me the joy is in the process, not in the awards and applause at the end.  HA!  And anyhoo, the joy in my little art room allows me breathing space which I know is so important...so am breathing.

Kondos Workshop

Just did three days with the internationally known Sacramento artist, Gregory Kondos, for a very humbling, happy, spiritual and freeing experience.  I recall the Clint Eastwood movie; The Good, The Bad and the Ugly and that it was separated into three parts.

THE HUMBLING:
The man is 90 years old, and still a very vibrant, talented and forthcoming artist who shares his innermost thoughts, experiences, and opinions.  The humbling for me came when I realized that I am a mere minion in this painting endeavor that has occured in my "last act" and that sometimes I just need to sit and listen and BELIEVE what my senses are telling me.  I think this is Mr. Kondos message in his stories of "stupid teachers, world sketching adventures, friendships with the likes of Wayne Thiebauld and others, the love of his mother and listening to our mothers, and not listening to critics."

THE HAPPY:
Gregory and Monnie (his wife), are an act within the act.  There's a certain bickering that goes on between the two which at first kind of embarrassed me, but then One realizes that the love these two share just has to come out in this way and it's a funny, happy way to live-- to be so sure of the other person in the relationship that whatever is said is taken with a grain of salt and "yes darling" can be the next words uttered by either of the two.  The playful, flirty personality of Gregory is just so fun to watch and of which to be a part.  Then we have Monnie, who is the holding together beam of this House of Kondos with her husband contributing his own kind of stories of a life well lived represented by his paintings.

THE SPIRITUAL AND FREEING:
And then to really HEAR permission given to go with my gut, to free myself of all the rules of art, to simplify and be one with the process without worry about the outcome became such a spiritual experience for me.  I have heard the words many times before and intellectually I know that to be true, the process is ART for me--not the outcome.  And this is an ongoing lesson in my life that never ceases to bring forth that joy of life that I have within me so much of the time.  Greg is not the only painter that has given me the spiritualness of this lesson, and so I thank them all for that.

Here are the two paintings I produced during the workshop.

Hey hey, Everyday

Off to buy art supplies for the upcoming workshop I am doing with Greg Kondos.  Had absolutely nothing on my calendar today, then realized there are a few colors I need and possibly some canvas.  So that means I get to put Peawee's top down and roll over the highway to Sacramento on this glorious day.  I might even have to stop a few other places, depends on what I see along the way.

Everyday is a new adventure.

Remembering to Breathe

So cleaning my art room today and feeling like Sister Golden Hair is on its way to becoming I am Woman. What could be better than gathering my thoughts about Sister Golden Hair, Never Been to Me, and I Am Woman(actually 3 of my most favorite songs in the world) and placing those emotions on a canvas?  Would women actually get it?  Do I care?  Should I care?  Most importantly I should not care about the outcome; after all, my art is about the process.

While I can say out loud that my art has always been about the process, telling a story and getting emotion down on the canvas; how can it be really since I have so much to remember:  rules of art, rules of color, my innermost feelings of color, my sarcastic and truly hispanic feelings about color, my just doing paintings with the color that I have left over because I have no money or energy to go buy new, and then there's the showing of the art after it is done and weathering the criticisms.  Actually criticisms are always positive, but an artist is always their worst critic and so they tend to think others will point out all the little bad things about a painting even before they've ever shown the piece anywhere.  So where are we?

Oh, so I am now at the place where I need to put all of my energy into my authentic self getting out from inside of me to the outside and then being able to paint that.  My plan is to paint for a while just getting paint and texture on the canvas, then when I am in the painter "zone" to actually open up my heart (that chakra in which my heart dwells) and let the woman emotions dribble up onto my shoulder and down my art and into my hand and then onto my brush.  Will I have to cry?  Will I have to be consciously unconscious?  I'll let you know.  I know that I will let my right brain take over and so possibly will I be painting with my left hand??

Ok, so I have wound myself up so tight just talking about it, I need to breathe now.  Taking my glass of vitamin water and gonna meditate outside on my wicker chair for a while...and remember the breathing.

Yay!

So took a shower, washed my hair and then was drying it and thinking how to tame the beast, beast being my hair this time.  Got out the hair straightening hot tool and began to straighten this curly, thick mass of stuff when I hear Michael Siegel saying to me "finish your brush stroke."  What the...WELL, at one of the painting workshops this year, the Master instructor went to the extreme trouble to explain a brush stroke which begins, with lots of paint on the brush,  deliberately on the canvas and ends when you want the paint to end, deliberately, not wimpily.  Do not take the brush away early for a scrapey appearance.

And that's how to do my hair!  Begin the tool at the spot where one wants the straightening to occur, and do not pull away until the ends are straightened also.  I was pulling my tool away too soon thereby not calming the ends of my hair enough for a smooth outcome.  No wonder my hair was smooth at the scalp and the ends were sticking up all loosey-goosey.

Voila!  And now I'm clear on both issues.  Yayyyyyyy!

In My Head Today

Oh no, look what happened to Sister Golden Hair.

It now has a layer of paint, matte medium, some tissue paper and some copy paper with a grid in black ink.  I also did some lifting of paint where I could letting some of the underneath layers show through.  Now I'm waiting for it to dry so that I can decide how this will evolve.  I have been looking at this golden haired floosy for too long and finally decided the canvas needs to have something more meaningful on it, the gold is coming through the orange I placed on top of it and some of the red and blue too.  I may just find a way to express my feelings about strong, decisive women in the complements of orange and blue.  That's what is in my head anyway.

Ok, I have been holding my breath all morning and also whilst I was placing this bright orange on the canvas so maybe it's time to relax, take a walk, breathe, think.

Wimpy to Masterful

Okay, this is the latest rendition of the piece on which I am now working.

It's difficult getting the image out of my camera to represent the piece's colors accurately.  From this image I see that my washes look too wimpy so am going to correct with some thicker, deliberate paint.  Possibly I need more stamping in these subsequent layers.  The light parts of the image is actually bronze but possibly too wimpy for the camera to pick it up.  This particular painting, since it is on wraparound canvas which is not meant to be framed, needs to be sealed with a glossy medium...or matte...dunno.  I can try both.

Okay, so here I go again.

I AM WOMAN

A young mother at a drive-in movie with her daughter, a 1 year old all comfy in her car seat (in the front passenger seat since in those days there were no air bags, this is 1974 after all), is a memory I have in my brain.  It always brings tears to my eyes, so sorry for this pathetic soul who bravely goes to the movie with her child in tow in an attempt to prove to the world that she can do this alone.  The thought in her head is you don't show up for me when you say you will, I'm gone.  I can do whatever it is I have planned without you.

22 years old, full of life and happiness, just beginning to understand what joy is all about and Helen Reddy happens.  Helen shouting "I Am Woman, hear me roar in numbers too big to ignore" empowers this child mother to be all that she can be on her road of life.

So many of Helen's songs are in my memory "My Sister", "You and Me Against the World", "Peaceful", and of course "Ain't No Way To Treat A Lady"--just one of my lifelong anthems.

My thought is to put this into a painting.  How to honor women with my art?  Not just women but all that women ARE; their feistiness, their loving-ness, their wise-ness, their selfless-ness, that they sometimes can be so vulnerable and unable to hide that part of themselves, that sometimes they can hide that vulnerability so well that others don't get that about them--their softness, their willingness to let all go unsaid if it benefits somebody else.

Memories truly do get us through so much especially when we have the time and energy to remember...remember, breathe...breathe, remember.  I'm not a novice any longer, if I have to I can do anything...I am strong, I am invincible...I AM WOMAN!