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Maybe I’m Feeling Better?

March 20, 2013Ayin EsLeave a comment

It’s a no-go on Yaddo. I got the rejection letter yesterday. Oh, boohoo. Whatever. I expect another letter from Montalvo mid-April. And I haven’t applied for anything else besides the California Community Foundation grant, and that one is practically impossible to get. I mean, I said that about the Pollock-Krasner and I somehow won that, but that was because they had a couple of drunken panel members who were also blind and possibly on fire. I don’t know how I won that thing! They probably got sick of seeing my name – “Give it to her already! Or she’ll never leave us alone!”

Went to therapy today. Yeah, therapy. They still haven’t fixed me. And I have to say I really love my therapist. It is really hard to find someone to trust and feel comfortable with. I think about people I know and the stories I have heard, and even a few stories of my own! It’s not easy to find a sane therapist. Many get into the field because they are not stable themselves, so it’s no wonder that there are plenty out there that are creepy or hippie-dippy, or just bad.

Before I went to mine, I researched thoroughly. Those of you that know me know that that probably means I went to each of their houses and took blood tests and asked for their birth certificates. I knew what kind of therapist I wanted and I didn’t want to fuck around with someone who didn’t know what they were doing because I had my face in psychology books for the last 10 years, and they were about specific issues you might want to call rare.

I found a winner. She is highly intelligent and understands everything I have been bringing to the table. So now, especially since I’m going through major medication changes, I want to see her once a week, at least for a little while, and that nice lady made it doable for me. 🙂

Then I came home a stood in my studio, too tired to really paint, but I have been thinking a LOT lately about setting up my drums. I began taking measurements and figuring out what to do about this electrical outlet and that plastic bin, and my drawing table, and where to put my carts, and long story short, I think I have it all figured out. It’s going to take a couple of days and I have to visit Home Depot, but I just might have a little drummer area up and running by next week. I have to squeeze it in – between paintings and doctor visits, and all my other dicking around I do.

I was going to talk about how fucking disappointed I am about how HBO cancelled Enlightened, but I need to get back to the easel, so I’ll bitch about it later.

Today, the Last Couple Weeks, and the Other Day

March 15, 2013March 15, 2013Ayin Es1 Comment

I picked up my last piece from Billis the other day.

(Amusement Park, 2004. Acrylic and ink on dot marker paper, 38 x 27 inches.)

It wasn’t weird. You’d think it would be, but it wasn’t. Like I said before, I didn’t burn any bridges there and I feel that Tressa and Brooks, and even George remain my friends. I’m still listed on their website though. That change might take a while. I think they hire their webmaster but three times a year.

Just a couple of weeks out and what’s really interesting is the amount of ideas that have been coming to me since I gave my notice. I’m working on six pieces – five on birch panels (24 x 24 inches) and one of the same size on canvas. I am kinda crazy happy about all of them.

Arctic Memory will have to wait a bit, but it’s still set up in the studio, little broken threads laying all over the floor just in front of it. I realized that I did not paint the landscape under the letters after all. As I applied water to the paper, it was easier to pull them off and there was nothing but white, primed canvas under there. I then realized, I couldn’t have painted oil under the letters because I put those things on with a clear, acrylic polymer. Duh. Now I’m debating if I should just paint right over them (the Hei and the Kuf) and work on pulling off the other three since those are practically black. Whatever I do, it’s a back-burner project for now.

(Arctic Memory (How it might look after the change, 2013). Oil, paper patterns, pencil, thread, embroidery on canvas, 40 x 60 inches.)

I am waiting for results from Yaddo to come any day now. I applied at the beginning of the winter, hoping to do a one month residency. This will be the third time I have applied. No, wait, the second time. I have applied to the MacDowell Colony twice as well. I’m not counting on it. I had written to them beforehand and asked them what the age range was in their last pool of selected artists. The oldest was 35. Yaddo was 40. I once applied to the Skowhegan School and the oldest ever was about 40. So I’m not counting on it.

I am hoping to make it to one of Peter Clothier’s One Hour/One Painting events – particularly the one on Miriam Wosk at SMMoA on March 23rd at 2:00 PM. Peter has a book out right now about the art of looking at art called Slow Looking. I highly admire Peter as both a writer and as a person who practices meditation regularly <– something I was never quite interested in until I began to know Peter and started to read his blog.

Anyway, I should get back to this canvas I’m painting. I am going to be hoarding the new work, so I will have to start thinking about what sort of pictures to insert into my posts. Here is a random elephant:

Bows and Flows of Angel Hair and Ice Cream Castles in the Air

March 4, 2013March 4, 2013Ayin EsLeave a comment

And feather canyons everywhere, I’ve looked at clouds that way.

But now they only block the sun. They rain and snow on everyone. So many things I would have done,
But clouds got in my way.

Remember when I said I thought I could get away with three coats on those panels? WRONG! But then it rained. And then I got the flu. I still have the flu. And while I had the flu, I got paranoid that it was a fatal side effect of one of the many new medications I have recently been put on. It doesn’t help that I already have anxiety, or bouts of paranoia, or that “flu-like symptoms” are listed as a warning sign as a “serious” and “sometimes fatal” condition for a drug you have been taking for a few days. And let us add to that the general anxiety of my recent career choices, and the fact that my “Little Sister” has been lost in the Riverside foster care system for the past several weeks. I probably won’t even get to see her to say goodbye to her, and I would really like NOT to be depressed before I have any business taking on a new kid to mentor, I mean, ya know?

If I wasn’t sick right now, I’d be out there finishing those panels, but then again, my gardeners come sometime today, so it would not be a good day any way. I was hoping I could get them finished because I am picking up the rest of my artwork from George Billis Gallery tomorrow, which I already know is not going to be easy. I will bring a small box of tissues, for myself at least. Tressa has to be professional. I’m the artist, so I can be a wreck.

In better news, I designed a piece of art today that I really like. I say designed because it doesn’t exactly exist yet. I drew it in my sketch book, then I scanned it in. I scanned it because I meant to play with it in Photoshop and decide on the color palette, but that never happened. While I was trying to get the drawing centered onto a square, something kind of really cool happened. I was coloring the background color, which was set on a yellowish color (like the coloring for the birch panels) and without thinking, I just started swooshing it with a large white brush. “Oops.” But then, I left it alone. And I love it. I’m pretty sure this wouldn’t have happened had I not recently read an article about provisional painting. It’s an older article in Art in America from 2009 that Ellie Blankfort introduced to me a couple months ago, and it totally inspired me.

Anyway, I would show you this image I made, but I am trying to decide if I should start hoarding my work-in-progress until they are completed, and in fact, I’ve even considered waiting until I’ve had eight matching pieces. Isn’t that mean?

Okay, okay, I’ll tell you what I will do. This is much, much better than my idea/design anyhow.

This past week I fell IN LOVE with a piece of art you should all see. It’s by local, Los Angeles artist, Valerie Wilcox. And it’s the first thing you see when you go to her site, so you immediately fall in love before you make your way all the way into the site, making her some kind of master of strategy.

This is titled, Untitled w/Orange, 2012.
Acrylic, graphite, polystyrene, paper, 26 x 21 inches.

GOD I LOVE THIS!!!!

The Paradox of Work and Work

February 24, 2013February 24, 2013Ayin Es1 Comment

What do I mean by that? Well, there is the finished work of art itself, and then there is all the work that goes into making it:

The grunt work, like prepping, priming/gessoing, or maybe stretching the canvas. Perhaps ordering the sizes you want from the canvas maker. The sanding and sealing of panels — all in which are a kind of methodical, meditative process, or a giant pain in the ass, depending on how you look at it. There is also the menial work of rounding up the supplies you will need to make what you have been thinking about, which brings us to:

The strategies and ways you go about forming ideas for paintings. This is another kind of meditation. They might come from dreams, clever anecdotes, real or fantasy scenery or persons, abstract or surreal feelings and a way to use color to get all this across. All this shit takes a massive amount of thinking and meditation. It’s similar to a book I once read called Mount Analogue: Climbing a mountain in your mind so to speak, and making it real as you go along. Sometimes it comes really easily. Sometimes it takes a boat load of preliminary drawings, mixtures of ideas on paper, sketchbooks, etc., time ticking away for a while. It’s hard to say exactly, but you can’t force it. You can only do – something else – in the interim.

Then, do I even want to start talking about the actual application of painting? It’s such a sacred, intimate and even private subject, I shouldn’t dare. Besides, I’m not painting anything right now. I’m in meditation mode. I’m drawing. I’m prepping. Over the last few days, I have been sanding and sealing six small birch panels. I am hoping I have just applied that last coat, but we’ll see in the morning.

I just got this great new Dewalt palm sander which is making my whole life easier, not that using the block sander was so much work or anything, but the Dewalt sure makes it so severely even that I just might get away with three coats of sealer rather than four or five.

Also in that picture is my new Ingento paper cutter! mjp found it for a steal on Ebay! We are quite excited about it. Makes for better book making and paper chopping!

Anyway, back to my 20 x 20 inch panels. I’ve also decided to change my sealant mixture today, which for some might seem like blasphemy! From now on, instead of a 2 to 1 mixture, I’m going half shellac and half DH alcohol. It makes for a smoother, more even application, IMHO. I like it better. If you are going to follow my advice (which you never should) seal the back first with a more shellacy mixture and the first coat of the front and sides, then add more denatured alcohol as you go along with each coat with a light, even sanding between each coat. You should be able to get away with four coats that way.

Here’s the other two:

Like I said, I’ve been drawing a lot. Lately it has been my most honest work. That and my very last oil painting. The pink one. This one:

I did a little experiment and went through 100 paintings of mine – that I actually liked – and wrote down WHAT I liked about them. There were many repeating elements and I was left with a list of 21 things. I was then able to turn the 21 into 10 (just by wording it differently) and I am pinning it up in my studio to use as a jumping off point. In fact, I should title it SPRINGBOARD! So I think I am just clearing and cleaning up my spiritual clutter (I can’t believe I just used that wording) so I can begin some intense study and focus on my work. I’ve had a LOT that has been holding me back.

Mentally, I have been a mess. Some of my medications have ceased to offer me emotional benefits and I am in the middle of changing quite a few of them at the same time. It has been rough. This comes at the tail end of a bunch of drama with my best friend. 34 years of trust and a kind of amazing strength just broken, shattered into little shards of glass that slice me open at the slightest, unwitting movements I made. I had to make a decision to stop getting so unbelievably HURT, so I took myself out of that picture. And then, this week, I decided to leave my eight year relationship with the George Billis Gallery – I mean, without drama or burning any bridges. He gave me a lot of opportunity and I will always appreciate that, but I just left. And now I am on my own.

Now, I just want to see what my art begins to look like out here in no-man’s land. Should be interesting to get to know myself again.

First Day in Palm Springies

February 16, 2013February 17, 2013Ayin EsLeave a comment

I arrived pretty late here yesterday, probably a little after 1:00pm, and I had to wait for my room. I got an early check in, but the room was still not quite ready, so I waited in my little, rented white Fiat and texted a few people I needed to for about an hour until it was ready. I knew by the time I got all my stuff into the room and changed my clothes, I’d be too late for Peter Frank’s guided tour, so I skipped that and decided to meet a couple of guys from Stark + Kent, a cool little gallery here I found on Facebook. We have been emailing back and forth for close to a year now. They were very nice, and they also had a beautiful German Shepard named Madelyn. Most of the work in the gallery was of high quality. yet the pricing was reasonable. Two of the artists were very similar in medium and subject matter – male and a female – only the female’s were more subdued and the male’s (I only remember his first name – Arturo) was of more brilliant colors. I could not decide whose I loved more, but they competed against each other and I don’t know if that is a good or a bad thing.

The other thing was, they had told me they were not taking on any more artists until the spring, and I noticed a new artists that used garment patterns in her work – much more salable I have to say, so I fully understood. What can ya do?

So then I went to the fair at the convention center, which is magnificent by the way, a beautiful building. I actually tried to take a picture of the amazing entrance, but my stupid, fat fingers got in the way. I am really bad at taking pictures in general, I’ll have you know. On trips, during those great moments in life, of my dog, especially when she does cute things… I’m just not that person. I never care enough to break out my phone or camera in those moments, especially when I see everyone else doing it. Then I really get annoyed.

But I managed to take one pic yesterday of my friend Kelley Reemtsen‘s work at Skidmore Contemporary‘s booth. No one was around. It was convenient, so I did it. These are pastels.

Then this morning at breakfast with Tressa Williams, the Director of my gallery, George Billis, I took a picture of some mountains over a parking lot.

But the best picture I’d like to introduce you to is the TV that is in my motel room, circa 1981. It’s a Zenith, and it works about as good as it looks.