Thoughts

Share and Share Alike

April 6, 2013April 6, 2013Ayin Es3 Comments

All right, so I spend a shit load of time making decisions. So what? These days, it’s a wonder I come to make any at all.

I feel good nowadays when I make a decision. I used to have two kinds of problems before.

Firstly, I used to make descions, but then I’d second guess them the entire time afterwards. Drove me NUTS!

2. I couldn’t make a decision at all. I mean, not to save my life!

I’d fall into some sort of anxiety-ridden hell hole of self-deprecation and head-crushing confusion. And that was so hard to crawl out from.

And still, no decision was never made. (Woamp, woam) <– That’s that stupid music that plays when you don’t get your way. “Loser music!”

Nowadays, I take my time. I make up my mind and I commit to it. If it’s “wrong,” so what? It’s not the end of the world. Or is it? Ahhhhh!

I have decided to stop hoarding the work I have been doing. I feel I should share it. I mean, why hoard it? That’s stupid.

But when would I reveal it? At what opportunity? When will that come? Maybe never. So what the fuck?

I think I was afraid of someone or something coming along and bursting my bubble. I’m really happy with the work I’ve been doing lately, but I’ve been mentally fragile. Knowing this, I’ve been afraid to share my art because it’s the only thing (that is, besides mjp) that is making my life worth living and making me happy, and making me confident.

So, if I’m confident about it. That’s that. If someone wants to come along and shit on it, let them try. I’m probably a lot stronger than I think.

The new “body of work” actually starts at the end of last year, starting with Held by Sheer Willingness. It got a bad review in an art forum I belong to, but so what? It threw me off course a bit, but when it came down to it, I still really love this crazy painting.

The next one:

Ruminant Walk About, 2012. Oil on linen., 20 x 20 inches.

Then,

The Adequacy of And and Not, 2012. Oil on canvas., 34 x 34 inches.

And then the focus started to get really honed in with Runaway Box, one of my favorites:

After that, I had some kind of breakthrough and painted my first piece of 2013:

TOP HALF: In My Dreams, I Fall Apart BOTTOM HALF: Dick Boat with Feet, 2013. Oil and pencil on linen, 30 x 30 inches.

In a recent post I spoke about how some of the new pieces have been coming to me. But a new discovery shows that I did not draw the next one in my drumset sketchbook like I thought I did. I dreamed I did! I just looked through so I could post the first preliminary sketch, and while there are a few similar drawings in there that I drew before I fell asleep that very night I thought I drew it, that one isn’t there. I suppose that is why I drew it again (well, not again) in Photoshop when I returned home.

It’s the first one that I happened to finish on those six panels that I prepped last month:

Spin-flip, 2013. Oil and pencil on birch panel. 24 x 24 inches.

Read about what a Spin-flip is here.

And here is a pic of that sketchbook and a pic of the sketch for the pink painting at least:

The second one is called The Sander. Here is the preliminary sketch:

And here is the painting:

The Sander, 2013. Oil and pencil on canvas, 24 x 24 inches.

Now I am finishing up the third and fourth one and I’ll post them soon. Not so easy to draw them on the panels exactly the way you had them in your sketchbook, but I’m doing my best.

See ya soon!

Two, Third, Seven, Eight

April 1, 2013April 1, 2013Ayin Es2 Comments

I’m just waiting for my camera charge light to turn green and I think I will post the first two pieces of the series of seven? I suppose I’m still on the fence. Still thinking about it. Two are officially finished. The third one had a bit of a glitch in the Matrix, so it won’t be finished until later this week, or even the weekend, so I will be starting the next four this week and perhaps an eighth one will pop into my spaghetti brain. I really wanted to have eight in total before I showed them to anyone. I did, however, show a preliminary drawing on Google+ because that is where I spend all my social media time.

If any of you Facebook peoples wonder where I am, that’s where. Google+. If you aren’t on there yet, you should be. It is taking over Internetland.

So last week I worked, but not as much as I would have liked since I was ill. A different kind of ill if you had been following my entries. I have been feeling much better – with a lot of trepidation – which I suppose is normal. I am just glad I have been feeling better. 🙂

Little things made me appreciate my life. Actually, they usually do, but finishing little parts of the painting I was working on. It is not titled yet, but it has four black ovals. I was filling them in. I started with the edges, where I had to be very careful because they are against the finished birch wood. Just getting the line connected around from one end to the other made me do a happy dance. Filling them in was just icing on the cake. I was celebrating – and this particular painting isn’t even the one I like most. It’s the one I like least probably. Now that it’s all done, I like it pretty good. No feet, but I like it. It reminds me a bit of my 2004 work.

2004 was the year before I was picked up by the gallery, or rather, before they began courting me. It was a long process, yet everything seemed to have happened so fast. It was October and I did a residency at Vermont Studio Center. It was wonderful. Life changing really. I cried when I left to go back home, yet it was such a BIG deal that I even went. Not too long before I went there, I was a shut in.

Not too many people know this about me, but there were a few years where I couldn’t leave the house, drive a car – I mean – I couldn’t even check the mailbox that stood a few steps outside our front door. And at the time, I was in a wheelchair much of the time. It took years of therapy and reading books, and doing panic and phobia workbooks to get out of that mud, little by little. By the time I applied for that residency, I was barely ready for it. mjp had to fly out there with me and sort of set me up before it started so I could get used to the whole idea that I was going to be there for a month by myself without him and fly back alone.

My little secret that no one knew was that I came back a week early (pre-planned) and just didn’t answer my phone or use my computer, but I think my friend Suzan Woodruff knew and left a message about coming with her to meet George and the director at George Billis. It was kind of an important window of opportunity. I wasn’t even looking for a gallery. It fell into my lap, really.

These were the pieces that they ended up taking into inventory at the very end of 2004.

Polar Bearing, 2003. Paper patterns, thread, pins, oil & graphite on canvas, 24 x 24 inches.

Odetostas, 2004. Acrylic, oil and graphite on masonite panel, 20 x 16 inches.

Buffalo Girls, 2004. Acrylic, oil, fabric, pins & graphite on panel, 14 x 11 inches.

Electric Bill, 2004. Paper, acrylic, graphite & oil on canvas, 12 x 12 inches.

But, the ones I was thinking of in regards to the painting I’m talking about are these, which were done at the very wee-end of 2004 after I had a major surgery. Another story for another time.

Pollination, 2004. Oil, paper, acrylic and thread on canvas, 24 x 24 inches.

Night Blooming Seed Pods, 2005. Oil, pencil, paper and sticks on canvas, 12 x 12 inches.

The Roots of Gelt with Pods, 2005. Watercolor, pencil, ink, paper, money and sticks on paper, 22.5 x 30 inches.

The Week Went Well

March 29, 2013March 29, 2013Ayin Es4 Comments

How’d your week go Carol?

Why, the week went well, thank you.

The week went well for the birds that fly through my garden. The rats that live in my cranberry bush and the possum on the other side of the fence. The week went well for most Americans. Many of them got paid today, some got laid this morning, most had a good hair day, but even less knew the importance of their lives.

The week went well for the stars in the sky, the air when it moved in the early morning hours, it got brisk, and you needed a sweater.

Monday should have been a day where my back pulled straight, where I got a little taller, and my teeth showed a little when I smiled. My drums were set up as I wanted. My studio looked bitchen. My first three paintings were half way there – and I even still liked them. They are masterpieces after all.

I began to appreciate my surroundings. My life. The people I choose to share it with.

And I thought about how I arrived here

and how I will never fucken get over it.

I’m 11 here.

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.

First of the Three of the Six

March 18, 2013March 18, 2013Ayin Es1 Comment

So I have been working on the first of the three pieces of the six ideas I have mapped out with preliminary sketches. I swear, sometimes I just wish I had a magic wand that transferred my original drawings exactly the way I drew them on the smaller paper, and magically make them appear onto the canvas (or panel). Wouldn’t that be something? (White people’s problem.)

I tend to crush on the quick and messy, original sketch. BUT, if I did have it exactly as I drew it in the first place, all those new and unexpected things might not happen. “Mistakes” or just new happenstances. They usually do. And I usually like them. I just get fickle in this in-between time when the composition is laid down as good as it’s going to get and parts are getting painted and I don’t know exactly where it’s going until I dig in deeper with the paint. You know, the fun part. 🙂

I’m doing these paintings in chronological order – the way each idea came to me. I think that keeps a kind of excitement going because I am wanting to accomplish the ones I’m working on so that I can get to the newer ideas as soon as possible, if that makes sense.

The first idea, like a few of these, came out of my secret EyeBook. I keep a few different sketch books. All of them have different purposes and ways I use them in practice. I can’t tell you exactly how I use the EyeBook, but it’s the most important of all my sketch books. Up until recently, I worked in it every day. The exception lately has been because of some serious depression and a long, drawn out change in medications. I have worked in it here and there on the days I am feeling like myself, but I don’t think there is one page in it in March yet.

The EyeBook sketchbook is about being able to see your own work in an objective manner, partly. The sketches are not supposed to become paintings, unless they just so happen to command it. It’s also about identifying (and clarifying) how you feel about (your) art, and your emotions, and knowing the difference. The point is, one of the first ideas came about because I was so preoccupied that particular day, I could not do the exercise. I wanted instead to get outside and start sanding and sealing all the small panels I had left stored under my work bench. I wound up drawing a quick, abstract sketch of someone sanding a panel – “The Sander.” I painted all the black outlines in oil on that one already. I’m waiting for that to dry so I can paint the rest white and tan. There will be a small rectangle of fluorescent orange because I marked that page in the book with one of those sticky tags.

Another day, I looked in another sketchbook of mine, I just call it the “drumset book.” It has a red drum set embossed on the cover. One of my collector friends – Kel, from North Carolina, sent it to me, and I love it so much. I try to only use it when I have a worthy idea to put in it. I am going to be sad when it is totally filled and I can’t use it anymore. But anyways, I found a sketch in there that I thought was a great idea when I drew it (right before I fell asleep), but then I woke up the next morning and decided it was really, really stupid.

Later, I took the drumset book with me when I went to Palm Springs and I added tiny little lines to it while I was thinking about whether or not I should leave my gallery and what I wanted to do with my life as an artist, and I started to really like it. I thought, “Why did I think this was so stupid? Because I thought the gallery might have thought it was stupid? …Well too bad.” Working title” “Four Thinkers.” It’s mostly black with fluorescent green, red and a bunch of pencil lines.

And the one I started on a pretty birch panel today I think I will call “Red Scarf” because if I call it “Rainbow Eater” then it might make people think it’s a face, and it’s really not. It is abstract and has no representational meaning. There is a curved area near the top that I took into Photoshop and colored it red, but I also colored another one purple.

I spent two days flipping back and forth between these two images, asking and re-asking mjp, “red or purple?” yet, not really listening to his answers because it was ultimately my decision.

Here is where I can sometimes go a little nuts. (A little?) Yeah, maybe it was three days. It wasn’t easy, but I made it red and to me, it was a scarf. And to me it was REALLY important. I love this composition and now it’s kinda different now that it’s on the panel and slightly different than the original sketch. There is a spiral in it that is now stout when it was kind of tall and thin. There is an extra band of light yellow above the main area of coverage. All the horizontal color bands are thicker and the foot (yes, I just love putting feet on things these days as you can plainly see) is a little bigger than I first drew it.

Is it ruined? No. Just different. I am just getting started painting all three now, and I have most of the week for quiet painting time. I am so happy and we’ll see where this all goes.

Thank you for reading without any images. It must be quite boring and quite difficult.