Processing is Slow Work

You are going to be sick of seeing these canvases, but developing a piece takes time as I'm sure you know. So this is where I'm at with them.  I'm ready to start glazing the teal canvas that I'm calling Rise Up, for now.  Plus I'll have to try out a few things to determine how I want to paint and emphasize such areas as the Arabic lettering and the weeping eye.

Speaking of the long and often painful process of creating, check out Holly Dean's post as she develops a painting.
It's encouraging to know I'm in good company.

The small palette knife one is waiting on the wings for a finish and the possibility of a couple more joining it to create a series of some sort, we'll see.

My grand-daughters are coming for the weekend and you know that means art!  Will try to remember to take some pictures of them at work!  Have a great weekend!

Making Progress

Been working away on the teal canvas and I'm making some progress after letting it stand for a few days I decided on a direction that I'm pleased with.  I had done some gel stenciling in the top corner of the canvas that I really liked, using one of Mary Beth Shaw's stencils, so I decided to let the gears flow down over the canvas.  Thought I'd show you them while the gel is still wet so you can see them clearly.  Then I took a couple of my own hand cut stencils for the top right corner and the lower left corner.  The lower left is Arabic for 'Rise Up' the words just seem to fit with the quote I used on the collage cross effect about 'failure is failing to get up again after a fall.'  Over all I think these are going to work well for this piece.

I also used a small 8 x 8" canvas to try my hand at some palette knife painting.  That was a lot of fun and suits my style of textures.  As you can see I used my every faithful gorilla glue to draw a free hand design which I plan to paint in a metallic copper or bronze. (Bless artist Suzy Andron for teaching me about this glue in her DVD)

Hope you are having a creative week. If you're needing a little inspiration check out what Lisa Sonora Beam had to say, here's a taste:

“The creative force flows over the terrain of our psyches looking for the natural hollows, the arroyos, the channels that exist in us. We become its tributaries, its basins; we are its pools, ponds, streams, and sanctuaries. The wild creative force flows into whatever beds we have, those we are born with as well as those we dig with our own hands. We don’t have to fill them, we only have to build them.”
- Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run with the Wolves

Lessons From 'Process'

You've got to love process...If end product is all we have in mind then creating art could become the thing that defeats you completely.  I've been working more on the teal canvas that I posted about last time.  I tried a technique to help me establish some texture forms that suggest flowers blooming, it worked pretty well, until...I layered in a little more ink colours and lost the original effects I had achieved.  I worked with the mess for a time and then knew I just didn't know how to get it back to where my original plans had taken me.

So it's gone and I've brought the canvas back to it's beginning stages and will consider what I'll do with it now.

The process always teaches me something and this time was no different.  What I realized is how vulnerable or affected I am by 'voices.'  Maybe it's because all of this is so new, it's only been a couple of years since I began painting and my life long habit of valuing other peoples voices/opinions over my own has made itself evident in my art process.  You see when I began this piece and had the background done and my little flourishes on it, a voice in my life that I value greatly told me that for them I could stop right there because it was complete for them.  It was a wonderful voice meant to encourage, but it put me immediately in conflict with myself, because it was only a start for me and I began to over think it, worry on some underground level that I was going to ruin this 'completed piece' if I continued.  So I left it for a very long time but I could never get past feeling it was only the beginning, because for me nothing is sacred when I work on a painting. Unless I stop listening to myself and move into that doubting, critical mind stage and then God help me I'm toast!

I'll not bore you with more of my life lessons through art. Hope you are enjoying the process as you create :-)

Following Our Own Style

"When the creative processes grind to a halt, we have that unbearable feeling of being totally clogged...Instead of experiencing relaxed, energetic concentration, we jump avidly towards any distraction, no matter how trivial or ridiculous; we become easily tired; when we look back at our work nothing seems good enough; our eyelids glaze over; our brain cells chug to a standstill."  Free Play by Stephen Nachmanovitch


As you can see I'm still making my way through the book Free Play, not because the books slow reading but it's been a difficult summer for me physically so my reading time has been hit and miss.  Anyway, this chapter is on the function of both the muse and editor in our creative process, something we all have our scuffles with, if not a down right brawl by times!

I've been hedging my way around the teal  piece that I'd begun, then painted myself into a situation I didn't know how to get out of.  My thoughts on how to continue were pushing me towards a realm that I've never been comfortable in, realism, not even abstract realism.  Then yesterday, with head pounding out the warning that a storm front was moving in, (yes my head has continued to be a weather gage!) I found a way to bring it back into my natural creative bent.  Something Zom wrote in Pt One of her blog series on 'Developing Your Style' made me laugh and then find a way to return to my natural voice.

Gears stencil by Mary Beth Shaw

"You don't get to choose your style anymore than you get to choose your height or your personality or your looks. I started realising this at a certain point in my development when no matter what I painted, it looked like something that I had painted. This used to frustrate me. I used to look at a piece I was working on and say with scorn "that looks like something I would do." Zom


That last line made me burst out laughing because I'd done the same thing.  Gosh we are funny creatures.   So I'm back on track for now, adding a collage element that spoke straight to the situation by Graham Cook:


"Failure is not so much falling down as it is refusing to get up after a fall..."

Enough Already!

I'm very glad my life does not depend on my ability to take good pictures of my art pieces!  There is a skill to getting great shots of peoples art and I do not have such skills.  I'm a lousy photographer but I preserver in the hopes of being able to show you something of the finished piece. It's a little more on the golden brown than the picture shows, but as I told my sister this morning, 'it's going to take a visit from the big girls with their big cameras to capture this sucker!'

So this one will sit for a time as I need to live with a completed canvas until I know it's done.  I have to laugh at myself, just this week I added yet another small touch to two canvases that I thought were long since done.  At some point we all just have to stop and say, enough already!

Free Play Frenzy

Well 'snap!' it's been a battle, kind of like the one Odd Chick posted about in her own art endeavors .  I had almost given up on my latest collage canvas. I guess that's what comes of changing out the key piece to the collage putting my colour choices at odds with the new focal point.  Last night in one wild frenzy of 'Free Play' I smeared the canvas with Transparent Burnt Umber & T. Raw Umber. Using only my hands I worked it into the areas I needed covered and skimmed over other areas including portions of the photo.  It was glorious!  The wild abandon part when you don't give a rip if it works or not because you've come to the end of yourself anyway and the fear of 'ruining' something is long gone.

I was alone in the house but if you could have heard me when I saw what was emerging from the canvas as opposed to what I had been producing, you'd have though I was a mad woman.  Maybe I am when it comes to my art.

It was a living moment straight out of 'Free Play!'
"In school, in the workplace, in learning an art or sport, we are taught to fear, hide, or avoid mistakes.  But mistakes are of incalculable value to us.  There is first the value of mistakes as the raw material of learning.  If we don't make mistakes we are unlikely to make anything at all."  Free Play by Stephen Nachmanovitch


As you can see I've been continuing to read Free Play, and as with any book there are portions that speak louder to me than others.  So I take what I need and let the rest go, the gems of insight I hang onto.

My sister Kel and I have been having another one of our discussions, she has some wonderful insights into the whole value issue many of us face. I'm hoping she will flesh it out and write in more depth on the subject for her blog.

"You know, I think that may be the difference between us and other successful artists out there who are actually selling more of their stuff.  We come at it from our own viewpoint with all of its insecurities and attempts at humility, instead of looking at it from THEIR point of view, where sticking a few flowers in the ground, or splashing some paint on a canvas is seen as a hugely creative output that they could never hope to accomplish on their own, or something that will grace their walls with colour and mystery that just cannot be found in any department store.  We underestimate the value that people put on these things, and what they are willing to pay to experience it.  (We also come at it from OUR financial viewpoint, which does not allow for any luxuries like that!)"  Kellie Graham personal email to me :)


As you can see the gel is still drying on the canvas and I've more work to do, but at least now I want to continue working with it and that's a good thing. Now if I only had some skills with photography, I'd be able to take better pictures of the canvas :-)   Hope all of you are having your moments of Free Play this week.

"Free Play"

Art Journal Page

"Creativity exists in the searching even more than in the finding or being found."  Free Play by Stephen Nachmanovitch


As you can see I've been reading an interesting book, called Free Play.  Several things the author said captured me and so I created a page or two in my Art Journal around them.

"The whole essence of bringing art into life is learning to listen to that guiding voice...finding the heart's voice--"
"Play is without 'why.' It is self-existent: the focus is on process, not product."
"Art is a gift, coming from a place of joy, self-discovery, inner knowing."


Good stuff and I'm only part way into the book :-)

I'm also working on a collaged canvas, it's passing through its ugly stages right now. I will be apply various layers of glazed colour to enrich and give it the kind of depth I want. Plus I'm working on fully integrating the photo into the piece.  The picture of the old tree was taken by my talented sister Doreen, or Ree as I call her.  The tree is one that graces my Aunt & Uncles property.  We grew up clambering through it's gigantic limbs, you can see one of my Uncle's barns in the background. Memories worth remembering...

Hope you are all having a great holiday weekend to my Canadian and US friends.