Monday Mindful Menagerie

Finally the snow has dissipated enough to get around and generally get back to normal ... it was a long long week last week. I loved having a forced time to be at home with no possibility of leaving. I used to feel alone when I was by myself and there are times I feel lonely but for the most part I find that I am finally able to be free to be creative and just let my mind wander with the creativity. I painted every day and all day and sometimes into the wee hours of the night. I finally took photos of everything that I did during that time. It's kind of a menagerie of images but still in the theme of trees and outdoor images. I love how beautiful the snow makes the world look and I'm very grateful that it never lasts very long here. This past ten days has been the longest. And even though I love to be alone I was really looking forward to being with people. I had several fulfilling conversations. As always these images are my original paintings. Thank you for looking.

Friday Frigid Fragments

Well .. finally I have decided to post when I can and not be so upset with myself for not doing this every day .. I think I will try to work up to it. I have been stuck inside here all week due to weather .. yep snowed in. I've been ok with that because I've been painting alot. I did make up two rolls of composted fabrics but .. I'll talk about those later. I really do prefer the warmer weather for dying and such things but I did manage to extract some nearly rotten walnuts from my back yard before the snow hit. When we had one day of nearly 60 degree temps .. i thought it was practically spring. This week .. we've had 6 -8 inches of snow and cold cold cold .. So I did boil up my walnuts for a bit of walnut ink which I used in some tree paintings.

I'm hoping to get out of here tonight for a little bit. I'm just a tad lonely from no human contact for about 6-7 days. Above is the street that I live on .  Below is one painting that I did several months ago .. I'm not sure if it's done yet .. but it was stimulated by all the fiber artists that I see in blogs .. love all of the influence they have had on my creativity. I also find that I am really attracted to all things fiber and eco dyed.

 I think I enjoy the details of this painting more then the whole painting.

I really enjoyed painting this .. and I have noticed how much I enjoy the varying shades of white over different colors. I guess I will keep with this style of painting until I'm done with them.

There is one other work that I did a few weeks back ... when every one of the fiber artists that I follow were weaving fabrics .. I've been saving something I generate every day .. and that is coffee filters. So what is below here is cut up coffee filters that were woven and glued to a walnut dyed record album .. haha. Using what I have. and then embellished with the wonderful colors from Prismacolored pencils.

Ok .. better go before its too late. I'll post my snow day paintings tomorrow.



 

Saturday skipped a day or two.

... two days gone and I can't take em back. I didnt post. I am still wanting to do this every day . but I also wanted to combine it with new work .. or at the least something new that i've recently done. So I have some new works but .. no photos yet. So I'm going to look and see what new photos I DO have .. for I think that all things go better with something visually to see ..
The image here is only part of a chalk pastel that I did nearly ten years ago. This was a lesson in how to use the imagery that we see in our lives and expand on it. It's a good way to give yourself food for thought and composition as well as how you keep some parts and throw away the rest. I had this in a pile of other works that I have kept in my studio. I was going through these a few months ago and did a post of some other earlier works and this is another one. I"m sure you'd be surprised to know where this image was seen. Anyway when I saw this I realized how life sometimes changes how you see things. My taste in color and various things are always changing and this top section of the work here just seemed to GRAB me .. it grabbed me for the colors and had a strong feeling to me spiritually .. it seemed deeper than when I originally created it. So I just find it interesting to notice how older works can affect new work when you haven't seen them in a while.
I am thinking I need to create more work. I have finally decided on a new years word or two. I decided not to have a list of resolution but a theme to the next year. I guess it's best to put it down so that I can go back and see what it was and if I adhered to my own goals for the already passing year. Those words are Risk and Release. I intend to take more risks that will move me more into the directions that I wish to go. And I call them risks due to the fears I have about what I need to do. And Release is to let go of material things that are cluttering my spaces and my life and perhaps keeping me from living fully in the way that I want to live. SO there you have it. Not sure how much of this I will post about but .. i might.

Wednesday Mish Mash

Ok here's the second post of the year. I'm about to run out but am trying to get a foothold into keeping up with blogging and being optimistic about making art and the future. I do a lot of work that I never post. But also I post a lot of things that are different so sometimes I wonder if it's a mish mash. I can't seem to follow the "focus on one thing" suggestion due to the fact that I have so many varied interests but .. gallery's like bodies of work. So .. perhaps I just need to pick a theme... I'll be mulling that over. This is something that I experimented with a few months back but wasn't sure that I was finished with it. I still have a lot of trees left in me but I really love roots and rocks and rust and this painting below is a combination of those ideas although there aren't any real root feelings here .. but I did take rusted cotton and glue it with clear acrylic and then painted a variety of organic shapes on top. I worked on it for a while but then just got to the point that I wasn't sure it was finished or not. So I've had it sitting on a bookshelf where I can look at it from time to time. So .. I may add more things but I may not .. So here it is. The top photo is the whole painting which is about 11 x 14 and the bottom photo is just a detail of the lower left corner. Thanks for looking. Now I'm off to help daughter. Ps. You know now that I see this here maybe I'll just do a series of these. Where does the time go?

Tuesday Two Thousand Eleven

Well today is the first Tuesday of the year. I am going to try not to SHould on myself for not having blogged more at the end of the year but .. I wish I had .. hopefully this year will be more productive and always at the beginning of the year is hope. So heres hoping for the future.

Once upon a time a dear friend told me to never dismiss what people come into your life where ever and however and what they bring to you. Not physical things but words. Things that they say to you that may or may not have meaning. Sometimes I imagine some great orchestrator in the sky who is the great puppet master... and not that I think all people are like puppets but you never know. Anyway .. i imagine him trying to perhaps communicate to me through people with out directly telling me with his own words and so those people are the clerks, friends, strangers and that I happen to interact with from day to day. I don't always listen.

One such person that seemed to tell me things about my craft/art/creativity saw my purse (one that I've decorated and painted on) at a holiday party. I was in the kitchen chatting with people when I noticed this woman carrying my purse around asking people, "Is this your purse?" and i was kind of surprised and so I said .. "It's Mine!" and laughed. She proceeded to shower me with lovely affirming comments and then later as we talked and I told her about my situation she said .. what do yo love to do most? She said .. focus on that and gave me some other suggestions. I would like to make art for a living. Also on this same line of thinking I was reading a book and read a passage that sometimes the fear of success could be fear that the success will not be as grand as one has imagined. I'm not sure if I have the problem but clearly I have avoided posting my work in a place where people can purchase things that I create. Normally, I would say that I don't really create to sell but rather to satisfy some internal need to process the life that happens around me. It gives me great satisfaction to just find that I have skills to reproduce images or to create a mood and or sense of some emotion in some work that I have created. TO tell about what moves me or hurts or share my pain or my joy with the images. To create a connection to others in a visual way. I have mentioned before that I have found lots of satisfaction in giving away my art too. So... some of these gifts are what I give to family and friends for holidays, and birthdays.  I finished painting a wolf on a purse for a friend that requested it. I was so pleased that it turned out as good as I thought it did. It gave me great satisfaction. And she loved it. That was the best part. Here below is a picture of her gift. She wanted a wolf on a purse. I added the trees to cover some of the leathers indiscretions.

This is a leather purse.

Here is a photo of the back side.
This then is a blessing to me as much as it is to her.

Also here are some photos taken around my house. They involve the weather that we've had here lately. Much of this and the holidays has kept me away. It is my intention to be more attentive to the blog and my creativity and trying to make a living being an artist. Seems like a daunting task.

India Flints book came!!!

.. i did something that I rarely do ...I bought something that I really wanted. Yeah it was India Flints book Eco Colour. As soon as I went to the post office to pick it up I ripped open the box and sat there in the car, heater blowing keeping me warm and read flipped through the pages. Wow ..couldn't help but read a little of each section to see what I could start on when I got home ..... and gradually what I'm discovering is that I'm going to have to have more patience. haha... cause all her really beautiful things take time. I am hoping to start with some of her methods of dyeing soon so that I can have a bunch of bundles going. I have some milk and water outside in a bucket to mordant some white cotton just to see what happens after I've done that. The weather here is so cold though that the milk water concoction will probably freeze tonight. Now I'm thinking I really have to learn about the plants that typically grow here. So I'm going to the library to see what I can find about native plants to here. In the mean time .. I have more tree paintings and some owls.

Saturday Sayings, Stitches and Sketches

 Ok here is my attempt at slow stitches. Here are a variety of fabric pieces. An embroidered napkin that was dyed with blue dye and folded so that the edges would be on one side and both seen so it wasn't folded evenly on purpose and then there is two pieces of discharged black fabric, I like these because the discharged images remind me of fire. So I'm kind of thinking this has an earth, wind and fire feeling to it. The center is a scrap of blue denim that is discharged and behind that is a wool sweater that had pearls stitched to it and behind that is a piece of beige that was dyed in walnut ink. To the right of the beige is a weave of threads that took a while but I enjoyed the way that it worked. I just had to try it. Then there are some eyes below that that I just tried so .. not sure it works but it is what it is. There are also a few beads I stitched in also. Kind of feels like my life today for I am feeling a slight bit busy but thats just in my head not reality. I have a mood of sadness today and find that I am not doing the things I need to do for myself. The cold is all around me just as the blue surrounds the black in these stitches. I think some days that I have what it takes to just get by and make art. I have a belief that if I just go after the things that I dream then all that I need will find me but that seems like a dreamer mentality and then doubts creep in and the reality of no way to pay the bills just seems rather overwhelming. So .. I then just become less movable. I feel stuck in my misery and all I can do that is consistent is paint pictures of trees and stitch here and there and look for more ways to just put the feelings into drawings and paintings. Then I want to find bigger paper to paint bigger ideas ... and i don't want to leave but I'm freezing. I hate the cold. I hate that I don't have the basic necessities of life during the winter. So I just want time to pass ... or I chide myself for trying to stay doing what I want instead of what I need. Which is more important? Its just a cycle of emotion weaving my brain and thoughts into knots. And thank God I have the trees to paint and then to see .. and i write words that I think the world needs to know. Love yourself .. love you and you will have love to give, love others and you will have more love. Maybe I need to love others more. Maybe that's a piece I'm missing. Hard to love others in a room typing or making art in isolation. Who knows. ? Just a saturday of sadness and ranting..

 I love the purple and blue of these trees and there is something that makes me want to keep looking. The above tree is walnut ink and gesso on a page of book text and glued to a book cover. Something satisfying about it. Alone it stands .. kind of lonely feeling. Maybe thats why I'm so drawn to the naked trees because I identify with the feeling of being so exposed. Sometimes my writing makes me feel exposed. I have been thinking about listing the trees on my etsy shop just as they are and see what happens. I guess if I don't try I'll never know.
Too much thinking for now .. I will eat and see if I can think clearer. Anyway .. .. I hope you enjoy the peek into my insanity. haha. and maybe the trees.