Life, Art & Unknown Roads

A delicate gray-scale palette, this painting has been shipped off to Santa Fe, to Patricia Carlise Fine Art, 554 Canyon Road: I've fallen in love with the horizontal format. It's exciting to travel new roads (unless lost on an interstate exit like I was yesterday)! Even bohemian artists may need a GPS or road map, despite their love of the unknown, the uncertain. Life, like a new canvas, is an adventure.

"Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant," wrote Georgia O'Keeffe. "It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest."

Art Trek: Open Studio June 28-29

'Sometimes, you need the ocean light,
and colors you've never seen before
painted through an evening sky." ~David Whyte, excerpt from Second Sight

Open Studio Tour this month is getting closer; area artist studios will be on tour June 28-29, with a preview party/exhibit on June 27 from 5-8 p.m. at Upstairs Artspace (upstairsartspace.org). I'm still hard at work creating new paintings and sculpture for the event (see post below for more info)and haven't taken a break! With gold, peach, tangerine, aqua, green-golds, pink, lavender and delicate hues, this small oil painting is one that speaks to my heart and soul: it's the essence of the "Esto Perpetua" series I've worked on for over 12 years now: depicting how I see nature: her ethereal, changing spirit. Is it morning or evening? There is no answer, for somewhere it is morning, somewhere it is evening. I painted this one outside, on the front porch, June morning all around.

Painting Journeys on Life's Road

One thing I know, as an artist, is that art is life, and life is art. In many ways, the process of creating art is a metaphor for life itself. We may struggle, smooth-sail awhile, and face challenges despite the blood, sweat, tears of it all. A true artist is compelled to make art, to put their soul and spirit in each work. The large piece I've worked on since last fall has just been completed. Would you believe I had it 'finished' four times at least? Those who saw it here in my house/studio would say, oh it's done! Yet....I would question it, be driven to go back to it even when I thought it done too. Hauling a heavy 4' x 5' painting inside and outside, wielding the heavy floor easel in and out, days of paint-covered hands...the piece started taking a life of its own. The final round came after it seemed complete: I was driven to scrap paint off, add some in, to add in the energy I felt it needed, along with hard sweat in the afternoon sun. At that point, I felt it had the vitality and energy of my art client's life in it, along whatever I bring to the table in my art in the creating of it. In all that, the painting came around to the very beginnings it started from, full circle in a way. Just like life. Along the arduous journey of the making, I would repeat my mantra while working on it: TRUST YOURSELF! In life, as in art, we MUST trust our deepest self. We may not know the end destination, but we must trust that we will find the path, the way despite the many convolutions life (and paintings) take us. Stephen King wrote in his book "Writing" that it's like driving a Buick along a foggy road. It is. You cannot see your way clear some days. The point is, you do it. You get out there in blazing sun, freezing days, and paint. Or write. Or make the music. You do it because there's no other way for your spirit: it's not about the money you may need, or the groceries you long to buy--it's about the art. Trust yourself. You know the way if you listen. You do it because your soul beckons you, and that light is there: it's up to you to capture it and be the conduit of something much, much greater. Trust yourself.

Spring & Art: New Paintings

"Earth laughs in flowers." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Spring returns this month of April, daffodils, pink cherry blossoms, tender buds of green unfurling in a field of blue sky. River dog has spring fever: we both do--so grateful that ice and snow (are hopefully) disappearing. Spring brings life renewed. Over winter I worked on a large painting (4' x 5') on days that would allow it. Now, with warmer temperatures and sunshine, the piece really is coming together: it'll go live in San Francisco once it's finished. I'll be doing more open studio Saturdays from 1-3 when weather cooperates.

The Landscape in Autumn

"Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. " ~ Rachel Carson ~ October is here in the mountains, leaves slowly changing to gold amid the emerald shades above: now and then a lone leaf drifts to earth. Fall tends to be a creative month for me: the temperatures cool from sultry summer, glorious crisp afternoons are meant to paint, to sculpt, to inhale...as if you could hold the moment forever. This is an "Esto Perpetua" landscape from the long-time series I've worked on for almost ten years now. It remains a perennial favorite, although I fall in love with them all, like children, and send them out into the world to create good energy wherever they may land! In the beginning, a golden fall afternoon is where it all started: I painted the first one. A leaf fell to earth, then another, and another. Open Studio at my Art House will be Saturdays throughout October, from 1-3 p.m. Drop by or by appointment at other times.

Landscapes & Dreams: Art is Life

“...into paying more attention to the world’s day-moon, to sunlight bright on water or fragmented in a grove of trees, and to look more closely here at these small leaves, these sentinel thorns, whose employment it is to guard the rose.” ~ excerpt from “The First Night by Billy Collins September keeps trickling by, a slowing of time: yet a hastening of days. Sunny afternoons seem more precious now: a recent one found me out on the back deck, art projects waiting, River dog happily soaking up sun, laundry drying. Yet, I sat there and watched the high blue concerta of life above, wispy white puffs floating lazily. There wasn't a thing I wanted to do more than inhale those tenderest of moments, to watch those drifting clouds and think about life. In the next week, I'll have a painting on display at the Spartanburg Art Museum in the Artists' Guild Juried show, a large sculpture at Tryon Painters & Sculptors' juried exhibit. Soon, I'm shipping new work including this painting to Patricia Carlisle Fine Art in Santa Fe. I keep thinking about loading the car up with paintings, along with the dog in the front seat, and taking a road trip to New Mexico. This time of year, the drying chili peppers, sunset mesas, blazing cottonwood gold, scarlet apple tree leaves floating down over the Plaza in Taos all call my heart.

Esto Perpetua: The Landscape

Featured photo is of my "Esto Perpetua" series...I just got a RAPG grant to purchase materials for the series, which I began several years ago. This is exciting to me: my first grant endeavor! There's more within this blog about my thoughts about the sacredness of nature and the Esto Perpetua landscape series of paintings. Here is another Derek Walcott poem I found today, and enjoyed...hope you will too.

Derek Walcott: excerpt from "In The Village" from White Egrets.

...My veins bud, and I am so
full of poems, a wastebasket of black wire.
The notes outside are visible; sparrows will
line antennae like staves, the way springs were,
but the roofs are cold and the great grey river
where a liner glides, huge as a winter hill,
moves imperceptibly like the accumulating
years. I have no reason to forgive her
for what I brought on myself. I am past hating,
past the longing for Italy where blowing snow
absolves and whitens a kneeling mountain range
outside Milan. Through glass, I am waiting
for the sound of a bird to unhinge the beginning
of spring, but my hands, my work, feel strange
without the rusty music of my machine.

Blue Sky

Fall is upon us here in the mountains of N.C., and this landscape with brilliant blue sky captures the moment. I've just returned home from Arrowmont School of Arts & Craft in Gatlinburg, TN, after an oil painting workshop with Baton Rouge artist Libby Johnson. Many ideas are percolating!

New Work: Esto Perpetua

Esto Perpetua: The landscape of the soul...

Esto Perpetua: Red Evening