Journalistic Abstraction
There's a journalistic component to my abstract work, coming from the neighborhood of the subconscious. If I try to cook up a visual idea of some event or place, the painting turns out to be a remote translation - stilted and awkward, lifeless. If I am able to paint with a more open focus, working from a felt sense of color and mark in a conversant way, there's a better chance of mining something more authentic, and the painting can carry something closer to the direct experience of my surroundings and recent history. It's an odd thing to try to describe from a process experience, but evident in the work itself.
Having recently returned from living on a quiet island off the Florida coast, some of the work that has emerged continues to reflect the memory of the seashore, the high winds and storms of January, the ocean and sky teeming with life. There's a sense of the experience of living and walking and swimming there, taking in the sea oats grasses, dunes, occasional turquoise waters and washed up lobster baskets. Also the sea life shows up: tunneling hermit crabs, fish wriggling down a pelican's long throat and being swallowed whole, starfish, clams, octopuses, blow fish, scallops, mullet, fish bones washing up on the shore. A few painting details shown here:
Below, I've included a painting image from an earlier post along with a photo of the woods near the studio, to look at the the different imagery arising from experiencing the midwest in February: north winds, silvery tree skeletons, golden sedge grasses and the hardy wildlife that survives the harsh winters.
My Beloved Mentor
Along the way, I was lucky to find an extraordinary painting mentor, Philomene Bennett. She encouraged me to do what felt most authentic, allowing me to push past my own confines and delve into what felt most true and aligned.
Early on when attending her studio class, I was working on a large painting that was getting worse and worse the more I worked on it. Something welled up in me and I slightly mixed magenta and pyrrole red oils, stuck a big brush in it and drug it across the middle of the buttery wet canvas in a sort of thrilling rebuttal.
Philomene said JANE, that magenta LINE! Do you see that line??? It is extraordinary, can you SEE what just happened?
I said What what? You mean I can do THAT (that intuitive movement that wasn't analytical, that was so juicy and real and impassioned)??
Right then, somehow, she had knocked a hole in the dam of restraint that was keeping me from developing a more truthful and intuitive way of working. With that line, with that comment and discovery, my work began to become an extension of me, flowing from and beyond me, through a larger dimension. That one day changed my life, entirely. I began to paint with fervor; painting became akin to air and food and love.
Many years later, our teacher/student relationship has become a treasured friendship. Recently I dragged an old, shot-full-of-holes Oliver combine into the field by the studio to create a painted sculpture, and invited Philomene to come over and work on it with me. I had a bag full of spray paint and Philomene brought a bag full of Burger King breakfast biscuits, and she sat on the golf cart sipping coffee, offering thoughts and pointers. As she would speak, I could feel what she was going to say, sort of like lifelong canoeing partners who knew how each others paddles were going to strike the water and which way they were steering the canoe. In perfect unison, with me running the spray paint and her long jeweled finger pointing this way and that, occasionally an uh huh or OH, we worked on the combine nearly wordlessly, some kind of energetic communication flowing between us. It was a heavenly experience.
Recently, I kidnapped Philomene and brought her to the studio to share some wine and look at art. When she looks at art, she settles in quietly, taking some time to really wholly look, reading it carefully from side to side, up and down until she really sees it. From this place, speaking philosophically, musing about distances and pull and feeling and place and memory and what's in front and what's the atmosphere, and from her few studied comments, her words acting like the strike of a match to a fuse, allow me to hear deeply and translate for my own, and with a few washes and marks, the paintings came into wholeness. I captured some of it on a time lapse camera:
Of all the teachers in all of the world, I happened to run into Philomene. I am deeply, profoundly grateful.
Painting Process - Autumn
It's autumn, and the colors of the woods and prairie are coming into the studio. The doors and windows are open, the air is sunny and fresh.Paintings begin on the ground, where thinned acrylic paint is pushed into the canvas, using gloved hands, brushes, gravity and sometimes brooms. This forms the atmosphere in which the painting lives. Then the canvas is pinned to the wall, where more opaque mark making is laid down. Sometimes it goes from floor to wall and back again, numerous times until it is completely resolved.
How Paintings Begin Sometimes
Paintings don't begin with paint. There's canvas to unroll, size, dampen, colors to mix. Even then sometimes it feels good to simply be in the studio for awhile, checking brooms and brushes, watering the plants, opening the windows, staring out at the landscape, until there's not a sense of time, but rather of being aware.
I usually start a painting the day before I'm going to work on it - getting the basics out of the way, and maybe laying down atmosphere, pouring thinned pigments and mediums into the raw canvas, letting it dry completely. The second day, it may get pinned up on the wall, and internally driven mark making process begins.
Sometimes, however, there's a piece of fabric or a form, or a line that had been seen on a Grecian urn, that ignites something inside me. This painting began with a begonia leaf, and later a pink bloom from a geranium. Usually the actual form is simply a catalyst, but this time the mark making came directly from these items.
Working in the Studio, and a Fresh Coat of Paint
I worked on many canvases over the last few months, many of them pinned up on the walls at one time.
It really helps the process to move from canvas to canvas, sometimes getting stuck and moving on to freshen up my eyes. When the canvases are wildly varied like these, it keeps me untied, and in a mode of discovery. Having many to work on at one time with no hurry to complete, felt so luxurious, and allowed them to unfold naturally.
Having completed most of the work, it was time to document, photograph, inventory and notify galleries - the nuts and bolts of the business.
Having done that, I decided it was time for a fresh coat of paint:
A fresh start! It seems so quiet here now. Imagining the stillness could be reflected in the next body of work.
Saturday Painting Frenzy
Saturdays have long been my favorite studio day. Even though I work every day, the luxuriousness of a Saturday from my corporate days lingers. The phone rarely rings, my favorite radio station has good music programs, and it feels free and unfettered.
Yesterday was wild - fast and furious energy, I pulled some older canvases to rework (always free-ing) and kept the camera going to watch the progression of some narrative work. When watching them all together this morning, these time lapses seem to capture the frenzy. Mozart's Symphony #25 sets the perfect pace.
The work is unfinished.
Reclaiming Space and Form
After a long period of photographing completed paintings, preparing for shipment, inventory and buying materials, it is at last time to reclaim space and form, and begin to paint again.
Music by Taj Mahal - M'Banjo
Immersion - Working in the Morning
It works best for me to immerse in the studio, without weaving anything else into that time. Getting to work early mornings and watching the light move from dark to first light to brightness, is exhilarating and focused. Occasional breaks to simply sit quietly, reintegrate body and soul.
I've been running time lapse videos to watch the progress, slowing it down to see if I am leaving a better painting under the one that it becomes. This one picks up the energy of the morning, especially when accompanied by Mozart's variations on "Laat Ons Juichen, Batavieren".
Moving a Large Painting
For two of us to move a 15' painting under a partially 14' ceiling, requires strategy and patience, threading the painting between rafters, for storing. We ask ourselves sometimes, what can't two women do?
Beginning Again
Projects have been completed and shipped or put away, the studio is swept clean and there are blank canvases on the floor. The light is beautiful, a large flock of bluebirds who are wintering here dot the hedge tree just outside the studio's glass door. There's a sense of spaciousness internally and externally. It is time to begin again.
Out With the Old
I use about 150 pairs of rubber gloves a month for painting. Gathering them up, sweeping the floors, rolling out new raw canvases, helped to make January 1st feel deliciously fresh and clean. There's nothing on the calendar for 9 days except painting.
Prairie and Painting, a Process View
Working on our land and working in the studio seem to me to be two sides of the same coin. Both are connections to nature, rooted deeply in earth and sky, both feed the soul, one reflects the other reflects the other.
This week we burned the prairie, and while it'll remain charred all winter, in the spring, the wildflowers and native tall grasses will flourish. The painting that arose from the experience carries the feeling of the day.
Upon Awakening
Upon awakening, there was a sudden and urgent need to paint something fresh and innocent, and hang it in the living room.
Unstretching, and Stretching Canvases
Extra large paintings are hard to stretch. My studio assistant is small and mighty, and stretched these three jumbo paintings using a ladder and brains.
(Re)Working Large
I fastened together a group of old canvases with an acrylic gel medium to form two gargantuan canvases, and began pouring paint into them outside on a concrete pad, then hauled them in and pinned to the wall. Some of these repurposed canvases date back to my beginnings as a painter, so I've titled the piece "My Life So Far" and am working on it freely, no mind for selling, just for exploration and discovery.
Sky
I watched the sky through long afternoons this summer while recovering from an injury. Sometimes tall billowy thunderheads built up in the indigo blues of midwestern July skies, sometimes it was deep blue and crystal clear, sometimes wafer thin sheets soundlessly skated across the high sky from one horizon to the other.
This long recovery became transformative, spacious, deeply informative as to the ever-changing nature of the world.
The first day that I was able to pick up a canvas and a bucket of water, I began these paintings outdoors, under blue skies and high clouds. So close was the experience to the work, the paint seemed to mix itself to deep indigo, the paintings seemed to appear as I observed.
Sky - Noctilucence 64x56
Sky - Water 66x84
Sky - Polar Clouds 66x84
Sky - Night Shining 64x56
The series is titled "Sky", and references noctilucent clouds, which are polar clouds in the upper atmosphere, visible in a deep twilight. They are made of ice crystals. Noctilucent roughly means night shining in Latin.
Modern interior in minimalism style 3D rendering
Photography Day, June 2016
This minute long film is from a time lapse that spanned 8 hours. Surely we walk five miles plus on Photography Day.
Music: Mozart Sonata in D for 2 Pianos, K 448, Molto Allegro, Murray Perahia and Radu Lupu
Big Stormy Grays
While working on a commission, I rediscovered the pleasure of richly colored narratives overlaying neutral atmospheres. These four 60x90 pieces were very satisfying to paint.
Navigation Series - Essence 63x90
Navigation Series - Back to the Known 64x90
Navigation Series - Converge 64x90
Euphrates 56x86
The Ochres of Roussillon
Ochre pigment is buttery warm, divinely tactile to the eyes, in varying colors from yellow to orange to red. These colors are my work's life's blood. This spring I visited the small village of Roussillon, in the Luberon Valley in southern France, built on an ochre ridge, mined for it's pigment. Walking along the ochre trail, immersed in the earth's rich warm color, was an ecstatic experience. I can still feel the buzz, and am now working on a series titled "The Windows of Roussillon", soon to be completed.
Photography Day - April 2016
With EG Schempf and Cassie Rhodes, respectively, Photographer and Studio Assistant extraordinaire.
Music by Beethoven, Piano Sonata #21 In C, Op. 53, Waldstein, 1. Allegro Con Brio, played by Emil Gilits