The Four Seasons, Twombly and Rothko

Sharon Kingston studio with Four Seasons in progress

I've always wanted to paint a Four Seasons Series--large scale and immersive--like Cy Twombly's Quattro Stagioni that I was fortunate enough to see at the Tate Modern in 2008.

I bought the canvas long ago and they've been hanging around the studio.  I began Winter in Winter (see at left and titled Passage) and am still contemplating its completion.  On Friday I began Spring with the intent that the cloud layin will move back behind layers of views--through the willow buds and cherry blossoms...abstracted of course.  Painting each season in season is an important aspect of this series. And connecting each painting to a Rilke poem is an important part of my process.


So, it was a bit coincidental with the Four Seasons so much on my mind, to attend a local production of the play RED last night.  This play is an homage to my art hero Rothko (my painting technique and many of my philosophies about art are consistent with this great man) and a peak inside the studio and decision to take and then retreat from the famous Four Seasons Seagram Building commission.  I felt like I could have been on stage speaking his words, so connected is my process.  The layering, the spending the time contemplating and looking and the desire to have the viewer spend the time there also.

Working title spring, 60 x 72, oil on canvas, in progress

Passage, 60 x72, oil on canvas Sharon Kingston

Paintings Placed - Digitally

I can imagine that it is hard for people to conceptualize a painting placed in their home, office or reception area. I do send a lot of them out of the studio for try outs.  However, now, thanks to Houzz ideabooks, it is so much easier to "imagine" them in a setting.

My husband's company has been importing modern furniture for some time now, and since it was yet again another rainy Sunday, I thought I'd try my hand at pairing what he offers with my paintings, digitally, to give collectors a better idea of how the paintings will look in situ. I think the presentation of these works are so much richer here than on a gallery wall or as a thumbnail on facebook.

Here's a tasting of Paintings Placed.  Furniture and paintings available at modernclassics.com

 

Surviving the Parting and Nature in the Balance Exhibit

Be ahead of all parting, as if it had already happened,
like winter, which even now is passing.
For beneath the winter is a winter so endless
that to survive it at all is a triumph of the heart.

Be forever dead in Eurydice, and climb back singing.
Climb praising as you return to connection.
Here among the disappearing, in the realm of the transient,
be a ringing glass that shatters as it rings.

Be. And know as well the need to not be:
let that ground of all that changes
bring you to completion now.

To all that has run it course, and to the vast unsayable
numbers of beings abounding in Nature,
add yourself gladly, and cancel the cost.

Rainer Maria Rilke

The Whatcom Museum is holding an open exhibition in conjunction with its upcoming Vanishing Ice show titled Nature in the Balance.  Artists are encouraged to submit pieces which speak to the topic of our changing climate. This is my submission, titled Surviving the Parting.

Change

Want the change. Be inspired by the flame
where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist when sketching loves nothing so much
as the curve of the body as it turns away.

What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.

Pour yourself like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start and with ending begins.

Every happiness is the child of separation
it did not think it could survive. And Daphne becoming a laurel
dares you to become the wind.
~Rainer Maria Rilke

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"When you are in doubt, be still, and wait;
when doubt no longer exists for you, then go forward with courage.
So long as mists envelop you, be still;
be still until the sunlight pours through and dispels the mists
-- as it surely will.
Then act with courage.”
― Ponca Chief White Eagle

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“When you are in a state of deep internal stillness, you see the truth of change, the truth of impermanence that’s constantly in flow moment by moment. So that becomes a kind of insight that liberates you from the futility of the kind of grief that disallows our own humanity to emerge."

~Roshi Joan Halifax from "Compassion’s Edge States"

Want the Change, 30 x 40 in, oil on canvas ©Sharon Kingston

These past few weeks have been most enlightening to me.  Extremely unsatisfied in my job,  I mustered the energy and professionalism to execute a major event which I had been working on for an entire year.  I delivered an "innovative and extremely successful event which was executed flawlessly" despite the inner turmoil.  And then I resigned from my job.  Trying to be still and contemplative among the voices of doubt and anger that have existed in my head was a difficult endeavor.  However, conversations with strong and capable associates as well as these wonderful words gave me the courage to not only speak out and stand up for myself, but to move forward to realize a different vision of my career, one more consistent with who I truly am. 

 

Just make art

Of Ourselves and of Our Origins: Subjects of Art

Art Criticism

Can we speak sensibly about what we like about art?

Peter Schjeldahl giving a talk at the Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis (1999)

This essay is an edited version of a lecture given at the School of Visual Arts in New York on 18 November 2010, as part of a series organized by David Levi Strauss and sponsored by the MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department.
At a time when art is being publicly gamed to exhaustion, can we speak sensibly of what we like about it, deep down? The short answer could be: ‘Well, sure, why not?’ Thank you and goodnight! But put it this way: can we make any significant difference by speaking of what, deep down, we like about art – a difference in the world or even just in the special purlieus of art? And to do it ‘sensibly’, meaning both reasonably and in a way that others can feel.
Franz Kafka was asked if he saw any hope. He replied: ‘There is infinite hope, but not for us.’
The long answer to the question is: Not really, things being as they are. People talking in public about art today may speak from their bleeding hearts, begging indulgence from their listeners, or else make chess moves with the clichés of some or another academic discourse or prevalent babble, intimidating or benumbing possible dissenters. But it seems to me – I won’t try to prove this, so you can agree with me or not – that our culture’s bridges between individual experience and shared meaning are pretty thoroughly blown up. We can look at the river – current things, current events – from one side or the other, from the heartfelt or the rational. In between, we’re all wet. Some of us try to enact exceptions to the rule, and maybe sometimes we do. But they never seem to catch on or to go anywhere.

The Shape of What You Lived

And you wait. You wait for the one thing
that will change your life,
make it more than it is—
something wonderful, exceptional,
stones awakening, depths opening to you.

In the dusky bookstalls
old books glimmer gold and brown.
You think of lands you journeyed through,
of paintings and a dress once worn
by a woman you never found again.

And suddenly you know: that was enough.
You rise and there appears before you
in all its longings and hesitations
the shape of what you lived.

Book of Images

Rainer Maria Rilke

 

I do believe that I spent a lot of my life wishing for something more.  Expecting every year to deliver more "success"--like an upward trajectory towards some undefined pinnacle.  There may have been an appreciation for how unbelievably fortunate I really was--but that nagging expectation for more was always present and quite overshadowed the moments of my life.  Rilke and life experiences over the past few years have sparked a shift in how I view the life I've lived and am living.  The old adage that everything happens for a reason becomes ever more clear the more open minded and reflective you are when looking back at the journey of your life.  That choices--concrete as they seem at the time of making them--are really quite fluid.  The world really does conspire to take you along the path you were meant to be on if you let it. 

The Shape of What you Lived series is my tribute to recognizing and embracing these moments of my life that are here right now--and how they are enough and plentiful and wonderful in how right they are for me right now.  The paintings are inspired by my morning moments, the mistiness of the mornings which symbolizes to me how we know not what our day holds for us, but if we pay attention there may be an inkling of suggestion about what it means as we move through it.  The paintings are a way for me to contemplate these beautiful words by Rilke, words that continue to affect my responses to my life.

 

Sharon Kingston, 36 x 48 in, oil on canvas

Sharon Kingston, 20 x 24 in, oil on canvas

Sharon Kingston, 24 x 24 in, oil on canvas

Sharon Kingston, 24 x 36 in, oil on board

Making Books

 

http://www.mypublisher.com/index?e=OHm3Q8zJl3SnvK9yg-DELSmT4JrVn3lD&showForm=true

You may view and purchase this book at the link above.  $14.00 plus shipping.

I've used MyPublisher for the past few books, but I'm thinking a migration to Blurb is in order.  The user interface is okay for creating, but the sharing and ordering process is cumbersome and old school.   Not impressed this time around.

So, until I can figure out a way around their system, you'll have to just enjoy the little view allowed with this link.