A Year With Rilke, December 26th

The Double Realm, December 26, 2011, 36 x 36 in, oil on canvas

A Year with Rilke, Daily Readings from the Best of Rainer Maria Rilke, translated and edited by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows is a dog eared post it noted "bible" that I go to often for inspiration.  Although the book is composed as a daily reader, rarely does the poem of the day have anything to do with what I am painting or contemplating.  However, as the year ends and the frequency of the statement, "I'm ready for this year to be over" resounds from others, I've been reflecting on how it really was the best of times and the worst of times for me and my family this year.  The winds of change blew our way and we had to make really tough choices and big changes.  But in that struggle there was so much goodness, so many gifts and blessings and such a change of perspective that these words by Rilke--today's entry--resonate strongly with my situation.  The polarity of life--how there is no understanding of its riches without a walk through austerity--is a message that is expressed across many platforms and belief systems.  Here is Rilke's take on it, from the Sonnets to Orpheus I, 9.

Only he who lifts his lyre
in the Underworld as well
many come back
to praising, endlessly.

Only he who has eaten
the food of the dead
will make music so clear
that even the softest tone is heard.

Though the reflection in the pool
often ripples away,
take the image within you.

Only in the double realm
do our voices carry
all they can say.

Trying on Something New

I rarely experiment with surfaces.  I've found a canvas I love and stretch most of my pieces myself using purchased stretcher bars (I'm not that much of a purist that I create those by hand too!).  This prep process is fine for larger pieces.  Over the past year I've experimented with gessobord as a surface for smaller works liking the 3/4" profile in depth and expecting that I'd like the smoothness.  The fact that you can purchase it cradled affording me a back frame to hold onto when I paint and making the work ready to hang were also pluses.  However, I find myself struggling with the board--something to do with absorption and drying--and only 1/4 of these paintings actually make it to completion.  Not a good ratio considering the fact that they're $15 a pop.  So, onto another surface experiment I go for my smaller works.

The above painting (not complete but shown here for example only) was created on a 14 x 18" clear gesso linen panel.  The raw linen peaks through in places and because it's fabric and not board, the absorption I need with my process is happening again.  I like the idea of presenting the work as a framed piece with a matte sans glass or acrylic.  And, since I've loved maple frames forever, finding a way to finish my work with a maple frame is important to me.  Although the finished pieces measures in at 21 3/4 x 17 3/4--maybe not small for some folks--I think this might be my new format for smaller works--for the time being.

Image-ing

I took a car and ferry trip with four teenagers today.  We checked out the site of a future exhibit of my paintings, collected fantastic rocks on the beach and ate burgers together--and listened to all our favorite songs on the way home.  Now they're listing to a Lady Gaga Holiday pandora station while making duct tape Christmas ornaments.  It has really been a fabulous way to begin the holiday break.

So while they're doing their thing, I used my digital tools to imagine my paintings in this most fabulous setting.  Come March when you sit on one side of the table you'll see the view on top and from the other chair the view below.  I'm inspired to create a couple of new pieces and can't wait to get in the studio tomorrow.   So exciting...

Very little paint, loads of depth

 

I love when the minimalism of form and the minimal amount of paint collide to create a great sense of depth.  Another work I created this past Fall had the same kind of mystery- something to do with beginning the painting with a bold color and the subsequent subtle addition of just an ooch of paint and absolutely no brush stroke.   "Painterliness" or mark making is not the only way to inject the artist's energy into a painting--and I don't believe surface texture is what its all about even though many artists are enamored with encaustic and resin and what I lovingly call decoupage.  I love the idea that I know there's barely anything there -- yet the painting takes you somewhere in your mind and memory.

This painting is 36 x 36 inches and is being reserved for a very special exhibit opening in March.  I'll tell you all more later, but just know that I've desired to have my work shown in this wonderful space for a long time.

Stimmung, Kandinsky's term for a work's atmospheric element or transcendent tendency.  Deliberate silence, deliberate negation, is a major way of sustaining the elusive spiritual atmosphere of the abstract work by ruthlessly reducing the artistic (tasteful outer beauty) to an absolute minimum.  Indeed silence attempts to eliminate beauty altogether.  Paradoxically the absolutely silent becomes the radically beautiful, just as for Hegel absolutely abstract spirit becomes radically concrete being.  The silence evokes an ecstatic sense of immediacy, an experience of radical beauty, breaking all the habits of mediation conventionally associated with perception.  Concerning the Spiritual in Contemporary Art by Donald Kuspit.

A Whisper of Things to Come

As some of you who read this blog know, I took a non-art job about two months ago after having painted, taught and run a gallery for the past three years.  I'm happy to report that I've been finding a way to balance the art into the equation.  Although I'm still hoping to find a couple more hours of studio time every week after I'm done with the new job stuff and a big work project that culminates in March--I'm pretty good with how it's all worked out.  A challenging work gig with a steady paycheck and the ability to keep my "final resting place" studio and some time to create and exhibit my work.  All is well today.

And, I've found, even without the built in gallery space of my former storefront studio which afforded me a every artwalk for 40 months experience,  I've had steady opportunities to exhibit my work.  Upcoming exhibits in the Winter and Spring at new spaces will be good for me.  In January I'll be exhibiting with 3 or 4 other artists at a new gallery space in Port Townsend called Simon Mace Gallery.  From February through May my works will be found at St. Joseph's Hospital as part of the Healing Through Art program, something I've wanted to participate in since hearing about it.  I'm so hoping hospital visitors find a quiet, contemplative experience with my paintings.  And then, in April I'm planning an exhibit at the Amadeus Project in Bellingham complete with an artist talk about how poetry influences my work (April is National Poetry month).  Whew, and then it'll nearly be summer.

There will be a couple of new pieces in the Healing Through Art Exhibit and I'm hoping to create a grouping of large scale works for the April exhibit.  I may have to give up that sleep in Saturday! Here are a couple of paintings from the archives, both owned by the same collectors, but purchased nearly a year apart.

A Whisper, oil on canvas, 8 x 24 in, Private Collection

Inflow, oil on canvas, 8 x 24 in, Private Collection