Close, but no cigar...

I work very hard when depicting the animals to keep their essence and shy away from anthropomorphizing them into Hallmark card cuteness.  Just couldn't do it with this creature.  And I am far from satisfied with her even now, just tired of smearing pastels around for a while.  It is the ultimate ennui of artists when their vision does not materialize on the paper or canvas.  Sometimes it is something better, something magical.  Often it is not.  Whatever.  Every piece teaches me something I need to know about this craft.  I think this one taught me to focus better on the subject.  Head was too big, eyes too far apart, body to thick.  AAAAARRRRGGHH!  Still, it was fun.  Now to put her away, start something new, with lessons tucked into my pocket for future reference.

Back in the saddle again...

Sometimes I go on an artist hiatus.  I never really plan to do this.  It just sort of happens, and I look up and say, jeez, I haven't painted in so long.  And I wonder if I can still do it.  My walls are laden with my work.  Surely that should stand as incontravertible proof that I can.  And it doesn't because I forget the experience of the painting, and no amount of framed oeuvres are going to convince me.  It takes getting out the pastels, taping the Tiziano paper to a board, choosing an image, and beginning.  And then, there it is, again.  Most of what I hoped to get is there, on the paper.  It is an amazing thing, over and over again.  God I love doing this.  

Everything is surreal, part IV

Well, I am listening to Mahler.  Even I am impressed.  I have successfully poopooed him all my 70 years, but I decided that if I am going to be an art music afficionado, I need to broaden my taste.  So I ordered a set of all the symphonies minus one.  I guess he wrote on stinker in ten.  Pretty good batting average, Gustav.  And in spite of some rather abrupt volume shifts, I find his music really romantic.  If he hadn't written such looooooonnnnnng works, longer than the staying power of the average human bladder, he might actually be popular.  Or maybe he is, and I just didn't know it.  Nevertheless, here I am, steeped in culture.  Other jarring things happened today, too.  Big bang not too long ago announce yet another collision on the very busy cross-street to my halcyon little neighborhood.  I trooped down to get a gander.  Sweet little old lady was being trundled away in the ambulance.  Little dear was just planning on some shopping at the market, and out of nowhere, a pickup slammed into her.  There are a couple of these dustups a year.  I am really careful when turning out of my country lane onto this thoroughfare.  It is a war zone.  And then, oh, this is the worst.  My favorite character on Days of Our Lives got snuffed out.  Just like that.  No warning, and really, folks, this is just too much.  I have been watching faithfully since 1997.  I am breaking up with you!  No more DVRed episodes to faithfully attend to.  Done. 

Watercolors, bah...

I think I suck at watercolors.  Part of the reason is that I work very fast and don't pay enough attention to what is happening on the surface and they freaking run around with a mind of their own.  They just won't behave like oil or acrylic will.  So, impatience, number one artistic character defect.  Sometimes, though, something interesting happens all by itself.  It could be some colors that meld together, or a tiny detail that didn't get smeared around.  I pulled out a stack (one of many) of watercolors I did in a class a couple of years ago and gave them the test; what would they be if I framed them.  Amazing things happen when I put a mat around a painting.  Doesn't matter if I like the painting or think it worthy of framing.  It's like putting a bum in a tuxedo.  Suddenly, wow, it looks so, well, legitimate!  I am of the mind that an audacious artist could put a mat around anything, slap it on a wall, and somebody would think it is art, fall in love with it, and buy it, even at the slightly inflated price I put on my art, because if I don't value it, no one will.  In fact, I think you must love a piece of art to purchase it, and that should be a tiny sacrifice.  Then the artwork will be the balm for that little wound in your bank balance.  Newest thoughts from an admittedly insecure, neurotic artist.

The thing about blue and white shirts...

My favorite blue and white shirt got a hole in it.  Not a smallish hole that one could stitch up on the inside with just the faintest pucker to attest to its existence.  Oh, nonono.  A great honking hole that would showcase my admittedly more evident than usual collar bone.  The rest of the shirt is likewise as fragile and thin from multitudeness wearings and washings, a couple of decades of love.  What is more appropriate as a blue and white shirt for a trip to the Cafe for a non-fat latte and cinnamon walnut croissant on a Sunday morning?  There was a time when I had to be trained to change out of my workaday outfit every night when I came home.  Now I live in those comfy, roomy garments that are soft and well-loved.  I missed my blue and white shirt.  Actually, I still have it, on a  special hook in the itsy bitsy closet, where I can adore it on occasion.  And, blasphemies of blasphemies, I replace it.  My new blue and white shirt is not striped, that would be like buying a puppy just like Boo and hoping for the same dog to show up.  No, my new blue and white goto shirt is blue with tiny nosegays of white flowers in between very discreet polka dots.  It, too is soft, already, and worthy of having croissant crumbs caught in its cuffs.  God bless Anthropologie.

One wonders, Vol. XXXIII

The older I get, and I am very old, like (gulp) 70 big ones old, the more absurd this world seems to me.  People are all het up about all the wrong things.  Like no marshmallows in the Lucky Charms.  What (adult) person eats Lucky Charms?  Haven't they heard about artificial colorings?  High fructose corn syrup?  Jeez, folks, grab some Cheerios.  Or better yet, some steel-cut oatmeal.  Organic honey.  NUTS!  Funny, but I used to serve my kids hot dogs wrapped in crescent rolls.  With American cheese.  Well, I was 30.  I didn't know much better.  And I was on a strict budget.  Lucky Charms are expensive!  Trader Joe's sells cereals much less expensive that are much better for you.  They all have a lot of sugar, though, like it is the second or third ingredient on the list, which means that it is the second or third most abundant ingredient in the mix.  I have given up on cereal.  And lately, I have given up on most sugar.  Oh, I miss it.  And it is not all gone.  I made my protein pancakes this morning and spread them with pumpkin butter.  And whipped cream.  No, not that aesthetic yet.  But I made them with an organic egg and 0 percent Greek yogurt, and multi-grain pancake mix (has some of those oats in it, too).  Waiting for results of this year's cholesterol test.  Mine was up a little last year, when cookies, cake, pies and ice cream were regular fare, a sort of reward for growing so old.  I know that sugar causes inflammation, and inflammation causes high cholesterol.  Should be interesting, seeing if this little change has helped that.  Certainly has helped my fluffiness.  I have lost 12 lbs.  So, take it from a skinny  old person.  Can the Lucky Charms.

1-800-itscrap

I am thinking of starting an artist's only suicide hot line.  Encouraging messages, like paint over it stupid, or throw it on the floor and walk on it for a while.  Remember Pollack, Matisse, Kandinsky.  Picasso!  Look at art online.  Go for a walk.  And best of all, just keep swimming.  Stay in action.  Here is a little bit of action I have been working on for the last few days, or daze, a layer at a time.  Cannot get away from the chaos of it all. I noticed at Art for Life that my lioness arrested folks.  They looked, then they looked again.  I think that is the secret of selling art.  Make something that is hard to look away from.  This piece is that, if you can get over your first glance. 

Self actualized woman strikes again!

The check engine light came on the other day, in my car.  My previous MO was to drive around for a few months, sweating and muttering and praying it would not blow up.  (I actually had one that did just that.)  Not now.  Now I am totally on top of everything.  So I got out the Yellow Pages, and found the ad for the place that checks this malady, free.  That cost me $150, just to diagnose the problem.  I had to re-schedule for the actual repair.  I managed to get rides from dear friends on both ends of the transaction.  Today, I took it in again, and decided to just find my own way home.  This process began with noticing the number on the bus that I often pass on my way into town.  Then I looked up our transit system online and found that, as a venerable senior, it was only $.75 to ride.  Pretty affordable.  My mechanic is on a well-traveled route, too, but I decided to walk the mile or so to the downtown bus mall, a lovely 20 minute stroll past several auto repair places and a couple of tatoo parlors.  I waited there by the sign for the #3, and considered mumbling to myself like several of my fellow passengers.  The driver was very nice, and did not need to see my Medicare card to accord me senior rates.  The bus was clean and fairly cheerful, the ride was smooth, up until the end when I pulled the cord on top of my stop.  Nevertheless, I am heartened that I can take such good care of my little self in the big bad world without my wheels.  On the return trip, I can get a transfer!

The artist speaks. Now listen!

The lioness went to Art for Life today, an annual silent auction to benefit Face to Face, our local AIDS hospice.  Our county was particularly hard hit in the epidemic.  Now, this is a worthy cause, indeed, plus it puts the artist's work in the way of folks who buy art, albeit cheaply, at this particular venue.  I like to exercise my mind with critiquing the fashion statements.  Money certainly can't buy taste, that's for sure.  But I digress.  Now, if I were this organization, who depend upon the local art community for the very fuel for their fire, I would be really nice to the artists.  That means fawning a little, and certainly oohing and ahing over their piece, whatever it might be, even if it is crap.  Mine is not, as you can see.  Well, I think it's not.  Really, folks, artists have pissy little egos that need constant tidbits to keep going.  Feed them!

One wonders, Vol. XXXIv

Seriously, your would think that rich and famous people would know better.  I am thinking that Julia Roberts needs to rethink her hairdo.  That peeking through tie-back drapes thing she has going on is not at all attractive, and much too young for this maturing so beautifully woman.  I rebelled against my mother's admonition that age means shorter, lighter hair, until I quit dying it and found that it was a delightful shade of silver, that I had actually been trying to get with hair coloring, and quite attractive in its own right.  Then I cut it all off, really short, which makes it kind of wave and nestle next to my admittedly finely rounded head and gives me a kind of imperial look, like Napoleon.  Everyday my hair is different.  It is sometimes kind of fluffy and I look like a throwback to the 50s, with a bubble do.  Then it is kind of flat, and I spike it up a little for a kinkier do.  And then, like today, it does both, looks really young.  The hair, not me.  Okay, I'm over that now.

Holy crap, long time, no post...

Hello. Cowwoman here.  Yes, still vertical and kicking.  I am in the last stages of intensive therapy.  Happy to report it was successful.  Now, after navigating through shame, scapegoating, worthiness, and just plain misery, I have emerged with a new perspective of my self.  Big revelation:  my mother is not the way she is because of me, which has always been her take on the situation.  However, I am the way I am because of HER!  And, as sick as I felt in the beginning of this trip through the cerebral soup, she is the one who has been, is, and will always be, sick.  Now, at the venerable age of (gulp) 70, I feel free to be who I am, having finally discovered who that is.  Gee, that's big.  And the cause of all this mental anguish, the core belief, was that if I loved myself, I was not a good person.  Both are terribly important to me.  Early in my recovery, I learned that alcoholism is a symptom of a far more pervasive disease.  The Big Book never says what that is, however, leaving me to ponder.  I decided my underlying problem was self-loathing, and started a campaign to learn to care about me the way I cared about others.  And in the end, what the Steps taught me was to have integrity and kindness, always, in other words, be a good person.  This included visiting my very old, very unhappy mother, even though she worked very hard each time to let me know I was a worthless piece of work, and I would walk away suitably flayed.  Big paradox, you see.  Being a good person meant opening my little self to yet more self-hatred.  Not. Any. More.  (I am wiping my brow as I write.)  Often, as I sat on the couch in Ian's office, he would throw out a notion about how I could let go of going to see mother, and I would run up against this interior wall that said "Hold it!  How can I be a good daughter if I do that?"  And then, mother shut the door for me, appropriately on Mother's Day, a year ago, proclaiming that I should be ashamed of myself for actions in the past (50 years past), that my visiting her was seen as obligation only, and that she never wanted to see me anyway.  In fact, she never wanted to see me again!  And so it is.  Ian said I was free.  Huh?  Only a year later, and I get it!  No longer fearful of losing the quarter of a million dollar inheritance (brothers get over a third of a million each), no longer nose out of joint over being overlooked and discounted for lack of a penis, no longer mourning family that I was never a part of anyway, DONE!   And FREE!  So, expect upbeat and less whiney posts. 

And here is one reason, my granddaughter, Eleanor Grace, Nora.  Happiness abounds!

A funny thing happened on my way to my blog...

Well, best intentions and all that.  Many, many burps along the digestive tract of therapy, art, life in general.  I did a bunch of these sloppy abstracts.  Really, Pollack had nothing on me, stirring the paint around with my trusty putty knives, layer after layer, all wet and messy.  It was cathartic, to say the least.  And I LIKE them.  They are visceral, kinetic, kind of edgy in a way I didn't think I could be.  Of course, I am exploring that.  My baby therapist said he didn't know many folks of my exalted age, verging on 70, who would do work this wrenching.  And I thanked him, as he has taught me to do, and told him "I don't know who I am and I want to find out before I die."  Yep, the cowwoman is on a voyage of self-discovery.  Considering I fell out of the high chair (twice), out of the buggy, off the bed and off the potty, and a babysitter shot my father's loaded gun through my crib, and I burned my hand on the oven, and the dog bit me, I am lucky to have had any life at all.  Seems I was not very important in the grand scheme of Mother's life, being female and all.  And I tried to  not be very important to my self for a lot of years, throwing myself under a man and adopting his way as mine, looking for love and approval.  Now the life is mine, at least.  Messy house, messy art, messy little dogs, it's all just fine with me.  Yep.                                                                                                  

Never, never stop learning and growing, even when it hurts like hell...

The cowwoman has been hung out and dried lately.  This occasions angst.  Angst occasions paintings with a whole lot of kinetic energy.  I learned this new process from a weekend workshop.  Couldn't get his style, though.  This work is the result of many, many layers of paint, thinly applied and each layer sealed with a layer of acrylic varnish.  I just love this piece.  It is visual proof of the healing process I am experiencing in therapy.  And my therapist wants to buy it!  I don't know what "artful" is, but I think this is close to it.  It is complicated, full of energy, a burst of creativity I didn't know I had in me.  I just ordered 6 more cradled boards like this one to work on, and oeuvre # 2 is currently reposing on the board.  I slap at it several times a day.  It is taking its time revealing itself to me.  This is okay.  Probably I will begin another, then come back to it.  It's really all just amazing fun, art. 

Roll over, Cezanne...

Trying something different.  My first love, even before I went to college and learned boatloads of stuff about all those artists that came before me, was Cezanne.  I loved that he outlined things.  That was my partner's first criticism of my art.  Things do not have outlines!  Well, tell that to Cezanne.  Everything just jumps off the page, right?  And then there are the COLORS!  Holy palette, Batman!  So just imagine the fun I had doing this pastel yesterday.  Well, I had not done anything for a while, and I was ready for a challenge, and in the end, it really just did itself.  The way things are supposed to happen, sort of automatic painting.  In the end, this is the best therapy there is, to just noodle away with the paper and pastels, pushing color around, getting all messy in the process.  I had to do laundry, that's how intense it was.  And this is the way artists have learned their craft for centuries, copying the masters.  What Cezanne teaches me is a love of scintillating color, dabs of which are everywhere, even where you least expect them.  I want to paint like that.

Hot here, cool painting...

Happy to report the Punkin finally got his spring haircut.  He is a fraction of his usual self, very neat and splendid.  I fretted over this little thing while he was out in the van in the driveway.  He got an excellent in deportment, my little guy, and Dierdre is happy to add him to her long list of happy little canines.  And there is a raft of them.  I told her that must bee because she is good at what she does.  It is such a blessing to be good at what one does.  Happiness is a fluffy duck, and a sweetly shorn puppy.

Super satisfaction, plus a soupcon of rebellion...

Back to the drawing board, so to speak.  THIS is my style, lots of marks that show, on dark paper (some of it even showing through the finished work), expressive and bright.  This is "The Elder".  He is my fourth lion in my current wild animal opus.  He has a fierceness and a sweetness at the same time.  I did him fast, as I usually do, but as a concession to my recent teacher, I went back into the painting for some fine tuning.  Not a lot, just a little.  Now satisfied.  That could change.  Art is so very subjective.  My goal has been to find what works for me, and so far, this is it.  That could change, too.  A wise woman whose art is terrific, and highly personal, once told me to just keep playing.  I am happy to follow that advice.  For the rest of my little life. 

What happens when I value others more than myself...

I took some pastel lessons from a really fine, acclaimed artist, who doesn't know anything but his own style.  Now I know more than he does, because I know mine AND his.  Here is a glammed up self-portrait done in his way, very saturated and smoothed out.  Well, it makes me look really young, not a bad thing.  He even wanted me to smooth out the hair.  Didn't do that.  Now, I think this style is admirable, and useful for when I am doing a picky piece, like a floral still life, maybe.  He uses sanded paper, which is hard for me because I am so heavy-handed, I make oodles of dust.  I am debating putting my glasses on, which would make it much more like me.  Oh, well, live and learn.  I just keep trying new things, thinking I will stumble upon that which would make me revered and desired and immortal, that would be nice, too. 

Not erveryone is the same, thank the Universe!

I signed up for a pastel class.  My thought process said, well, I taught myself this medium, and since I knew nothing about it when I started, maybe I still know nothing and there is much to learn.  (Actually, I had a book, and tried a lot of stuff before settling on the style I now employ.)  The baby artist in me said there is much to learn, little one.  And this very French guy is a renowned artist.  Surely he knows more than I?  So I bought the sanded paper, which I had tried before and was pretty unimpressed, made lots of dust under my heavy hand.  And, yes, I made mounds of dust.  I chose to do a self portrait, since I was the only subject at hand.  No, this isn't it, it is still unfinished.  What, you say?  More than one session on a painting?  Yes, French guy is pretty picky picky.  And, yes, it looks like a painting.  A kind of very smooth version of cowwoman.  Nuts.  I like my toothy paper.  I like the fact that you can tell it is not a painting.  I like the challenge of layering the pigments for dimension.  And I did this as my computer geek guy was hooking up my new CPU.  No more games of Freecell waiting for the Internet to graciously appear on my monitor.  Patience is not my virtue, guys.  And I love this guy.  The buck, I mean.  Also love the geek, and if anyone needs one of those, I know where to find him.

Newness all over again...

This is me trying to be a) neat and b) superlative with my drawing homework.  Neither goal was met, but aiming for it never hurts.  Punkin took off with my kneaded eraser, so I grabbed another from the pencil box, and it was dirty, so now I have a couple of blotches on my pristine page.  I like working with transparent objects, they are so much more expressive on the page, when one can discern after they are rendered that they are, indeed, transparent.  Sigh.  I followed the instructions of doing the shading as recommended by the teacher, but cheated in that I used my tortillons and eraser shield, not currently on the supply list.  Showing off, that's the cowwoman.  See what I know.  Yay me.  More coming, and that cannot be a bad thing.  The more I practice, the better I will become, yes?  Must get a supply of erasers or I will be searching for them on the back psuedo-lawn. over and over again.  Happiness is an HB pencil and a sketchbook. And knowing where your eraser is.

Back to basics...

The cowwoman felt that her work was too static, which means I had become my own teacher, and that is a way to get really stuck with the art.  So I signed up for some drawing lessons from a local artist.  He believes in learning to draw from the mind rather than rendering objects you can actually see.  This has never been my forte, but, hell, I am willing to try anything.  Here is my first lesson, drawing a can from the right perspective.  I actually embellished my can with other lessons I had learned, like weighting the line so that it is heavier when in shadow and lighter on the side of the ambient light.  I got a big nono when I left raccoon prints on my nice clean drawing, and was admonished to always rest my hand on a stationary paper towel.  That alone was worth the $40 I spent (for 4 two hour classes, being a senior doesn't ALWAYS suck, you know), and I was so impressed with this guy I signed up for his pastel classes, too, which means I need to dig in the muck that is my studio to find all the goodies I need.  Or buy new ones.  Gee that sounds like fun, actually.  New pastels are just like a new jumbo box of Crayola crayons, and remember how exciting that was?  Jumping up and down here like a little kid.  Figuratively speaking, of course.