Dedicated to the Lost Pines of Bastrop County

  I LOVE to paint large. On the first day my kids went back to school this fall I stretched and gessoed the largest stretcher I had and set to work. I had recently driven to Houston through Bastrop County and on that late August day the burnt sticks which had once been an extravagant forest--the Lost Pines area--spoke to me more than they had before. I have seen the results of last year's record fires several times before, in pictures and in real life, but on that day the sky was dark with purple clouds and the recent rains had produced lime green new grass which made the black of the burnt pines look velvety rich, and the soil, which is typically a ruddy red, look incredibly orange. And as I passed by in my van, late for my Houston date, I saw one tree which still had it's branches--but with scarlet red foliage, probably a dying tree. When I returned home I immediately drew up a sketch before my memory faded. On the day I mapped the painting out in oil the local radio station I usually listen to had special programing, interviewing victims of the fires, each telling their very dramatic and heartbreaking stories--it was the one year anniversary of the historic fires. I immersed myself in the sounds of their voices and painted. This is the chronology of the painting.

This might be the halfway point, halfway to completion. I won't know for sure until it's done and I can look back, but I know this is the point where I glimpse infinity. Every part of the painting needs attention and detail which could go on and on and on. The job now is to decide how much detail, and where, and if those details actually serve the painting.

detail

Earth has a Long Memory, as of 9/29/12

Please stay tuned....

"Evil Don't Look Like Anything"

Negotiating Safe Passage, 36x36", oil on canvas, 2007

 Last night at dinner Ramona brought up the idea of inherited guilt. She was writing an essay for school. She, in all her youth and innocence, was wondering at the idea of original sin or inherited sin. Brian and I brought up the idea of collective guilt and collective consciousness using slavery as an example here in the states and we also brought up Nazi Germany. She wasn't having it. Why should anyone feel guilty for what they didn't actually do? We talked about the guilt we feel about the advantages we've had because we are white, our parents are white---about the positive projections of advancement, expectations of success, we've inherited. These things were hard to pin down with examples....Brian talked about the economic advantage the early United Stated enjoyed because a large amount of our industry---agriculture particularly, was built with the free labor of slavery--wealth built on slavery, not freedom. And how a parent's advantages and limits are potentially passed on to their kids. 

 All this got me to thinking about guilt, temptations, purity of good and purity of evil. I don't happen to believe that there is such a thing as pure evil or pure goodness. I believe it's far more interesting than that. I try to go good things, strive to be kind, but I am fascinated with evil. And experience in life has taught me that that struggle is where wisdom is gained. So in my work as an artist I use the allegory of nature to show the ambiguity of beauty in humankind. There is, always, in my pieces, an element of sadness and wonder, at the beauty of things both evil and good. Nature is a formidable force of goodness in life. It can also be horribly destructive and destroy lives. One should never turn their back on nature. Keep it close and watch it. But remember, "evil don't look like anything."

Evil is an act.

Here's one of my first, favorite, Okkervil River songs...It really says it better than I can.

 

No Wonder I'm Nuts, or, What I Did This Summer

I've been beating myself up a bit about not producing much work this summer, and not getting a chance to take my regular bike rides, always busy, though, always thinking.

Today, I realized, I have been doing A LOT but it's all sort of new and all unfinished, and, most significantly, it's untested work and so, it feels shaky, insecure, anxiety ridden. Today I realized that's just as it should be. It mirrors my life exactly, and that's OK also.

I've been teaching 4 mornings a week, 2 hour classes, every week this whole summer and you'd think that would leave me plenty of time to get my other work done, but I've felt so scattered. I normally take some time off in the summer, break from teaching, renew my creative lifeline. This year finances are tight, so not only was there no vacation get away to make me all new again, but I decided to take on more students--open all my weekdays up. And I'm so happy to have had the opportunity. I've really enjoyed the teaching and have in fact honed my teaching skills and enjoyed these young people so much. BUT, my creative self needs rejuvenation and I have been wishing for an outlet, or even the concentrated time necessary in my studio to really get into my work. I started to look at all the pieces I've been working on all summer. When I slowed down enough to take stock, I realized that I've been working on a lot of different projects. They are all so varied, so much so, that it feels like my ideas are ricocheting about my studio in a really confusing fashion. So, I did what I usually do when life overwhelms me, I made a list--but in this case I documented it with pictures.

Here are some of my soon to be completed projects:

Work in progress, print of original ink drawing, mixed media and collage added.

 Dog Day Bugs, Cicadas, for examination, collected lovingly and given freely, to me...Thanks Juliee!

preliminary drawings

enlarged and exaggerated...

Dog Day Bug, ink on claybord, beginning--loving working with liquid ink, sennelier's shiny shellac version.

Dog Day Bug, changing, hmmm, we'll see

Wall of ideas and recent sketches

Sycamore tree parts, things Felix brought to me when he was little, I had saved them in a paper bag, found them the other day....sweet.

One of my studio chairs. Chairs are one of my favorite things to draw. They all seem to suggest the people in the room, past, present, future.

Indian Paintbrush, ink and watercolor

Sorry the photo's a little blurry...ugh, Bird's Nest, oil on maple panel, for  my friend and fellow artist Matt Lynaugh, almost done.

My Problem in Yellow, maybe it's finally done. A 2-D set of worry beads.

My next painting. I already know what I'm going to paint--what it's about, and all, I just have to sand and bleach the stretcher because it has some mildew damage--boring details.

AND, I have an idea I've been stewing on for a while--for an art destination, here in Austin. I just need about 4 million, DOLLARS, so it's crazy, but I can't get it out of my mind and it keeps getting more real the more I think about it. The idea is so great and beautiful, isn't that enough?

Authentic Texas Figs

  I like to draw from observation--real life, and I try to use photos, as tools, sparingly. Photography is an art form all it's own and I'm primarily a painter. By drawing what I actually see in front of me I learn more about how I see and how I interact with the object or scene. It becomes more personal and contemplative.
  This week I wanted to draw figs. They're in season, and in all the grocery stores now, but I wanted to learn how to draw some particularly good energy, Texas figs, so I asked my dear friend Rose, who has a small farm outside of Austin, to bring me some from her tree the next time she drove into town. She graciously obliged. She likes a good art project and she grows some delicious figs.
  They are a mildly ugly fruit on the outside, but on the inside, once cut open, they reveal a seductively shiny center (almost bawdy) which is flesh colored on the edge and is an increasingly rich burgundy color towards the center. And they're sweet to eat.
  I could take a quick photo with my phone, print it up and work from that image but it would teach me nothing about figs. And nothing about my relationship to these figs and how we both change during the experience.

Figs, pencil

I  set the figs on a dish which I then placed on some vibrant orange velvet which set off the chartreuse of the fig stems and the purples of their skins. The first drawing took maybe an hour and a half, in pencil, just trying to get a reliable likeness, but I am a sucker for color interaction so I knew this still life should become a painting.

Figs, watercolor

   Watercolor seemed the best choice because it's necessarily quick to finish, and oil, which is my more accustomed medium, would take so long that the figs would dry up or mold long before the painting would be complete. So watercolor was the choice. It took about 3 hours, and indeed, in that time the figs' burgundy red grew darker and the pretty fleshy beige color grew slightly translucent and grey. The resulting painting is not that great--I am still learning to control watercolor.  So, unsatisfied with the watercolor,  I know that my next step is an oil painting. But now that I have shared the better part of a day with these figs I feel like I can take the drawing, the watercolor, and my new intimate knowledge of these figs and use it all to create an oil painting which says something about how I see figs and avoid the use of a photograph which I find to be so dulling--and I can go ahead and eat the darned things already.

This is how we've been enjoying them lately:
  Macerate thin slices of red onion in balsamic vinegar and a pinch of good sea salt. Let sit several hours or overnight, no need to refrigerate. When you're ready to eat, slice 10-15 figs (5-6 if they're large) in half and set them on a bed of mixed salad greens, preferably a mixture of tender lettuce and bitter greens like arugula and radicchio. Spoon out the sliced, macerated onions onto the figs, add goat cheese crumblings or shavings of manchego cheese. Drizzle on a few spoonfuls of the balsamic vinegar liquid and a few drizzles of olive oil, salt and pepper to taste--lightly toasted pecans or walnuts are a nice addition. You will probably have leftover balsamic liquid: I have been adding more onion slices to the leftover liquid so that I can have the salad again tomorrow---with strawberries, pear or mango. It's a sweet and sour treat.

Fig, red onion and goat cheese salad

Mom and Dad Go with Me on a Bike Ride

  Today I rode my regular bike ride, the same route I've taken, with very little variation, since 1991. I don't ride every week but I sometimes ride 3 times in a week. Lately I haven't been able to make the time. I knew I needed to ride and that it would be the one thing which would break me to the other side of how I've been feeling lately, mentally and physically. I know that it makes a huge difference in the quality of my life. I know this, but it had been probably 2 weeks since my last confession--er ride.

One of Dad's more controversial works, alter and mural with sculptures, St. Augustine church, Houston

  It takes about an hour to complete my ride. Once on my bike, time immediately stands still. The great thing about taking the same ride for so many years is that it sort of takes me for a ride. I don't have to think about which way to go. It's like my bike knows. I am freed up to THINK and when I do notice my surroundings it's all about the nuance. Everything that is different from the last rides I notice as if it's highlighted in neon. Certain trees in bloom--and trees actually relocated from one side of the street to the other (that was really funny) and so much development in this city...

  But I really meant to write about my father. I only mentioned the bike ride because it's what enabled me to concentrate long enough to know what was really holding me back for the last 2 weeks. My Dad died about a year and one half ago and this week I am participating in an art show/fund raiser to benefit his widow who is still digging herself out of the mountain of medical bills and financial ruin which resulted from his injuries due to a welding accident and his subsequent inability to produce work for the last few years of his life. He was an artist, a sculptor, mostly. His life serves as a confusing mix of what to do and what to avoid as an artist. It's just I don't always know which is which.

Dad with the "Zoo Friends", in front of the African Elephant sculpture, our driveway, Houston

 For instance, he actually made a living as an artist. His work sold really well, and for a long time, in the Houston area, throughout the United States and somewhat even in Europe. We had some tight years for sure and he didn't do it alone; my Mom was there at every step, lending her keen organizational skills and sheer aesthetic grace. But he and my Mom had a family of 7 to support and it's a rare artist who can actually make a living with their art, much less, support a family. So that's a success I'd do well to learn from.

  But he was complicated. I think today he would probably have been diagnosed as manic depressive. He had a horrible and damaging temper. He was incredibly intelligent. He had a weakness for alcohol. He knew how to work a room. He put his art and career before his family--or so it seemed to us. When my parents finally divorced after 26 years of marriage we were all devastated, including him.

   I loved him, of course, but there were times when I wanted to do everything different than what he did. I wanted a balanced artistic life and a happy family. I didn't want to be the kind of artist whose bad behavior people excuse because they're an Artist. Yet I never wanted to be anything else than an artist. Always and still. So for many years I cultivated more of my mother's traits. She worked tirelessly on the sidelines helping his career and gently raising their children. She did all his billing, his filing, his PR; she kept a beautiful house, gave dinner parties for important collectors and never appeared anyway but glamorous and chic.

   This approach has not necessarily served me well.

   So, on my bike ride I revisited this theme. I know that I tend to behave more like my mother and that tapping into my father's aggressive and even risky strengths is important for me if I want to thrive and grow. It is all the more challenging for me because some of the other things my mother taught me, consciously or not, are how to be ladylike, polite, patient; and how to demure.

  I gave myself a talking to. I recommitted to embracing the wealth of wonderful traits in both my parents from whom I've gained so much and I resolved to put my own particular spin on being an artist...this way of being, that I am still inventing.

Thinking About Paris

   It's summer in Texas. Which roughly means, get out of town if you can't stand the heat...it is HOT now. And I am not leaving...not because I want to stay...I'd jump at the chance if I could afford it but now is not the time. So, because I can't go, I will revel in what I love about Texas, the heat, the mosquitoes (HA!), the sticker burrs, the craggy rocks, the plants which do survive, the political incorrectness, all the general surliness that we Texans wear like a badge of honor, but mostly because we don't have a choice. We can't get away, and each year we survive gives us another notch in our belt. We are so tough.

A billet I found recently in an old journal, from my second trip to Paris

   This year though, I am thinking about Paris. My memories have taken on a certain mythical quality so if I get some details wrong, no matter. The feeling of Paris is good for a moment of escape. I have been to Paris twice but my most fantastical memory is of the time I went when I was 19. I traveled with a wonderful young couple, helping to care for their 3 year old boy. I had been their regular babysitter in Houston. The boy's father's family had an apartment in Paris--and a country house in Chaumont. Not just any apartment. It was in a very old, historic neighborhood, close to the Centre  Pompidou. This apartment was full of antiques and beautiful works of art...I was thrilled--and yet, in my youth--I think back on my brain at that time... I expected the rest of my life to be like that apartment...full of beauty, art, culture, fabulous food and happy family. I don't think at the time I was able to appreciate the scope of what I was exposed to. When I arrived, at evening time in Paris, my body still on Texas time, the table was set with a special homecoming meal. The patriarch of the family was of Russian descent so there was caviar and vodka to start ...which is what I remember most,  I don't remember the main course...I do know that every meal I ate with that family influences all the meals I serve to this day. I learned to make a dijon vinegette, a reliable chocolate mousse, a cold yogurt/creme fraiche cucumber walnut soup. At the country house we hunted for mushrooms, went to buy wine at a chateau...I had my first kir royale and plenty of wine.

But the memory which seems the most mythical is of a sweet romance I had with my young charge's uncle. Did we really climb from the window balcony of that Paris apartment, onto ancient rooftops and wander at sunset from roof to roof? My young eyes only incidentally took in what must have been some incredible view: the Seine in the distance, perhaps the Eiffel Tower in view? I was smitten. I remember a walk to get ice cream on my first day there, on tight streets;  he yanked me out harm's way as cars zoomed past. I remember a funky museum of ancient functional tools, signs, and French cultural relics. Churches, chateaux, a sauna--where he handed me a washcloth instead of a towel (to cover myself). Usually I had my little charge, his nephew, with us. We took him on bike rides, sight seeing, picnics.

Me, summer of 1981 in Paris. I don't really recognize that young woman.

   Memory, now, is a funny thing, like this picture, it's pretty foggy and sometimes I barely believe that these things happened to me. And really, I was so different then. But Paris, that summer, before I transferred to the University of Texas in Austin, holds such sharply bright crystal clear moments of memory, which surprise me, and make me hold my breath a moment so that time stands still just long enough for me to see the apartment on the Rue des Lombardes, and connect to the girl I was.

And I remember this: Precious, The Pretenders, 1980

How to Stay Centered, The Value in Losing

detail

  Recently, as an artist, I have had a string of small disappointments. Small things, individually, but each a blow to my ego, and each, perceived by me as a lost chance at the hoped for little bump which had the potential to, I don't know, get me noticed, secure gallery representation, translate into a real living instead of years of what could be perceived as a vanity project. But the last disappointment just knocked me off my game completely. Again it was nothing big, just a publication I didn't get into. Maybe just the last straw. And so, the ability to behave like a good loser has become a special added challenge.

 This is not a post which will bestow answers. This is all about the questions. How to stay centered as a person, an artist, and, as a parent--I have to set a good example. What a burden! But how does one best exemplify being a good loser? Especially, losing at something one loves? Something one has chosen? You have to reexamine what it was you wanted. OK. I have to de-legitimise what I formerly found worthy? Because it feels like that--and that the alternative is to take the judgement to heart. My best self goes into hiding. There is a lot of talking to oneself.

 Mostly I'm talking reaction. I know I have control over my reaction. What a bore--to not get angry! I know that's best. I only have to think back to my mother's reactions to saddening disappointments to know how one is supposed to react: stoically, maybe a few tears, but you didn't blame anyone and you would, of course, shortly, carry on, because who knew what you might have to face next? You'd better be ready!

I think there might be a spoiled kid in me that never had a chance to be.

So carrying on may mean, at least for now, not putting so much stock in opinions other than my own. Maybe going more interior. Searching again for the strength within...my center.

And maybe I need to remind myself that the successes I have had are not negated by these multiple  rejections. They exist separately. I should be thankful for all of the judgements made in my favor. That's what my best self should do. I do get to choose the occasions to which I should attach value. There is, in this, a danger that believing in the positive reinforcements exclusive of the negatives can produce an ego without a critic. Not helpful.

That is counter to the latest mantra...something about putting yourself outside your comfort zone, etc.

Stretching one's boundaries, etc. Stretching is strengthening. It must be a balance thing, a yin/yang thing. Stretching and expanding boundaries while maintaining a strong center. Really though, at my age, getting mad still feels good and if there is a way to tap into that energy I don't want to bury it.

Searching still. But in the meanwhile. Here (below) is My Problem in Yellow or, as I sometimes call it: If I Don't Sell a Painting Soon I'm Going to Have to Get a Real Job