Bonfire the Art

Wouldn't it be nice if all you had to do was paint every day and not think of anything else? Who ever said we had to sell anyway? Is that the only measure of success? You go to art school and no one ever takes a business class so we're mostly pretty clueless about selling. We get out here in the real world and wait for the studio door to open with a gallery owner begging for our work. "Here, I'll take this one and that one and the next five you haven't painted." "While I'm here, I'll treat you to lunch." -- Ok, dream on. The truth is we slog our paintings back and forth across town to this show and and that exhibition and sell something every once in a while. You get in a good gallery and then the next thing you know, it closes--can't make it. So we keep hauling our work around while it stacks up in the back of our studios. We give some to chairty and to our friends, but still the stacks keep growing. Bonfires begin to look enticing--during a full moon, with strong libation, we could toss and hurl the canvases and paper to the ancient art spirits. But, "maybe not" we think, afterall that's kind of like committing sucicide of the heart and we'd have to endure the hangover.

Writing

There's nothing like being awake in the middle of the night and thinking about all the things you want to write about in your blog, like how about a little humor in here. I've decided I'm way to serious and need to lighten up a bit. Words baffle me, I am a visual person and usually say what I want through paint. I think I'm just terrified of people actually reading what I write and criticizing it. Ok, I know I'm not a great writer, in fact I'm pretty bad and if it weren't for spell check, I'd be sunk. So having said that-- wow, I feel better already--I'll ramble, mispell, write run on nonsense and maybe occasionally say something profound. Well, maybe not.
(It's more fun in color, isn't it?!)

Tuscany, Italy

I felt like I was traveling through a Da Vinci landscape. The mountains in the distance were a cool blue with undulating hills covered in patchwork fields. We would drive around a bend to see a hilltop village defending chartreuse vineyards below. Colorful workers could be seen bent over rows of grapevines that were beginging to turn yellow. The weather was perfect, with just a touch of crisp coolness. Our car twisted and turned along the "Chainti trail" above Sienna, while I sketched the ever changing shapes of the landscape out the car window. We stopped here and there to buy wine and take pictures. The villages were so cute that we felt like we were in a Disney movie set, and naughty bakeries enticed us in to challenge our will power. Tuscany is truly one of the most beautiful places we've been and it's not hard to understand how the Renaissance was born here.

Depth of Color

When asked how I get such bright colors I can only answer with--"I see them." I love to be outside, to hike, ride horses and just be. I can only be in my studio, hidden away from the world for so long before I need to have sky above and earth under my feet. With watercolors on early travels, I first started to see the depth of nature. I wasn't sure what all these colors were, but began to paint them because it was fun. Years later I studied about color from books and took an impressionist workshop from Susan Sarback. I finally figured out that I wasn't having flashbacks, that the colors were really there!
All of us have learned to block out sensory input until we don't believe it is there. With training, anyone can see again, like we must have when we were babies. Ever noticed a baby stare at something--they're not seeing the object with a name, they are looking at all the shapes and colors on it and around it. As we learn to label things, we block out the excess sensory input and only notice what is needed to explain the object. I suppose we must do this or we would be overwhelmed. Artists that paint from nature, be it still lifes, landscapes or people, learn to un-name things and again see the colors and shapes. As you relax and look-- a green leaf becomes a myriad of colors and shades, a white wall becomes a rainbow. The world at that point is infinitely beautiful and an adventure to discover. The grandiose and the minute are whole new worlds waiting to be seen. How lucky we are to learn this. Now, go start "seeing."