Artwala Road

It snowed this morning, the snowflakes like saucers from outer space, but the ladies still showed up for class and we painted with gouache. Last week we doodled—we made spontaneous abstract line drawings; then we noodled and brought some sense of design and intention into our drawings. This week, with snow outside the windows, we took photographs of flowers and attempted to make designs with gouache from them. Flowers are such incredible symbols of spring and renewal as well as being just plain beautiful. I have a feeling they’re emblematic even of our lives, such wonderful images to work with and very forgiving.

The idea was not to concern ourselves with verisimilitude but to do one pattern of color based on the flower and one of line superimposed on top. We ended up spending the entire three hours on one painting and discovered that what looked like a simple idea was not so simple after all. Same old challenge. But there was no frustration. It was good to just be there together in a warm space on this cold damp day, painting. Art is like meditation—we all fell into a space beyond our daily lives.

This piece here is part of a bigger image I did. Curiously it looks better cropped. The bigger image which was busier and lost some presence because of it. So often we can choose just part of a work and have the whole become more coherent and affecting. The less is more principle—it makes the work clean and strong. I think this might make a good painting even on a larger scale but it’s hard to say if it would hold up. I may try it someday.

We’ll do this same exercise again next week and simplifying is something we’ll work on. Meanwhile we all agreed that what we have is, indeed, a ladies drawing club. Whatever it is we’re doing on Saturday it’s a girl thing—we can chat in short hand, we can be ourselves just as we are, we can do our art and it’s a fine, fine thing. Not that certain chaps might not fit right in but they are rare, those sorts. We’re all products of our time and girls were not fully valued in the time we came of age. Women did not have power and many in this world still don’t. It’s good to have a place to have a few laughs—because the great thing is we are still laughing. We need to keep our spirits strong. We all got coffee at the restaurant next door. We sat and painted in a circle. Maureen brought in kd lang and we listened to her do a couple of Leonard Cohen songs including one of my favorites—Hallelujah. Hallelujah, for sure. By the end of class the snow had stopped falling. It’s melting now, running down the street in rivers. Spring is coming.

March 1st, 2008 | Category: Drawing Club | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL