Artwala Road

We have a new president and it seems now as if anything is possible.  I mostly thought it was though it’s been mighty hard to keep faith these last eight years.  It’s not always a popular belief but our Barack Obama knows the power of believing and staying on course, of having big vision.  I’m so thrilled that he’s going to be our next president.  It does make me wonder though what the rest of us can do or should be doing at this time when our planet is in such peril.  And it especially makes me wonder what we as artists should be doing because we spend so much of our time pondering, feeling, creating.  What should we create?

I think about these things sometimes but mostly I just show up at my new studio and put some music on and begin.  I know that whatever I do is not about making it into MOMA or some other place that sanctions art.  I really do art to know my true self and put out good vibes—for me that’s the purpose of this journey. I really believe that the best we can do for our planet is live good lives, be happy and do our best. Not always easy.

I’ve started a new series of paintings just six inches square.  It’s entitled You’re Not Alone, about all the connections in our lives, seen and unseen.  I have about sixteen now and you can see the first few at the top of the page here.  This shot was taken last week and there are more now but I haven’t had a chance to take another snapshot yet. We’ll have open studios on December 4th and I hope to have 30 or 40 paintings done by then.  Some will go to the Joy Street Open Studios next weekend, November 22nd, where I’ll show with my friend, the photographer, Mark Peterson.

Having the studio is absolutely fantastic—I’m getting twice as much done as I did before, maybe more.  But I’m also getting hooked into designing things for the art center like this poster for the upcoming members’ show which I did this afternoon.  No complaints.  The painting is by artist Alvina Lavdani and is wonderfully quirky.  I love that artists work away on their art and, if they’re lucky, they find something compelling to keep them going.  This painting is so full of charm and mystery.  It makes me wonder—a good thing.  I like paintings that leave something unsaid, something we have to fill in ourselves.

There were several choices for the poster.  I wish we could do two.  Susu Wing has done the most fantastic sculptures out of regular old packing tape.  Just brilliant.  One now graces the hallway and I’d love to put it into a poster but we didn’t get a chance to photograph it before the room behind it became filled with handcrafted items for the annual shop.  It took me by total surprise when I first saw it—just plain fun.  Art on the planet.

I’ll post more photos next week of my wall of paintings, better quality, I hope.  Meanwhile The Saturday Morning Drawing Club continues to meet.  We’ve been drawing upside down, a very good exercise for looking with care and developing a sharp eye—so necessary in art.  Try it—you’ll be surprised what emerges.  In my case the results are more fun and stronger than when I draw right side up.  I look more carefully, that’s why.  I’m beginning to see that art is really all around us.  We just need to see it.

November 12th, 2008 | Category: Dear Reader, Drawing Club, Spotted / Art on the Planet | Comments (3)

On Saturday we once again drew on big paper taped to the wall.  We used photographs to spark ideas and, once again, everyone did work that was bold.  My own piece was not successful.  I mucked up a figure I was drawing by trying to ‘capture’ the actual features a little too closely.  What works better for me is to try to internalize the image and then just draw from my mind.  But the point is not to get a great finished piece but to explore—to just see where we are.  So it was good information.

But the others all did brilliant stuff and amazed themselves, I think.  Something about working big has liberated everyone from excessive care and fiddly obsessiveness, especially when we are working with time constraints.  This time we spent a couple of hours just drawing on our usual pads before attacking our larger piece so that left just an hour to spend on that.  There was no time to worry.  Besides we’d already immersed ourselves in the flow by loosening up on the smaller paper.  It’s always a question of getting out of the way of the mind and just relaxing into whatever is happening without judgment of the work or self.

One of our members said—”This is art yoga.”  It is!  We’re drawing but not forcing, not pushing beyond our limits.  We’re just going as close to our edge as possible, each week nudging ourselves just a little further.  We’re accepting ourselves just where we are.  It’s all perfect, all fine.  And we’re smiling.  Amazing things happen when we get out of our way.

Next Saturday is the last class then we break for the summer.  I hope the class will continue to work on their own until we meet again in September.  To me it’s not about producing art but actually practicing.  The practice is just as great as any object we make.  If we’re doing this in a yogic way we develop presence, being totally in the moment.  We develop non-judgment, total acceptance of what is— the messes we make and ourselves where we are.  And if we make messes we get to see where our edge is and  discern where we might go next time.  Plus, and I think this might be the best of all, we develop a little humor, which really is delight just being who and where we are.  All this from drawing!  These are pretty cool things to be able to take with you into whatever your world is.

I’ll report next week on the last class.  I’m in the final, final leg of my writing project which I hope to finish by mid-June.  Then it’s onto something new and I’ll report on that as the summer goes on.  Meanwhile the wee garden I envisioned is now being planted in pots.  With luck I’ll get the tomatoes in today then sit back and wait for the harvest!

May 22nd, 2008 | Category: Drawing Club | Comments (2)

It’s a rainy Saturday here in Boston and there were only four of us drawing today. Our goal was to work on getting a little more abstract. Realism is always interpretive anyway and we’re all interested in breaking free of its constraints. I’m really always interested in exploring. I think that’s what a class is for and, with luck, we get ideas and experience to further our art in whatever way we want to continue. The thing that grabs one artist is not necessarily what grabs another so it’s good to try things out, to really experience them as a way of coming to know who you are as an artist and even as a person.

So we folded our paper in half and drew from a photograph of flowers on the top half with the intention of simplifying. In other words, we tried to leave some of the detail out, to leave some of our lines open, to keep shading to a minimum. The object is clear but the rendering is light. That done, I asked the class to then open the paper and complete the picture using something from the first image but not all. I think the results were really interesting.

Sometimes it’s a question of coming in closer, or reversing dark and light, or just doing lines. In every case, what emerged was more interesting because it allowed the viewer to engage with the image by trying to find meaning in it though not literal meaning. I think that art in a pure form like this is energy. Depending what we do we can create a field of energy in our work—a field of lightness, or tranquility or excitement, all kinds of things. It’s the viewer’s job to watch themselves and their response to the piece at the same time as viewing the art itself.

Art can take us out of our small minds and into our big, expansive ones. So even if it is just a practice it is a fine, fine thing to do. We confront ourselves even when we are focused on something outside of ourselves. We see the ways we inhibit ourselves and the ways we begin to free ourselves. And, very often, we see the ways in which we judge ourselves and our work. I think this is why it’s so hard to break free in art—we’re groomed from our first day in school to perform the ‘right’ way, to get ‘good’ grades, to ’succeed.’

I called this class ‘The Mistakes Class’ because I really want us to make mistakes, to go that far out. Luckily I made one myself today. I tried something and just couldn’t find anywhere to go with it. So, it was on to something else. I can’t even say it was a mistake I learned from—it was just something that didn’t work. But the next piece I did really did work and I couldn’t have done it without going way too far in a fruitless direction first.

I’m still a bit pooped from our time in San Francisco, have to say. But so many wondrous things seem to be happening that are leading in good directions. I’m still very inspired by the Art in the City symposium at Harvard a couple of weeks ago. It makes me think how much of art and literature in the last part of the twentieth century was invested in form in an intellectual way for its own refinement and sake. How little art and literature in the recent past has looked out beyond the small ego self. This is just a thought but it seemed we had our heads in the sand as our planet slid into dilemmas we ignored—overpopulation, the burning of fossil fuels and their effects, extreme poverty, pollution and illness. Making another drawing is not going to solve these problems but I think it can lead us to our brave, creative selves where we are able to look both inwards and outwards and take good action in the world. Maybe it’s all perfect as the Buddha said but I hope artists are going to be part of the solutions we need now to create. More on this soon and I’d love to hear your thoughts too. But now I’m going to cook dinner and try to get back on east coast time!

May 3rd, 2008 | Category: Drawing Club | Leave a comment

Every week in our art class we sit around a table for a chat before we start working. Usually we talk about what we’re going to be working with that week and today we worked on abstraction. But before we began one of our group said she sometimes wondered why she was doing art. She has a very good job and doesn’t sell her art, at least not at the moment. So, is it worth the time and effort? We all agreed that we have a good time on Saturday mornings but is that all that’s happening and is it enough?

In my last post I was (curiously) asking much the same question. If we are not making a splash is it worth swimming? We went around the table and everyone spoke about what doing art is about for them. One of our artists said that she does art for mental health. It’s a lot like meditation. It takes us to the place of peace so that’s a good thing right there.

This same person said that the creativity we consciously nurture in making art becomes much more present in other aspects of her life. When I think about creativity I think about abandoning preconceptions, of diving into the unknown, of learning to trust, of failing and succeeding, of playing and having the courage to go where we haven’t gone before. It does alter our lives when we internalize these qualities.

All very cool. Still, I think of a memoir I read, Final Edition, by the British writer E. F. Benson who wrote the wonderful Mapp and Lucia stories. In the book he told of a friend who had decamped to the island of Capri and for twenty-five years labored on the definitive poetic translation of a selection of ancient Greek epigrams. “He read me some of them, his voice, charged with emotion, trumpeting out the emotion of the triumphant lover or falling to a whisper as it mourned for the untimely death of a beloved youth.” And then, “my heart sank at his elation.” The result was wooden. “Happily the gods in their mercy had withheld from him the perception of his own incompetence.” The man died without publishing his long labors. They were left to E. F. Benson in the will in the hope that Benson, an established writer, might take on the task of getting it published and promoted. But he could not.

I really love that story. I love the man’s devotion. He got to where he got to and enjoyed some of the fruits of a romantic life on Capri. A consolation.

In the same book, E. F. Benson wrestled with the question himself. His first novel, Dodo, a book no one ever reads now, launched his career and made him famous and rich. Curious no one reads it now, isn’t it? Then he wrote several more books and they were soundly trounced in the press. He thought his career might be over and went into a period of deep questioning. It was writing he loved and he couldn’t turn away from it. He decided to carry on and to ignore the public, to write only what he cared about. From that came Mapp and Lucia. Those stories are not widely read now but they were for a good while, are brilliant fun and may come back again, who knows.

Who knows the permutations between these two realities? But, to me, it all looks rather fabulous, one story really no better than the other. Each person was on his own journey and neither gave up. So moving, really. Writing took one man to Capri, the other to fame and fortune. You can’t lose.

April 12th, 2008 | Category: Drawing Club | Leave a comment