Trace, Transition, Witness

Transition Trace - In Process
spray paint, oil and cold wax on canvas
30" x 150"
This is the beginning of my "dark to light" studio experiment #1.
I am starting to think about the indexical trace of weather, and emotions as weather systems that move through the body.






















Forms, witness - In process
oil and cold wax on paper
48" x 38"

These are two representational works on paper that I am painting over. I am using the smaller vertical form study from last semester as a starting point and experimenting with the scale to see how that might shift my navigation of the piece. I absolutely love working with masking and playing with hiding and finding the textures and images from the older works is really fun!







Here they are together. I have been trying to pay attention to the images I see during my day and how they may be moving through my subconscious into my work, and I wonder if these dark shapes are trees? They remind me of the deepest layer of trees in the woods I run through during the day - or perhaps from my evening runs, the night trees silhouetted against the urban-lit sky.
The trees always Witness.


...another studio experiment... sketching the series - adding text...a stack of these are outside in the rain now - lets see what the weather wants to say...

I am Here.

Hello February.
Wow.

After coming home from Boston, I had a great transitional meeting with Helen, and my new mentor, Carol Adelman. They encouraged me to re-think my studio space once again, and I added another dry-wall surface for painting, and removed my giant bookcase and easel from the space. I have included some pictures here of the new layout, complete with painting starts, which I will write about in a future post, when they are further along.







































The Spring Residency in Boston was amazing. It brought new inspiration, ideas and goals to my practice, as well as amplified challenges in time management. This semester I am already moving further outside of my comfort zone - pushing myself to get the work done despite an increased teaching schedule and the usual demands of life. I am here - filled with gratitude to have these days overflowing with experiences, tasks, and projects that make up the artistic practice that is my life. Breathe.

Listening

At the beginning of life, one is only able to distinguish a few colors – red, black, bright blue, and strong contrasting pattern . When one is learning to speak one starts with simple one syllable words: “mom”, “dad”, “dog”, “up”. As infants grow and their vision and vocabulary become more complex, they build sentences, learn grammar, and eventually put complex ideas together into stories. Along a similar trajectory, their vision develops, the colors of the world become easier to distinguish, and they develop visual as well as verbal vocabularies.

The idea of one’s understanding of color becoming more developed over time also translates into art education. As art students, one begins the study of painting with monochromatic studies and limited palettes. Slowly, an artist will add colors and variety to her palette, until as a mature artist, she settles into a selection of colors that best help her to communicate her ideas. The relationship between color and communication is what interests me. How do words and color work together, or not? What is the relationship between color and verbal expression? Color and control? Color and power? These are large questions that artists, scientists and philosophers have been exploring for generations, but in this paper, I will closely examine excerpts from readings that have caught my attention, and in doing so will clarify my own relationship to color in my practice.

In his book, Chromophobia, David Batchelor describes color as “Silent”.

Silence. The silence that colour may provoke is a mark of its power and autonomy. Silence is how we have to voice our respect for that which moves us beyond language (83).
Does color communicate silently? The elements of art (color, line, value, shape, texture, space, form) all have the ability to communicate emotion and ideas to the viewer of a painting. Of these elements though, color carries with it the strongest power to elicit complex associations, both symbolic and sensory, from the viewer. Josef Albers, in his book, Interactions of Color, discusses the symbolic associations with color that are common in Western culture (Albers, 48).

For example, in the United States the color red may express political conservatism, danger, or passion. This can only mean that as a Western culture, we have already helped to form and ingest a language that color speaks. We hear color.

Because of these powerful associations, color is a very effective communicator. Color inspires memories, ideas and emotions, which are often translated into words. Poets throughout history have used color as a descriptive tool to help them paint images and inspire associations, with words. This would not be possible without the strong link between color and verbal language. Color has a voice. The voice of color can be heard not only in the poet, but in the critic, the educator, the passionately moved, and empathetic viewer. Color speaks through us with our own words and is given another life through our verbal expressions.

I read, I see. I see, I speak. Our senses and our mind operate together and we communicate with one another about our experiences. Color’s voice becomes more eloquent and articulate as the maker, the viewer, or we, become more developed through our education, life experience, or practice. The visual vocabularies that we build through looking with our eyes, and remembering with our imagination, hold thousands of colors that are linked to experiences, emotions, and ultimately words. Poets have used the power of these associations consistently over hundreds of years. The following is from Ralph Waldo Emerson's poem, The Sphinx:

Sea waves are green and wet,

But up from where they die,

Rise others vaster yet,

And those are brown and dry.

This next poem is from Robert Frost's Sand Dunes:

Up rose the merry Sphinx,

And crouched no more in stone;

She melted into purple cloud,

She silvered in the moon;

She spired into a yellow flame;

She flowered in blossoms red

This poem is from Divina Commedia by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

With snow-white veil and garments as of flame,

She stands before thee, who so long ago

filled thy young heart with passion and woe.

The following is from Winter Memories by Henry David Thoreau:

Within the circuit of this plodding life

There enter moments of an azure hue

And finally, this poem is from From Emily Dickinson's 'n Winter, in My Room:

In winter, in my room,

I came upon a worm

Pink, lank, and warm.

A familiarity with the language of color, and a strong verbal vocabulary, work together to facilitate communication between the arts. The play between word and image enhances our experience of both art forms. We hear what we see. We see what we hear.

Silence is not color’s power. The power of color is within its effective ability to inspire further expression through language. Color has an innate power in this sense, and powerful things are often a threat to those that feel insecure. The need to define and control power is a reoccurring theme in Baxter’s analysis of Chromophobia . Although Baxter cites many compelling examples of efforts to mute or manage color by those that are threatened by its power, I see examples of its selective use by those in power for their own communicative needs. For instance, colors are used by groups of individuals to express identity, ideas, and inspire loyalty. Examples of this type of communication with color are the flags of countries, paper money, and the uniforms of groups from sports teams to fraternities. Coming from countries where money was multi colored, the founders of the United States chose to eschew the chromatic currency in favor of a monochromatic form of paper money. In the context of Baxter’s argument that color is associated with less sophisticated forms of thinking, this switch would indeed make sense (Batchelor 22). The decision to embrace monochromatic currency was made not as a conscious critique of Europe, but simply as a way to stand apart from what was, and create an identity that would not be confused with the past. There is a somberness that is reflected in the color scheme of US currency that also communicate the gravity of leaving all that is known behind for new lives, as of yet to be defined. The colors of the American flag: red, white, blue, are simple, primary, and direct. The symbolic interpretation of these colors communicates the struggles and hopes of founding a new country. Red describing the blood of battles, White for the unknown future, or hope for better days ahead, and blue for the expansive territories that were as of then, undefined, or the endless sky. Of course this is one subjective interpretation, but it illustrates the potential for colors to communicate ideas, and objectives symbolically, and the symbols we use to describe these ideas are words. The monochromatic beginning of the United States currency (which is now, two centuries later adding more color to its paper money), and the primary simplicity of the United States’ flag, bring me back to the ideas of birth and development; the first classes in art school. Lack of color is not where we end after growing more sophisticated, as many of Batchelor’s arguments suggest, but where we start – and develop from.

Color is not Silent. Its voice is a varied as its uses, but it is a compelling voice. Color reminds us. Color creates conversation. Color defines and describes. Color participates. Color is a verb. It is an active process. How does hearing the voice of color help me to communicate with color through my work? Color teaches me to think in a more complex way as I experiment with different palettes. I am beginning to hear the complexity in the arguments that color makes. I can hear color mumble and I can hear color shout. She recites poetry to herself and is a gifted linguist. Color teaches me that there is always another way to say something – a more interesting, compelling choice of words. Of all the lessons that color gives to me through her voice, what I value most are her lessons in listening. Color is teaching me to listen.

Works Cited

Albers, Josef. Interaction of Color. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Print.
Batchelor, David. Chromophobia. London: Reaktion Books Ltd.Print.
Cagil, Joy. “The Use of Colors in Poetry”. Web. 29 Oct. 2009. Use-of-Colors-in-Poetry&id=214314>.
Hamer, Russel D. “What Can My Baby See?”. The Smith Kettlewell Eye Research Institute. 29
Oct. 2009. Web. .

The Truth is Out There – or is it?

Seventeen years old. I am filled with questions, righteous energy, and creative drive. The world of Art History is presented to me in college, and artists from the Spanish Renaissance, and Modernist movements immediately entranced me. El Greco, Chagall, Franz Marc, Franz Kline, all spoke to my earnestness and emotional involvement with my own work. It is only now, many years later that I am actively exploring why these artists were working in the expressive, representational styles they are so well known for. What were they thinking? Why did they make the choices they made, and what was it about them that still pull me to them, even now, over two decades later?

I see a parallel between my own teenage angst and quest for truth, and the Modernist yearnings for the pure essence of art. The Modernists are as a whole, representative of the teenage years of historical art. Breaking away from the protective parental structure of the Classical and Academic Realist movements, and searching for fresh ways to assert their newly forming subjective responses to change, the Modernists define themselves, like a rebellious teenager, by the past that they push against, and the future that they embrace. In this paper I will explore the essays of Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee, and examine the questions they were asking almost a century ago in the context of my own contemporary culture, and practice. Through this process I will strive to answer the question, “Has Art grown up?”

In my reading of Theories of Modern Art, I was particularly engaged with Wassily Kandinsky’s essay, entitled,“On the Problem of Form”. Kandinsky is addressing the question of which artistic movement, representation or abstraction, best defines the purest essence of art. He argues that regardless of what “form” art takes, it must answer honestly to both its chronological context and the inner life of the artist, two elements that I see as inseparable.

The form is always bound to its time, is relative, since it is nothing more than the means necessary today in which today’s revelation manifests itself, resounds…The form is the outer expression of the inner content (Chipp 156).

This argument is particularly appropriate for consideration in contemporary times, as artists reach across disciplines, cultures, and time lines to find the voices that best display their intention. In their introduction to the 2008 Whitney Biennial Catalog, Henriette Huldisch and Shamim M. Momin speak to Kandinsky’s question of form, and how the solution to that question has not necessarily been reached in a linear fashion, if it has been reached at all.

Within the vast, variously differentiated field that we (perhaps absurdly) continue to yoke under the single term contemporary art, certain prevalent, often interrelated practices to us seem particularly germane to the moment. Many of the projects presented in the 2008 exhibition explore fluid communication structures and systems of exchange that index larger social, political, and economic contexts, often aiming to invert the more object-oriented, ends-driven operations of the art market. Recurring concerns involve a nuanced investigation of social, domestic and public space and its translation into form-primarily sculptural, but also photographic, cinematic, and so forth- which in turn catalyzes social practices extending beyond the exhibition space (Huldisch, Momin 32).

Paul Klee foreshadowed this contemporary concern with systems of exchange and interrelated practices in another Modernist essay. In his “Creative Credo” of 1920, Klee speaks to the interconnectedness of all things, an organization of movements that converge in the act of creation. Klee goes so far as to call art, a simile of [the Biblical act of] Creation (Chipp 186). Klee’s perspective, while heavily biased toward graphic art, joins Kandinsky in his quest for truth in artistry through a filter of morality and spiritualism.

By including the concepts of good and evil a moral sphere is created. Evil is not conceived as the enemy whose victories disgrace us, but as a force within the whole, a force that contributes to creation and evolution. The simultaneous existence of the masculine principle (evil, stimulating, passionate) and the feminine principle (good, growing, calm), result in a condition of ethical stability (Chipp 185).

I am intrigued by this quote and the emphasis that Klee’s search for the truth of art seems to put on balance. The formal elements balanced against spontaneity, the narrative balanced against abstraction, and here, the balance of male and female energy, framed in language reminiscent of the Garden of Eden. This quest for stability makes sense as I learn more about the competing influences within Modernism, of which Klee’s practice was centered. Far from having outgrown these concerns, questions of balance are often in the forefront of contemporary artists’ thought as well: technology versus tradition, inclusion versus alienation, public versus private, nationalism versus diversity. How we balance ourselves against these competing influences and more, is where our truth is revealed.

Another interesting tangent from the 1920s that reaches across the boundaries of generations into current times and my own contemporary art practice is Klee’s awareness of art as a mediated form of communication.


Formerly we used to represent things visible on earth, things we either liked to look at or would have liked to see. Today we reveal the reality that is behind visible things, thus expressing the belief that the visible world is merely and isolated case in relation to the universe and that there are many more other, latent realities. Things appear to assume a broader and more diversified meaning, often seemingly contradicting the rational experience of yesterday (Chipp, 185).

Yes, we are revealing the “reality behind the visible things” today as well, but that is a subjective interpretation now, as it surely was in Klee’s time.

Despite my nostalgic and emotional connection to the Modernists, I ask myself what my art means beyond its visual and emotional echo of the Modernist aesthetic. I am currently trying to communicate beyond the pictorial references that I have become so attached to – I want the surface to hold marks that evoke memory and imagination in the same way that the dreamy narratives of Chagall, or the energized woodcut portraits of Max Beckman evoke responses. I want to jump from the launching pad of so much history into the arms of my own moment’s very contemporary longings. Yes, the same questions of essence and purity are present for artists working today, including myself, but these questions are mediated by the quickly changing definitions of what essence and purity really are. With so much of our reality being mediated by technology, industry, commercialism, and cultural exchanges at the speed of light, how we define Truth has becomes nearly impossible to describe beyond our own personal boundaries.
As I explore Modernist essays and read academic reactions to contemporary art, I wonder if Art continues to be in the wild throes of adolescence? As artists we continue to ask and re-ask the same questions of ourselves. What gives what I do meaning? Where is the Truth in my experience? How do I best communicate my intention? The form may change, but the questions do not. The problem of Truth is best considered as a circular quest that begins and ends with the artist. We are the mediators for the viewing public. The public and all that surrounds and comes before, mediate us. We can only take responsibility for our own truth, and that truth is not out there, but inside each artist.

The Truth that a 20th century seventeen year old yearns to release is primitive in its relationship to the centuries of history that attracted it, but it is that connection between generations that is worth examining now. The effect of the Modernists is still being felt by working artists today. For myself, I know that I am pushing back against different things than they were, due to the expanse of time that separates us, but many of their questions are familiar and resonate with me. I thank the Modernists for leaving behind the path of their search, for reflection, as I work through both philosophical and technical questions of meaning and communication for myself. The History of Art may never completely outgrow adolescence, but in my lifetime I look forward to the continual maturation of my practice of art.

Works Cited

Kandinsky, Wassily. “On the Problem of Form.” Theories of Modern Art. Ed. Herschel B.
Chipp. Berkley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968.155 – 171. Print
Klee, Paul. “Creative Credo.” Theories of Modern Art. Ed. Herschel B. Chipp. Berkley, Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1968.182 – 187. Print
Huldisch, Henriette; Momin, Shamim M. Introduction. “2008 Biennial Exhibition.” New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. 32 – 36. Print.

Bless you.

December.
Writing, reading, teaching, sneezing. I feel like this just about sums up the last couple of weeks.
December was actually a wonderful month in many ways having to do with experiences, relationships, and forward movement. I feel so much excitement and potential for the upcoming AIB residency, new work, and a studio in the middle of being deconstructed once again, to make it an even MORE effective space for making. It has also been amazingly beautiful here in Seattle this past week, and I feel so fortunate to just "be".



These are a couple of recent images of what I have been making, along with the most current version of my artist's statement.

For now, I am in the middle of a reading marathon to prepare for upcoming seminars in Boston, and recovering (hopefully, now please) from a devastating virus. Well, ok, a cold.


The Blue Moon is on its way...

The ritual of painting is one way that I process change. What remains constant, always, is the mark. Through the mark, I give voice to change in an intuitive way while recognizing that each part of my life is relevant to, and reflected in my work. Intention for my practice forms through my life experiences, and reflection. Through the paintings, I am looking for engagement with the world through a language that communicates differently than words. My practice is a form of call and response with life. It is a conversation that stretches over time and reveals its many truths slowly and quickly. The speed of exchange is an internal, yet visible conversation.
Part of my ongoing personal search for the truth of my practice has been to strip away images that mediate my relationship to the paint. The past several years have presented me with enormous loss. Many of the relationships and places that I grounded myself in for decades, if not my entire life, have shifted. This body of work is an exercise in releasing the pictorial image that I have always relied on as my translator, and replacing it with greater attention to the materiality of the paint, and the use of formal elements to communicate the response to a shifting landscape. Through a mixture of acrylic under-paintings, oil and wax medium on paper and canvas, I am exploring single words, feelings, or ideas, and responding to the intuitive hum in the heart, as I search for the combination of formal elements that express what I want to call out. The time that I give these pieces involves layering, sanding, scraping away and re-building the surface. This very visceral connection with the materials gives voice to the complexity of my personal experience, and a materiality to what sensations my body holds surrounding these experiences, as well as the experience of making. The passage through these paintings took me from ideas of space, to ideas of form. The most recent pieces are looking at form in direct relation to how it is affected by the experience of its surrounding. Art making to process change, marks as a call and a response.

These are the works of this moment.

And so it ends, and begins.

"Dive"
12" x 8"
oil on paper









So I come to the end of my first semester. A couple of really interesting things have come up for me. In my second to the last session with Helen, she noticed once more the recurrence of certain forms in my work, and brought up the idea of my making 3D forms. The creation of forms would potentially give voice to the pictorial references that are so a part of me, and perhaps give me a new way to interact with them. I imagine they would be a grounding balance to the imaginative components of the abstract work. How abstract would these forms be? It will be fun to discover. This idea immediately appeals to me and takes me back to the end of my BFA work at PAFA, where I was indeed, making all kinds of mixed media forms that directly related to my imagery. I was attaching them to paintings, hanging them in space, and mounting them on the wall. I never fully explored this direction, yet I love the physicality of making objects, and satisfy this drive now through woodblock carving and printing.
Turning to the object again makes sense to me even more after attending a gallery talk by Margie Livingston at the Greg Kucera gallery yesterday. Margie is a painter, but uses objects that she makes as references for her paintings, and as a dialogue between painting and object. Margie's approach really spoke to me as it comes from a place of communication, wonderful abstraction and color, and moves beyond simply creating still life forms to paint from. While I was running today, I thought a great deal about what I saw in Margie's work, what I would like to try, and how to get started. I am excited to get to it!

Margie Livingston
"Big Yellow"
Oil on Linen
90" x 66"















Helen also asked me to move away from the small studies and begin a 6' x 6' painting. Wheee! I have it primed and ready to go. I can feel it's presence as I stand infront of it, and I so love that. I am very excited about this upcoming semester, and so greatful for the experiences and insights of these past six months.

Where...

"Where"
oil on paper
24" x 36"

I have been having a really tough time getting photos that I am happy with - that actually look like the work - since the season changed. This image has more "white" in it in this photo than in real life, but it gives an idea of what I have going on today. This painting began as a body landscape and is still really reading that way to me. Thinking while I was working today, the phrase "she lost her head and followed her heart" kept repeating in my mind. Turn this image 90 degrees clockwise and you really see that...
Float.

Helen O'Toole
"First Cut"
oil on canvas
78" x 58"
2008-2009

Last night I went to an incredible panel discussion at Kitteredge Hall.
The artist speakers were Helen O'Toole, Danila Rumold, Mary Ann Peters, and Eric Elliot.
I had seen work by all of these artists except Mary Ann in Seattle prior to this discussion, but was inspired anew by this exhibit. Their radical honesty, insight into their practices, and the evidence of their hard work, left me full. Some of their comments that truly resonated with me and that I continue to reflect on, are at the end of this post.
Here is a piece of Helen's from the exhibit. This photograph, of course, does not honor it as I would hope, but it gives you an idea. Helen's work takes you to an internal landscape - a place of emotion and mystery. It is a personal and beautiful place. An honest place.

Everything can change in an instant...Ideas as a hum in the mind...the idea comes in the middle of the process...what habits limit...defying the idea of a "body of work"...work that is shown is only one reflection of an artist's life long changing practice...Everything can change in an instant... the Lotus Sutra...Dual notions...beauty as a seductive tool to introduce other topics...art that causes discomfort...Everything can change in an instant.

Practice

Form Study - Wing
oil and cold wax on paper
18" x 24"

I am in a place right now where satisfaction is hiding from me. I am stretching and wandering - bumping into things and then reaching again. This piece is just one example of the many things I am exploring right now. I think this place of being unhinged began as I shifted my thinking into ideas of form as "body" and body as history/landscape. Some very exciting, yet fleeting, things have been happening - only to be lost again as I become uncomfortable with the literal images that begin to emerge. What seems to be tricky for me is holding an idea of an "object", the body, but still trying to remain abstract with it. What I am learning is that because my attachment to form is so definite, if I want to work in the abstract, it is better to simply focus on general ideas or moods, rather than specific forms. I am not ready to truly bring the figure back in. I am going to redirect my thinking away from it and back to ideas of color, space, mood and form without attachment. When I do bring the figure back, I can tell a great deal will happen. Just not yet.

I just had a trick or treater come to my door. It is November 13th. He was pretty cute, but I still told him to come back in 334 days...

Time

Forms
Oil and Cold Wax on Canvas
18" x 24"




















Final Splash

This was the first abstract painting. It has been being reworked for that long. I have broken all my previous unkept records for length of time staying with a painting.

What is missing?



The "ball" was really bothering me - so ultimately, it had to go.

Ok, so I had yet another inspiring meeting with Helen, and the exploration feels so vast as things change and then change again. An idea that came up in our meeting that is completely taking over my internal mechanisms is the body as landscape. Wow. SO much to say there. Time will unfold and reveal it all for me.

There is no linear movement

"Splash (3)"
Acrylic and Oil on Paper
38" x 48"

This is one of those pieces that I put aside, and recently pulled out again and reworked. I am much happier with the areas of atmospheric transition in this piece, as well as the serendipitous little areas of under-painting peeking through. There are areas of heavy texture that may be tough to pick up in this image, that also give the piece a satisfying feeling of weight and movement for me. I am also happy with the way the texture contrasts with the thinner areas where depth is apparent. The sphere may need to be softened and modeled, but I am letting it rest and dry for now.

I have many other pieces going in the studio and am noticing that form and depth, as defined by edges and temperature, are becoming my consistent distractions. This feels good and I believe it will make a nice bridge to bringing imagery back in eventually. The focus is shifting. It is also becoming easier for me to work with smaller formats and tune in to a more intimate scale.

On a parallel personal note that I believe reflects the ever present art/life connection, I noticed something interesting on my run yesterday. I often use visualization to help me get through a tough part of a run. As I was heading up an enormous hill yesterday the visual aids began, but instead of giant eagles surrounding me, throwing their magic lassos around me and pulling me up the hill, a stronger version of myself leaped from my heart to dance and skip around me, beaming and encouraging - guiding me up and up. Forms are changing. Work is changing. It is all beautiful and I am listening.

Right down the middle.

Sometimes you just have to slice a painting in half.

Listen

Listen Form 2
Oil and Cold Wax on Paper
18 x 24





















Listen Form
Oil and Cold Wax on Paper
18 x 24



















Today marks the half-way point of my first semester of graduate school, and my Mother's 87th birthday. It is also the first day of a new chapter of my life.

I had another really good meeting with Helen today, that filled me with renewed inspiration.
These two pieces represent my continuing experiments with abstraction. As I strive to create form, depth, atmosphere, emotion and resonating color that communicates, within a work without pictures, I meet questions of time, materials and scale. I sit with these questions and they bring their friends along. I will hold the intention of energy, gesture, radical honesty, and spontaneous response throughout the journey of each piece. I will let the painting take as long as it needs to. I will keep looking. I will listen.

My Practice, My Life.

Experiments in Green; Final Parting?

Green 1
Acrylic on paper
In Process

Recently, I have been doing a great deal of experimenting. The top two pieces here reflect a couple of sessions where I am primarily playing with a color I rarely ever use: Green. I am also continuing to think a lot about depth, as well as marks that divide, dangle/float, and reach. Contrast is always on my mind.

I find that I really respond to the first push of the painting, and as I continue to work on it, the initial momentum of the piece often morphs into something else. This happens most radically when several days go by between painting sessions. This can work for me, as the layers I continue build often strengthen the overall work, but of course it also often backfires and leaves me with nothing to show for hours of work except a very heavy, paint-laden piece of paper. Of course there is the benefit of what the hours give me in experimental experience, which I am not disregarding. I am however, trying to find a way to capture the energy of my first attack, AND build a rich and interesting surface. Working in series and on many pieces at once are two ideas that immediately come to mind. Any other thoughts would be welcome! I know this is not a new issue for me, or for lots of other artists out there.



Green 2
Acrylic and Oil on Canvas
In Process



























"Parting"
Oil and Cold Wax on Paper

Ok, I am stopping now.

the Parting continues...

"Parting"
Oil and Cold Wax on Paper
38" x 50"
in process

Ok, well this painting just won't stop. It has changed radically several times, and all you can probably recognize from it's last posted version, are the small glimpses of pink and yellow shining through here and there. I was just not satisfied with the palette, or the composition. Neither felt right, so I have been working and re-working it. This is where I am now - swinging back close to where I have been before, but wanting to be here as it feels unfinished still, and like where I need to be. I feel the tension between the surface and the illusion of depth - still intrigued by this palette with its beautiful darks and greys, and ochre light. These colors bring me to the sky, transitions of storm and light, day and night. Back to work - still going...

Double click on image for a better read of the surface.

A day for small studies and re-working...

"Fly or Fall" Reworked

After an inspiring crit with Helen, I am spending the day today reworking several pieces, and starting a couple of new things. Here is the most recent version of "Fly or Fall" in which I am trying to better define the spatial relationships and make the reds a bit more saturated. Among other wonderful ideas, Helen encouraged me to flip the pieces upside down in order to see them more clearly - a great tip!













Study 1 Oil on Paper
10" x 12"
These small studies are inspired by abstract photos that I take of value, texture and color in nature. I was more than a bit frustrated by the experience (fighting with the scale, feeling hemmed-in by the photos), but after my crit with Helen, I was able to see some beauty in these pieces, and especially appreciate that they tend to be much more detached from narrative than the larger pieces. After looking at them with fresh eyes, thanks to Helen, I am actually excited to do more of these.



Study 2 Oil on Paper
10" x 12"
Another aspect of these smaller works that I appreciate, are the palettes. It is rewarding for me to use more muted color combinations, developed from my experimentation with Helen's palette ideas. I hear new voices from these color choices.

Updating this blog after painting is making a very painterly object out of my keyboard...

Critical Theory - Paper #2

The Ritual of Change; Mark Making During Transition

Hesperian sadness; the quiet acknowledgment of the passage from day to night, with stillness and attention. A Shabbat dinner; a meal recognizing the end of the workweek and the beginning of the Sabbath. The ball dropping in Times Square; a communal marking of the end of the year as defined by the Christian calendar. Transitions, large and small, announce change. How do we as individuals, and as community, define the space between what we leave behind, and what we step into? What ritual marks this passage? These are questions that I have been fascinated with since I began studying folklore in my undergraduate years at the University of Pennsylvania.

Judy Chicago is an artist that I share my interest in both folk culture, and ritual with. In her well-known work, “The Dinner Party”, Chicago pays homage to the folk art of talented women found in myth and history. She describes the ritual of the dinner party with her piece, and gives voice to the creative talents that enacted these labor-intensive rituals. The women Chicago references channel their creative energies and skills into acceptable forms of expression for their time and culture. Together, they form communities with each other that lead to a larger ritual of sharing and communication within their groups. Chicago recreates this communal act of creation with modern artists still well versed in the folk arts that she is exploring as she facilitates the vision of her piece (Fabozzi 320). In this way, Chicago connects the rituals of the past with her more modern creative force.

17 years beyond my introduction to folk culture, I am actively involved in the exploration of folk music and the rituals surrounding its creation and dissemination. I play in a Klezmer band (music of the Eastern European Jewry), and am enamored with the tunes and songs that different cultures use to describe and navigate transitions. The notes that I play on my fiddle are akin to the marks that I make in the studio. The music and the mark making are both holding the space for the transition between what was and what will be. They tell the story of change.

As I reflect on the changes within my own life, and the role that my artistic practice plays in it, I am beginning to understand that my studio is the space of ritual where the marks that I make communicate the personal and public changes that occur around me. While I am not interested in using my artwork as a form of therapy, I do understand that through my work I am navigating change, and defining transitions through my ritual of painting. In this paper I will explore how other artists have used the mark as a tool to navigate change, and examine the questions that their practices or opinions raise for me as I analyze my own work, and the ritual within it.

War. What a powerful word, and what an immense vehicle of change. How have artists responded to such devastating and unasked for change? I found the answer to this question in the current Seattle Art Museum exhibit, “Target Practice, Painting Under Attack, 1949 - 78”, curated by Michael Darling. The voices in this exhibit are responding in a clearly visceral way to both the world changes that are occurring during their lives, such as World War II, Hiroshima, the Korean War, the Eisenhower years, and Vietnam, and cultural changes in how artists and the public consider painting itself. What I find most compelling in the exhibit are the artists that are actively processing traumatic change through their paintings – specifically, the type of marks that they choose to make to bring themselves, and their artwork, into the future.

Lucio Fontana, was an Argentine painter that lived and worked in both his native Argentina, and Italy during the second world war. After seeing an image of Fontana standing outside of his Italian studio after it had been reduced to rubble by bombings, I understood the incisions in his canvases in both a visceral and cerebral way. Considered a late modernist “heretic”, (Morgan. 18-19) he was consistently interested in the future, and described the razor knife slashes and punctures in his canvases in terms of an understanding of what lay beyond the current moment:

“I make holes, infinity passes through them, light passes through them. There is no need to paint.” (qtd. in Fisher)

Fontana’s eloquent description of his practice and what it means to him, speaks directly to the act of painting as a passage, or portal into the future. Through destruction, Fontana is actively creating a new space, or future, for himself.

Working on the other side of the globe, but simultaneously facing destruction on a grand scale in his home in Japan, Shozo Shimamoto also turned to the mark as a way to process change and move into the future. Puncturing and covering the surface of his canvas with gestural tears and nervous pencil line, Shimamoto viscerally and elegantly brings us into the future through his process of dakai, translated as “destruction as a constructive site” (Darling 106). Shimamoto’s canvases mark the event of his creation with their aggressive confrontation to the viewer, but retain a poetic elegance and fragility that speaks to the fleeting nature of reality. Shimamoto’s work is mediated by the titles that he chooses for them. “Work”, “Ifu” (Awe Inspiring Fear), and “Mother”, are titles that all further take us into the past and future of our own life-transitions (Darling 113).

Fashion model turned avant garde artist, Niki de Saint-Phalle joined her artistic comrades ideologically through her work that used the rifle as a paint brush. Exploding containers of pigment with rifle fire, Saint-Phalle speaks to the liberation of her mark marking ritual:

“We want to find a renewal. We want to find beauty in a new way. Making my paintings is life itself. The shooting is magic. The shooting is the moment.” (qtd. in Darling 24)

How does an artist decide what marks best communicate their ideas, emotions, intentions? How is the ritual played out in the studio? Is it planned ahead of time and scripted like a Catholic Mass, or is it a spontaneous response dictated by the moment? I have only recently begun to examine these questions, but know that my practice has been largely a spontaneous response, without much analysis up until recently. My current understanding of what happens in the studio is revealing that it is actually a mixture of analysis and spontaneity, a combination of control and reaction. While I may believe that I am composing ritual and opening a space for change to enter in, I am also working within the context of many other influences that act upon me both consciously and unconsciously. My work is mediated by my imagination as I consider forms that speak to a larger meaning I am expressing. My marks are also mediated by my memory as I work from what I recall without pictorial references to guide me. Just as the artists in “Target Practice” were each affected by their times, I am only beginning to be consciously aware of the cultural mediators that form the backdrop of the world I am surrounded by.

In his essay, Post Modernism and Consumer Society, Frederic Jameson speaks to his understanding of the complexities of mark making and the influences that define them. As he reflects on the views of French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan, Jameson describes the fluidity of the signifiers in language, and suggests that as meaning becomes more fluid, our grasp of reality may also become less stable. Jameson stresses that because we do not translate words into their meanings on a one-to-one basis, but rely largely on context, the connections between words form our experience of continuity and time. The relationships between words (signifiers) and their meanings (referents) allow us to move through past, present and future (Foster 118-119). Just as language creates meaning and moves us through time, so to does the ritual of mark making in artwork. The inter-relations of the references the artist provides on the canvas have the ability to work together to transition the maker, and potentially the viewer, from the past into the future by virtue of providing a space in between entering and exiting where reflection and ritual can take place.

In my work, as I process transition in my practice, I often turn to pictorial references that symbolically represent change or transformation. Although these definitions are supported culturally, their meaning changes depending on the background and life experience of the viewer, or as Jameson describes, from their context. This leaves room within my pictorial work for many interpretations. As I turn away from the pictorial image, and experiment with expressing my intention with abstract marks, how does this new language change my ritual and my understanding of the relationship of my work to the larger world? In viewing Target Practice, I feel a resonance between the vocabularies that the artists are developing, apart from, and unknown to one another, yet in synchronicity. Does abstraction, and a more visceral approach to painting, open up a less mediated form of communication, in which the ritual of painting can speak to the changes we all navigate? While any mark, form, or image has the unavoidable potential to become contrived or representational, it is the job of the artist to move through the passages of exploring them with honesty, integrity and awareness.


“…I rubbed and scratched the paper until I tore holes in it, trying to reach something else, something more profound, to grasp the very essence of things.” (Nolde, Emil. qtd. in Chipp.146)

It is evident that artists use their practice as a response to the world around and within them. Chicago uses ritual to remember. Fontana, Shimamoto, Saint-Phalle, are all turning to destructive, often subtractive marks to express the moment of change. Their choices reflect the larger cultural shifts around each of them and their personal reactions to change. My own imagery, and mark making, has a similar visual connection to the quality of change I am transitioning through. My interest with strings, seams, horizons and the breaking, severing or expanding of these references informs my work. Looking for resonance, turning to ritual – are both ways that I am navigating a shifting landscape through my practice. When the landscape shifts because bombs, literal or figurative, were dropped, the marks we make in response cannot help but be mediated by that change. As I build upon a visual lexicon of marks and images that have come before me, of course their meaning will remain fluid and over time the definitions of my marks and images will take on their own lives, dependent on their surroundings. The personal meaning that was my intention during creation will eventually be lost. This is not something that I fear, but something that I believe has value. If the creation of a painting is a catalyst for movement, how can it be expected to stop moving once the artist’s hand is still? Part of the ritual is also releasing the work to become what it will, based on what meaning is ascribed to it tomorrow.

Recognizing a place for ritual, whether it is a dinner, a holiday celebration, the destruction or the creation of a painting, will help us all maintain a space where we can reflect with integrity on the speed of change, and our individual and communal passage into the future. The change is an act of creation in itself, and through the conscious recognition of our rituals, we can release what came before and step into what comes next. Painting is an active ritual. Through our mark making we will not only pull the future to us, but discover within ourselves a place between past and future where the most radical honesty resides, and a visceral language through which to share our passage.

Works Cited

Chipp, Herschel B.. “Theories of Modern Art”. Berkley, Los Angeles, London. University of California. 1968. Print.

Darling, Michael. “Target Practice: Painting Under Attack, 1949 – 78”. Seattle. Seattle Art Museum. 2009. Print.

Fabozzi, Paul F. “Artists, Critics, Context, Readings in and around American Art since 1945”. Upper Saddle River, Pearson Education. Print.

Fisher, Sylvia. Target Practice. Seattle Art Museum. Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA. 8/25/09. Docent led exhibit tour.

Foster, Hal. “The Anit-Aesthetic, Essays on Postmodern Culture”. New Press. New York. 1998. Print.

Morgan, Robert. Lucio Fontana. Sperone Westwater. Sperone Westwater. August 25, 2009.