Desert Soul

So much to do, sometimes a list can be overwhelming!

Art-making quiets and focuses the mind onto the present until all else drifts away - kinda like meditation, a simplification, like water for a parched desert soul.

I stare at my canvas, this time it's made of tempered masonite. I've primed it three times with house primer on the smooth side and once on the rough side, to prevent warping.

It is a large square 48" x 48" and it's presence is firm and solid compared to the wispy, delicate yet surprisingly strong surface of silk that I've been painting on for the last three months. My husband bought one large sheet of masonite 8' long and cut it in two for me.

The day is grey, the rain is coming and my feet are cold - there is something wrong with the heater.

I've been reading Artillery Magazine - the Sex Issue and in particular one article, "Art With Benefits" by Josh Herman and am thinking about this quote from Jilda "To me, art must evoke something within us - be it joy, sadness, reverence or lust. An object which fails to do that is merely pretty." And although my work is abstract I feel it is also emotionally charged and sexually symbolic. I'm not painting sex per se, nothing so literal. But instead passion, emotion - intimate emotion.

This is a journey into my own expression of intimacy - a poetically abstract journey, minus the depiction of flesh - save that for the pornographers.

This masonite surface is so slick, hard, shiny, like new ice - not sure how to navigate this world yet.

The following day: Suddenly I feel happy.

I think I like this masonite surface.

"It's a long, long, lonely ride to find the perfect lover for your lover."

From the song "The Taxi Ride" by Jane Siberry

Musical Ambiance: The Speckless Sky ~ Jane Siberry

Into the Fire

Going beyond the figure, beyond realism, beyond...into emotion, expression, feeling, no boundaries, although the canvas does capture but a small square of time. The brushstrokes raw, evident, fighting.

This painting heaves and thrusts...I close my hands, my eyes, overwhelmed, yet waiting...is it done yet?

I paint with my glass off, my vision most likely strange to those of you used to crystal clarity. I prefer this world of soft edges, undulating, mysterious, the details not so important.

I have built a small fire to keep me warm, through paint.

I can go no further.

Beneath the Beneath

The silence is an invitation to think.

What are you really saying? Forcing the answer, making it fit within real-time practicalities lessens the meaning which can only be expressed wordlessly, through touch and sight.

The "little voice" in my head is quiet as I paint - putting brush to canvas - the colors and forms speak for me. No need for explanation. Isn't the process enough? But of course not! So I write an invitation to join me at play so you too can join the dance, the journey within. So you too can feel transformed through stream of consciousness being-ness, relaxing your tight hold on reality as you slip into something more comfortable...more perilous?

Can 'ArtSpeak' explain it? Can you? Can I?

I can give you the moment before creation, captured in words, but then wordless-ness takes over, and the moment just is...as words leave me, and colour, line, form, expression, movement, take over.

The softness almost unbearable. A need for sharp, dark, angst - to plunge into the depths beneath the beneath, where breathing no longer exists.

Musical Ambience: Sade ~ "Best of Sade", Rose Chronicles ~ "Dead and Gone to Heaven", Tori Amos ~ "Scarlet's Walk".

Moon Talon

When painting to music every song is like entering a different world. When creating from pain - paint is the antidote.

Paintings to capture what was...paintings to remember you...paintings to forget the past.

But what about the future? That, I can't imagine. What I can do is capture you on canvas...forever.

That imperfect moment made perfect...my creation. Making order out of chaos. The abstract and analytical mind can rest here, in being-ness.

Question: Without the pain can I paint? Painting relieves the pain, but with no dark emotion that needs release, how to paint?

Darkness I Seek.

To balance the light, the endless light of desert sun. Blood, sweat and tears.

Passivity does not engender paint. Anger, fight, passion, intensity, blood... does.

"Tell me that its nobodies fault but my own" from the album "Mutations" by Beck.

Moon Talon - acrylic and pastel on silk - 3.5' x 3.5'

Musical Ambience: Bjork - "Telegram", Rose Chronicles - "Gone to Heaven", Vetch - "Life's Not That Hard".

Journey into Intimacy

I'm painting again. It's back to a more physical way of being - painting puts me in touch with my body, movement and physical expression and is a form of ecstasy and release. I paint to music, loud music and this also sets a mood, a tone, a feeling.

This new series of paintings begun on Monday, November 19th are a journey for me into intimacy. I am painting and writing together - the one engenders the other, not sure in what order.

This latest is titled "Arrow of Pain" and with it comes Realization. Going deeper, more intimate, more, more, more. What does it mean? Being scared, but of what? Facing all the pain that intimacy has engendered over the years, facing all the mistakes, the regrets, the paths taken. Going into and beyond the hurt to reach the other side. Going deeply into feeling, so deeply that one fears getting lost inside.

I face my alone-ness every day. Some days it hurts. Some days I can work through it. Today I paint through it because I feel the pain more acutely. We are always truly alone and it hurts.

Musical Inspiration: Paul Van Dyck, Bjork, Loreena McKennitt, Tori Amos, 80's pop.