Finding Figure Drawing

I've recently had a breakthrough of sorts.  I must backtrack.

I was farting around on Tumblr one day a couple weeks ago and I came across a painting that nearly knocked me out of my chair.  This painting, a HUGE portrait of a girl's face, completely took my breath away.

(To view, go here: http://www.elly.ca/)

I nosed around her website for a while and not long into said nosing did I start to feel bad about myself.

I know, I KNOW.  It is so stupid to compare your art to someone else's.  You can never make someone else's art.  There mere idea is fundamentally impossible.  However, I still could not keep my insecurities from bubbling up to the surface.  They don't very often, with art, but that day they bubbled quite violently.

I think part of it is this artist's work embodies something I would love to be able to achieve in my own work: painting emotionally and loosely, with careful and beautiful use of color.  

I moped for a while and then started thinking.

What do I feel my work has been missing lately?

Where do I feel I'm not exploring enough?

What kind of feelings am I trying to communicate?

How do I communicate those feelings?

To answer my own ponderings, I feel my work has been lacking an energy, a vitality, a movement that it once had years ago.  The gesture and brushy quality that launched my interest in texture and light.  I've swayed the other direction into a more careful and illustrative approach -- I don't believe "too far" the other direction is the proper way to describe this, as all explorations into an idea serve a specific, useful, and grand function in the overall body of work and pursuit of ideas -- but this stirring of insecurities I now see clearly as marking a shift moving back the other direction: painting more expressively, accessing emotions more, responding and reacting openly to the material and the surface, placing less judgment on a mark or expression, being able to laugh at myself and keep trucking on in a very "air" kind of way. 

I really do need to credit Jamie with helping me realize these things.  We were chatting online and she slapped me with this:

[Regarding stumbling upon other good artists]

I hate that so much. But we are who we are. We can't change it. 

But we can take bits of other people and make it our own

[and what to do about it]

Girl, your talent is better than tht. You DO have it in you. You gotta work it out! 

Keep pushing. Play with color. Spend a day mixing color even! Make a color wheel in your sketch book. Definitely find a figure group. This girl has great gesture an emotion and is good with color. 

You can be that too! But better cuz youre you. And f her website. It's better than mine lol

I cannot describe how much I love this girl.  She always knows exactly, precisely, what to say.

But her mention of figure drawing lit me up inside.  THAT'S the thing that's missing.  THAT is the key to communicating the energy and gesture in my paintings -- getting my brain moving, thinking, buzzing with form and movement.  FIGURE DRAWING.  Drawing from a live model, in a room with other people drawing, something in which I am so expert yet haven't pursued for... five YEARS?  Jesus Christ.  That is five years I've not done what my soul is telling me to do. 

Hipbone Studio has three sessions a week for $10 per session.  Two of them I plan to attend on a weekly basis (the third is during the workday).  I went to my first session last Wednesday and it appears I've still got it in me...

Pics of my most recent painting to follow!

Spring Cleaning

The weather the past few weeks has been completely idyllic.  It's kind of unbelievable for May around here.  It won't last, because it never does, but MAN has this Spring been fun so far.

Last weekend the Boy and I had a "beach" day in the park.  Meaning, we went to the park across the street, bared our pasty white Portland skin in our swimsuits, sat on a blanket, drank iced tea, read books, and pretended we were at the beach.

I was totally convinced.  The sun was warm that day, but the air was crispy and the sound of the wind blowing through the tall trees sounded exactly like a roaring ocean.  Didn't need you anyway, Oregon coast . . . 

This morning I got up and kept trying to talk myself into going outside and doing things in other places, but I actually felt like being at home.  I actually felt prepared to tackle everything I haven't been doing -- but have needed to do -- for months.  You know the stuff: sorting mail, doing dishes, shredding stuff, cleaning the floors, sorting throwaway clothing into "Goodwill" and "try to sell to snobs at Buffalo," cleaning the mold out of the shower, blah blah blah . . . 

With each to-do I completed, I felt lighter and more at ease.  I had this huge round chair that nobody sat in that took up a lot of space in this little apartment.  It just collected piles of clothing and pillows.  I was finally like "You know what?  I am so done with this stupid chair" and I made a sign that said "FREE! In good shape, needs love <3" and put it on the sidewalk.  It was gone within a few hours, and I feel SO MUCH BETTER ABOUT LIFE.  It's weird -- getting rid of things that I no longer use actually makes me feel different physically.  Like I can breathe again.

I started cleaning stuff out because the Boy is [kind of] [technically] moving in.  We started looking for a new place months ago, but his lease wasn't up until the end of May.  The plan has been if we couldn't find a place by the time his lease was up, then he'd just move in here and we'd work it out.  He basically lives here anyway, so it won't be much different.  But it means getting rid of stuff I don't need anymore, because apparently I'm really good at keeping, collecting, and stashing anything and everything.  It's not as bad as those weirdos on that hoarders show, but I certainly get stuck in the "but what if I need it later?" thought spiral.  This is the problem: if I keep something because I might need it later, then I will never need it later.  If I get rid of something because I know I will never need it later, then I most certainly do need it later and it MAKES ME SO PISSED.  Do you see how this can be a problem?  Time and time again it proves to be true.

Stupid universe.

Speaking of apartment hunting, have I told you it is turning into my worst nightmare?  I've been actively looking for a place since January -- literally, since January.  We've looked at two places, the only ones that were even remotely worthwhile and proved to not be scams.  We didn't get one of them, didn't apply for the other because it was kind of atrocious, and turned down an offer from my boss who rents a property because it's just way out of our price range. I don't remember finding housing being this difficult.  Like, ever.  

Am I being too picky?  I hope not.  This is the way I see it: I'm not going to move unless a lot of things are better than our current situation, ie: closer to jobs, more square footage, at least a little bit cute and/or funky, some decent light, a normal sized kitchen.  It will be a waste of time and money to move just because, to soon realize our situation is not much better than before.

So if you know of anyone who has a place, is leaving a place, knows somebody who knows somebody who has a place, or even someone who has a large garage or perhaps an unusually luxurious cardboard box, let me know.

All of this means I need to make some amount of peace with my current apartment.  I have spent a lot of time being mad at her, but overall she's been good to me.  I can't deny that.  So I must figure out a way to make it work for the time being.

That's what today was about.

And *this* sweet little setup lit my freakin' fire -- I find I don't usually like having my own paintings hanging up in my house, but when I did this I just about crapped.

Not only does it make the room look waaaay bigger (how?!) but these paintings make me SO FREAKIN' HAPPY.  The photos really don't do them justice, especially the one of Lo, but hanging them up like this sparked something inside me and I just feel delirious with excitement.  It's probably in part due to this vein of work I'm in right now.  These paintings express something I have been trying to express for years, and have never been able to.  I don't know what's different.  I don't know what shifted.  But something was ready to start producing paintings with this feel and I'm stoked.

I've also been daydreaming about having a place with a room to call my studio, instead of a corner.  

Me:  I'm going to rearrange the apartment and turn half of it into my studio.  Okay?

Will:  Awesome!

(I love that goofy bitch.)

I'm thinking, Why not?  Why not turn my whole dumb apartment into a big fantastic art-making lair?  Didn't do it yet today, but . . . . . . . . . . it's on my pre-To-Do To-Do.

Puttering around in my apartment today was exactly what I needed.  I feel more quiet today, and in cleaning and rearranging I did end up finding some peace with the place.  A few minor tweaks made a world of difference, and I soaked up the light and patterns and colors I'd stopped seeing after a while.

Art spaces are just messy.  No way around it.

I will never stop loving you . . . <3

I brewed some more coffee at 5pm and soaked up my handiwork.  Life's pretty good . . . I GUESS . . . 

;-)

Last Saturday

I boarded a very small airplane, so small it was necessary to duck when entering.  We took off in a terrible rain that I watched pelt the propellers in the darkness of the sky.  A few mermaid sketches and two cups of coffee later, the horizon slowly revealed the blazing sun and lit up the ocean of clouds below.

We descended over Oakland and I'd hoped I could see the Occupy Oakland movement from the sky.  (I couldn't.)  I enjoyed the postcard-like view of the Golden Gate Bridge, downtown San Francisco, and the entirety of The Bay.  For some reason, Oakland smelled like rotting garbage. I couldn't remember if this is how California always smelled and I'd just never noticed before.

My bestest friend J Chanandler Bing, her husband B, and her eight-month old baby Bambino picked me up at the airport in a small white car I'd never seen before.  We went immediately to breakfast because J knows that's all I ever really think about on any given day.  She also knows I must eat precisely every two hours to maintain mood equilibrium.

I enjoyed a third cup of coffee, something called Eggs Michael (which B inadvertently nicknamed my three-month old nephew), and watched Baby Bambino munch happily on his very first pancake and also on a spoon.

I feel confident Bambino and I bonded sufficiently.  He was skeptical at first, I could tell, but I think he realized we get along well because we're both Water signs.

My first night there, J made spicy pork chops, zucchini, and purple mashed potatoes with mushroom gravy.  I was genuinely impressed with her mad kitchen skillz and heartily devoured my dinner, plus some extra.

The next morning she impressed me even more by whipping up some sourdough French Toast with cream cheese and homemade jam-like syrup, which they call "jyrup."  

French Toast shown at actual size.

Mmmmmmm JYRUP MONSTERRRRRRR

After that, J and I made felt mustaches and glued them on sticks.  We made templates for several different styles and then modeled them for each other.

Fetch me my cigar.

We even tried one on Baby.  He liked it for a minute, but then decided it didn't coordinate very well with his nighttime onesie and would be better suited to a tuxedo or suit and tie.

Later, our lovely friend Flamingo came over and the three of us (well, three and a half, including the Wee One) spent the rest of Sunday acting fancy and nibbling on delicious snacks, including a nice Brie, edamame (please note: there is no "n" in "edamame"), and some manner of pink wine in beautiful crystal glasses.  Bambino decided he would pass on the wine, as he was saving his taste buds for homemade pureed prunes.

After the pink stuff I felt so happy I drank some of the sweet white stuff (that's what she said?) and ate way too many snap peas. Monstrous gas ensued.

We sapped that bottle dry before we knew what happened (whoops) so the next day it was necessary to pick up two more bottles at Trader Joe's.  (Those were gone pretty fast, too.)

The next morning we woke up, drank coffee, and packed up the Little One for a special trip to Santa Cruz, where J and I met in college on the first day of Art 60 in 2006.  We planned to head up to campus and pop in on our old painting teacher, but popped in on our favorite Mediterranean food restaurant first.  We reminisced about how eating there in college was really spendy, and forking out $7 for a meal would really set back our budgets.  I used to "splurge" sometimes and get an iced tea to go with it.

OMFG FALAFEL

The air, the sky, the trees -- completely unreal.  Being there reminded me of my old Self.  Being there made my soul ache.

We participated as Guest Critics at a critique in our painting teacher's Intermediate class.  Our critiquing skills were really out of practice, so I offered the standard suggestions that helped me when I was in school:  Go bigger.  Get texture.  Stop thinking so much.

The next morning J dropped me off at the airport.  Both her and Bambino cried upon my departure and I couldn't remember the last time anyone had cried about me before.  Hugs hugs hugs and I was gone, sitting at a Starbucks in the terminal, thinking about how cleansed I felt, how much fun I had, and how wonderful things are.  I wrote some stuff in the little sketchbook J gave me and drank some terrible coffee.

Truly bittersweet.

bit*ter*sweet
[adj. bit-er-sweet, bit-er-sweet; n. bit-er-sweet]

adjective

1.  both pleasant and painful or regretful
2.  pleasant but tinged with sadness

On Art and the Inherent Preoccupation

Making bundles of balloons out of white price tags
colored with pink and green, inked with wandering chicken feet
and bouquets of flowers and wise words:

Live
Rinse
Repeat

What good advice I gave myself when I drank until six AM
and pieced myself together enough to get to class by eight;

I boiled the eggs and bought the milk and la-dee-dahed the day away
unable to get it off my mind, even tried a nice salty float
but had a hard time --
she's weird about things in her ears --
and my mind kept going back to that stuff;
plagues every train of thought
every avenue of existing comfortably in my skin
and comes back every time
like it did back then when I used to drink a lot
and make things --

What is different?  Have I changed?

I'm still me, pretty sure,
I have the same ailments, same mental emotional retardation
and latent anger I keep thinking is destructive a little
but GOD DAMMIT it feels good sometimes;
I drank some wine and that made it worse or maybe better
depending how you look at it,
maybe better like it used to make it,
but J. Chanandler Bing would say it's fucking awesome
'cause I think she wants to drink the wine with me too;

I feel in love and alive and level and clearer than I've been in a while
even though my dreams are nuts and grossly epic,
I still love when Bear ponders the emotions flitting across my face --
'cause there are thousands, just thousands of them --
because it lights up his and I love
when his face looks like that, so sweet and eager,
and damn that fucking charming beard.