Yellow Violet Light and Clouds and Square Series

Yellow Violet Light, 12" x 10" oil on canvas

Clouds and Square 1, digital image, iPad, Brushes app

Clouds and Square 2, digital image, iPad, Brushes app

Clouds and Square 3, digital image, iPad, Brushes app

The Cloud and Square Series were done immediately after the recent, early, sudden death of my husband's cousin. The squares show an empty space, a void, a loss. The inky, semi-transparent black is mourning but #3 is lighter, more at peace. The squares hover and demand attention; feelings that may otherwise be invisible become palpable. They make tangible the disappearance of the loved one, from being present to gone. A blue sky has frequently been used as a transcendent space, harmony within the universe, resurrection if you will.

Yellow Violet Light is similar in intention. Yellow and violet are complementary colors so especially vibrate when juxtaposed. They radiate together here causing some kind of visual sensation of motion like the hovering of the squares in the digital images which is less the effect of color than contrast, scale, handling, density, and context.

My good friend from grad school, the painter Aaron Brooks, told me this weekend that he thinks, "All art is a way of mythologizing our lives." I agree. I've written previously about Joseph Campbell and his assertion that mythology is the public dream. Artists create the myths that reveal universal truth. I've always felt my work is autobiographical and can envision a chronological cataloging of my work alongside, within my journals. They are about self-discovery, the phenomenon of living, a vehicle to process experience. Art is all that and a new experience, experience and ideas re framed. Art Weekly is like a book of hours, the medieval prayer book form structuring a day with times for specific prayers. I thought of making one of prints, but it turns out this blog does it for me. It has reflection, ritual, image and text, and is solitary on my end. Living and painting are the main things while galleries and sales are an annoying buzz in the background, a drain and potential distraction from the real work. Right now I'm left alone with my rituals, not such a bad thing.

Tappan Zee Bridge and Sunset Blue and Pink

Tappan Zee Bridge, 6" x 12", oil on panel

Sunset Blue, Pink, Black, 6" x 12", oil on panel

Soap bubbles are floating over the Tappan Zee Bridge! Not exactly. It's fanciful but I'm not really depicting soap bubbles, just pieces of paint that feel like bouncing, drifting air.

There are few things more fanciful than the BMW art cars, a collection of various models painted (on) by famous artists. Alexander Calder was the first, others include Andy Warhol, David Hockney, Jenny Holzer, and Jeff Koons, to name a few. The cars were fresh out of the factory when the artists went to work. I really like them, especially the BMW 525i decorated by South African painter Esther Mahlangu. BMW called it "the first African Art Car". It is tradition in Mahlangu's community in northeastern South Africa for women to learn ancestral designs at puberty and then paint murals on their homes. Her car is a combination of this history and European consumer culture, epitomizing globalization. I would love to live in a house painted like that about as much as someone might covet her painted BMW.

The National Museum of African Art exhibited her work. The museum is part of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. I didn't know it exists or maybe I forgot. All these years of art school, reading about art, talking with other artists, and going to museums and it's not on my radar. Maybe it's stored somewhere in the back of my brain, but it's a little disconcerting it doesn't get much attention. I believe African art is under appreciated in the U.S. just as Africa doesn't seem to be on the forefront of the country's political landscape.

"My mother and grandmother taught me to paint when I was ten years old. When I am painting my heart is very wide, it reaches out. It makes me feel very, very happy." - Esther Mahlangu

Sunset Blue, Pink, Black retains dimension while also pressing against the picture plane. The blue and pink push against each other as they form one sky; the black trees keep their place. The landscape boldly stretches just as it draws you in. My heart is wide when I paint, too.

iPad: Like Morris Louis, Green Blue Triangle Red, Cloud on Land

Like Morris Louis

Green Blue Triangle Red

Cloud on Land

Green Blue Triangle Red seems primordial. The red makes it seem like we are looking through a tepee: the door drawn back allowing the opening to be filled with the bright landscape of summer. Compositionally and coloristically (I don't think those are real words but we painters use them all the time) they relate to painter Morris Louis. Morris Louis , an Abstract Expressionist and a central figure in the development of Color Field Painting. He was inspired to experiment with paint applications of newly available acrylic paints after seeing Helen Frankenthaler's Mountain and Sea, the first "stain painting". [See Louis' 1961 Alpha-Theta] I was privileged to have Frankenthaler speak at my small departmental graduation ceremony for the MFA department at the University of Pennsylvania in 1996. Her speech was regrettably short (she seemed excited to get to her private showing of the Cezanne show up at the Philadelphia Museum of Art) but she got to the point which is what we often wish speech-givers would do. I will never forget her clear message, "Use your skills." She knew we were accomplished and understood how art can get pushed aside. She's now eighty-two and I am not alone in appreciating her contribution of luminous, energetic spaces. I haven't heard anything about her owning an ipad. I wonder what she would do.

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[A most excellent website: http://www.theartstory.org

It's mission statement:

"The Art Story Foundation's official statement of purpose is to: "Educate, inform, and introduce people to modern art through speaker series, educational workshops, and online educational resources".

Nicole is all excited!]

The Night Sky and other linocuts

The simplicity, pattern, line, and nature reference in these strike me as similar to Native American pottery. I particularly love the pots from Acoma, "Sky-City". My husband gave me one I saw there as a wedding present and it is one of my most treasured possessions because of what it is (I don't know its monetary value).

Lucy Lewis is the most famous Acoma potter (photo of her). I relate to her in because she took care of her family doing traditional chores (in a place that still doesn't have electricity or running water) while steadfastly creating her artwork without collaboration or assistance. She made art in obscurity, as she said that no one ever came to Acoma. She certainly wasn't alone, however, as she formed clay at the kitchen table surrounded by children and grandchildren. Born in 1902, the first competition she entered in 1950 brought a blue ribbon and further awards followed. Lewis' work is in art museums around the world. I had the opportunity to meet two of her nine children, Dolores and Andrew, who are both potters. They explained the origins of the materials for the ceramics are gathered from the area, the brushes from yucca plants, the color from a secret place. The symbolism of the designs is sacred and great effort is made to keep the meanings within the tribe.

These linoleum cut prints have a zoomed-out view of an open landscape. The Night Sky is an edition of ten. Each color is created by inking the plate, printing it, then carving out an area and printing it again on top. This is done for each color, layering the image. The three prints below are singular variations (hence monoprints) on The Night Sky, and are labeled "a" through "p". Most are printed on top of colored papers; some were old prints. The patterns and colors of the papers are fitted with the last pattern of the plate to make strong compositions differing in space and mood. I flipped the orientation of the plate for a few. Black ink is used as a unifying element, contrasting enough with the colored papers to clearly define form. I don't use yucca brushes but like Lewis I am at home in the studio and the kitchen. Maybe someday I'll be lucky enough to have the museum part in common too.