Pieces of me...the duality of the artist and writer...following my bliss...

Is it a bird? 11/28/2004

I didn’t have a bird in mind when I made this one…This is an old pencil drawing in one of my sketchbooks…my drawings are more meditation than a study for something specific…I started doing them in a sketchbook that a friend gave to me for a present to fill with my doodles that I had been making on scraps of paper and post-it notes…these drawings were more mine than anything I ever made before. It was a special time for me creatively, I was following my bliss in both art and writing.

Book cover for The Fractured Hues of White Light, copyright 2010

At the same time that I was filling sketchbooks with these elaborate doodles, I was also working on the early draft of my novel, The Fractured Hues of White Light, so the sketchbook of my meandering pencil marks played a role in creating the main character Samantha Ryder…an autistic artist who makes copies of the greatest hits of the art world in miniature, which she didn’t like doing very much, she did this to please her father and the people who wanted her to make them—it is the doodles in her sketchbooks that are “hers”…it’s about that and more…


From the back cover:

To this day I still laugh at my misinterpretation when the doctor diagnosed me as autistic—I thought he said "artistic"—so I laughed and cried out, "I draw just like my Daddy!" But no one laughed with me; my mother cried, my father became indignant, and the doctor defensive...Then my pencil went about the business of drawing—after all, I am artistic. But little picture's have ears—and my eyes didn't miss a thing, especially the emotions that sparkled in my mother's tear-filled eyes. My fixation with the emotional landscape of faces was always the quirky discrepancy of my being autistic—my drawings documented with intricate detail the people I loved best of all. The doctor thought this very unusual—puzzling, yet unique, he called me "special." 

My artist/writer pieces of me overlap and separate…it’s a duality that I manage (I don’t struggle with it—I’d get nowhere like that.) To compartmentalize these two endeavors, I gave the writing projects a name, Laura J. W. Ryan. It’s me, they’re mine.


I love what I do…

Currently, I'm editing my third novel, Drinking from the Fishbowl, which has been my focus for four years now, but it's been in the works since the initial notes that I started filling a salt n' pepper notebook around 2000-2001 or so...writing is such a slow process and just as meandering as my drawings...

I'm also preparing my latest contribution to the Sketchbook Project...I'm pretty excited about it—and of course, the drawings continue...

Roses

I have only one rose bush in my garden that produces blooms annually...the others,more costly at the time of purchase, seem to refuse to cooperate no matter how much I babied them...this one, I bought for $5 at the end of the season and felt like I was doing a rescue...I do nothing with it other than let the leaves mulch around it in the fall and pull the weeds away from it in the spring and it blooms for me in spite of the Japanese beetles that I flick off of it...

Earlier this summer the blooms came and went, but these last five arrived after the first frost on our acre and they were stunning in spite of being slightly touched around the edges...

Following my bliss through a camera lens...

It's occurred to me that I haven't done much painting this past year (I have been house painting, as meditative as that can be, it's not the same!) I'm still recovering from the nerve pain of the Shingles that I came down with back in April (yes, STILL) so being on pain killers all the time is making me feel a bit dull at times, but I try not to complain - I'm a tough old girl, so I work around it. I'm trying to remember the last painting I made, but recall that it wasn't really that good - I was feeling a bit tapped out at that time. My contribution to the 2014 Sketchbook Project was my "big project" at the tail end of 2013 that overlapped into the early days of 2014. I loved it so much, it was hard to part with it. I just signed up for the 2015 Project, so I'm very excited about that! I'm a little stuck on which theme to select so I'll have to think about it. It's a fun thing to do, I look forward to it every year...I highly recommend it for anyone to do it...link here: https://www.sketchbookproject.com/

I can't say that I haven't been creative at all, I've been taking a lot of pictures with my SONY NEX-7 that I bought with money from the sale of four paintings two years ago...my being a photographer is another part of me that I've been revisiting using digital cameras - the Fuji A900 point n' shoot was a fine little camera to start with (such a simple little thing, I love it! I recently bought another one to keep in reserve should this one ever die.) I haven't been in a darkroom processing film since college, even tho' my dad had a darkroom in the basement at home, I didn't follow through on the invitations to use it...yes, I learned photography at home from my father. It was his hobby, and he spent a long time gathering what he needed to take photographs and to develop them; very often, he used my bedroom closet for threading the film into the reel for the developing tank. Later, when he finally built the darkroom in the basement, he had a place to go (his "man cave") and long ago, when I was very sick with rheumatic fever, he gave me something to do when I was bored and unable to go outside to play with my friends. I was always a sponge, looking and absorbing the world—so, seeing it through the lens of a camera was a new way to look at everything I saw. Once I learned the basic mechanics, I used it intuitively, while my father fiddled with light meters and followed the directions to the letter. 

My father, was a quiet and patient man with an incredible sense of humor, and an awesome laugh, when he passed away on July 13, 2014, I lost the physical person who had taught me so much, but his spirit continues to live on, especially every time I pick up my camera, which now has the strap from his camera attached to it. Clearing out his darkroom has been a very personal moment in my life. I miss him very much. For now, I'm following my bliss while pursuing the images I find through the lens...

Nightshade

The Weeds

Natural Arrangement

Birch bark

Delicate Lace

Sunbeams

Morning light in the barn

Mullein

Sunflower

Knots and Layers...

I've been learning Lightroom on a 30 day free trial...having fun with it...some were worked on through old Photoshop 6...half of which I still know nothing about so my digital potential is not yet explored, but I prefer to just dabble for now...

Recording Bliss...

I can't help it, I love old rusty metal and peeling paint...all the things my Fred says when he sees it, only makes him think about the stuff he has to fix around here...true that, but I love the random patterns of cracked and peeling paint...our old barn is in need of a fresh coat of paint, so before we attack the decay and shedding, I pulled out my camera to capture some of the beauty that I see...

A few things I've looked at through the lens...

A thin line of sunshine

Hostas

Jonquil bulbs

The bottom of a rusty bucket

Rusty things...dang they're pretty

Dead burdock leaf

Peony with morning dew

Poor dead bird.

Peony

One of my Father's tools that I've acquired.

Wee Elizabeth...my bucket of sunshine!

Looking up at the summer mist in the pine trees

It was looking at me, waving...so I had to take its picture...

What's missing in this picture is, Max...I miss my old dog very much....

I'm in a looking phase...a thinking phase...I'm accumulating a digital sketchbook of my visual life. I'm also editing one of my novels that's been a work in progress since I scratched out the first lines in the year 2000. I'm following my bliss...