Inspiration from nature and going with the flow

I really do love lichen...I collected pieces of it off of tree bark when I was a kid, it just looked sooooooo...cool.

Ruffles and lace, so fragile...beautiful...

I'm sure some people would say "eeuu, gross..." and some people would think seeing this stuff growing anywhere in abundance is a scourge and needs to be eliminated because it's not supposed to be there because it's somehow bad...to me, it's life.

This cool blue patch is on a chunk of wood in our yard...we had cut a tree down several years ago and I've created a wild flower garden around the large rotten parts that were left behind along with the stump, and I've been admiring the various forms of fungus growing there for years, and this particular piece that had been once shaped as a chair (and even used as one while it lasted) is now fostering a small pine tree that had doubled in size this year, from the death of one tree comes life, I love having this part of my garden...

This sort of thing inspires my art...this is where some of my shapes and flow comes from...

Fluid Improvisation, 2007
pencil drawing on paper, approx. 12 x 9

My pencil just rambled everywhere in this one...it's a bit chaotic and the eye really has no particular place to rest in it...which I don't mind really, I like to find my own way around sometimes anyway, I don't like it when someone approaches me with: "Can I help you?" Look, if I want your help, I'll ask for it...go away...please...let me look around and enjoy myself without the pressure...I guess that's why I was such a lousy student...I always baffled my teachers, I just preferred flailing around on my own working it out... "just let me do it!" I wanted ownership of what I did, I didn't want someone to come along and finish it for me just because I asked for help, which someone did once...they just made a mark on my picture to "show me how" and I threw it away because it was no longer mine...the proper thing to do would have been to use a clean piece of paper and showed me how on that...oy, some egos are just intolerable...




This little one came from my small daily sketchbook where I fiddle with my pencil while waiting in waiting rooms of doctor's offices or waiting for my Fred to pick me up from work...it too has that chaotic spirit to it, doing it's own thing that I love so much...

What I see...

This is a photo I took of a rock in my garden, just a random old thing, crusty with layers of minerals, its pedigree a geological history from way back to who knows how long ago, and here it is on my acre enjoying the light of day on one of my Fred's creations in the garden...it's one of my favorite rocks...it's not "a sparkly", I'm sure most people would've overlooked it, especially when it was covered with dirt...but my Fred and I both agree that it's a very cool rock with lots of stuff going on in it...


It's stuff like this that inspires me to draw, things like rocks and bark, leaves and flowers, mushrooms, moss, and lichens are so beautiful to me, their patterns free flowing...gorgeous...

Wandering Ripples, January 26, 2005
pencil drawing, approx. 3 x 7

Night Shadows Suite

Mixed media experimental fun...Night Shadows Suite

Bristol paper, 11 x 14, impasto acrylic layer, heavy handed graphite scrubbed over dried acrylic (kneaded eraser lift here and there as needed), pencil drawing, and then watercolor/acrylic wash splatter...

The Eighth

This one has a little bit of everything happening in it...a pale wash of gray, pencil, and colored pencil...particularly that gorgeous tuscan red pencil...love it...
After I finished it, I had to give it a couple of days to look at it before I could decide which way was up...arrgh...but I settled for this way after about a week...it just seemed right...

Graphitint and pencil sketches

These are two small sketches from the sketchbook I carry with me every day, I doodle around in it to pass the time while I'm waiting for my Fred to pick me up from work, or I'll doodle on my lunch hour at work...tinted graphite experimentation on top of pencil, add water, and presto it's a different drawing...I like the red one best...

Untitled sketch, [indigo], June 29, 2007 pencil and tinted graphite approx. 3 x 3 inches

untitled sketch, [one of my favorite colors from the Graphitint box, "Port"], June 10, 2007, pencil and tinted graphite, approx. dimensions 3 x 3 inches

Geology

Digging deep into the geology of my drawing history...but not too far back...just looking into that sweet spot that I found almost four years ago when I finally started drawing the things that I saw in my head...and all around me...and my pencil and hand began to agree that this is how it's going to be...




Here's a little one that I made back in 2004...just feeling around on the paper surface with my pencil, letting it roam, doing things that felt right, that felt natural...keeping them small, this is only 2 x 5 or something like that, it's a little one...





And this one...I made ridiculously small, 1 x 1 inch square...just to say I did it, you see...


There's a dragon in this one...





This one is untitled, but all were made around the same time in December and January 2004-2005...


Fire...

Dusk...




Stained Glass...


Just a few little things...it's funny how they came about really...I had just about given up on this part of my life because I was so focused on writing books...but the pencil gave me something else to think about...I started doodling around on scraps of paper while I was thinking, and my doodles turned into this little batch of drawings in a sketch book that a friend gave to me as a present...it was the right size, the right shape, the paper had a nice texture...and then I just couldn't stop...

Sold!

Late Summer Bronze, August 23, 2007

This is a mixed media piece, watercolor, colored pencil, and pencil on Stonehenge paper...much of it accidental and random...when I finished it, I never thought it would sell, but it was just sold at the Contemporary Gallery this week (you can knock me over with a feather, I've sold three pieces!)

I believe my little drawing has gone to a good home, I met the buyers before they bought it and thought they were very nice people...







And I also sold this one from the Celestial Spring series: Green Spring which has already been pictured in a previous post not too long ago...another piece gone to a good home...







There's only one more week left of the Whimsy exhibition, it closes on August 1, and the gallery is gone forever...it was after all Temporary...

It's important to "play"

I can't stress enough how important it is to play around with medium and surface...and sometimes when it's not going well, to say "fuck it" and push it further...this little painting is on a piece of acid free mat board scrap that is approximately 3 x 2, so it's tiny...I made it on my lunch hour at work...sometimes I do this out of necessity, not just to create something, but to work out something, to put distance from work by "playing" solves lots of problems, clears the head of clutter...as you know, I have a thing for yellow...and I love purple and yellow together...I splashed and saturated, let dry, damn near gave up on it, then when the surface was at the right dampness (this takes practice to know just "when" to dip in again, I'm sorry that I can't really tell you "when", but trial and error is a fact of art making), I splashed and dashed some more and then walked away...I fooled about with it later after it was dry with some colored pencil at home, but decided to leave it...it was fine as is...it is what it is and I like it...


Do you remember this piece? River of Fallen Stars has sold at the Contemporary Gallery this week.
It's always bittersweet to sell a piece...especially one that is so close to my heart...they all are special during and after the creation process, but some of them are "favorites" and possess pieces of me that are deeply personal...but these pieces of me are elusive, it's pure creativity, it's emotional, it's spiritual...in spite of her busy surface where I struggled with process, deciding what to leave in, what to leave out, suffering through trial and error, there is peace there...it's like lying on a blanket in my yard and looking up at the Milky Way in the summer sky, looking for shooting stars, while listening to Beethoven's 9th in my head...this is my bliss on paper...it always amazes me how it gets there from here...

It's an honor to have someone part with their hard earned money to buy my artwork, and it is always my hope that the buyer will treasure the piece as much as I do, and more because they see something in there that belongs to them, they can read their bliss...

Broken points and grays

I've been trying to restrain my temptation to go dark in my recent work, I got into trouble with my sketchbook last night playing around with a 9B pencil and wound up back peddling with a kneaded eraser...not so much a disaster, but it isn't anything that will see wall space in an exhibition...this little one from my sketchbook is full of my delicate touch with the lighter range of pencils and then I fooled around with broken pencil tips to create little jagged marks that are plant like...like bits of seaweed in the swirls of water...

March Symphony, March 18, 2008

I love this little one...

I really do love it...it's done on a scrap of RIVES BFK, it's approx. 6 x 4 inches, and not a very straight cut one either... there's just something delightful about the flow of watercolor on that velvety surface...I just let it go about it's juicy business, bleeding and drying, then I touched into it with various pencils for some detail after it dried, but not a lot, I didn't want to over work it...

Whenever I see this one, it always startles my heart in a special way...I can't explain it, only that I love this little painting...

And of course, Beethoven had something to do with it...Piano Sonata No. 14 "Moonlight" in C sharp minor op. 27/2...


Moonlight, Adagio sostenuto, Number II, January 3, 2006