Studio de la Paloma Blog

2006-12-31T07:25:00.000-06:00

For the last day of the year 2006 I thought I'd do a big update. In the last two days, I've been able to get to the studio and put in several hours on my painting. Here we go.

It's difficult to see, but in this picture, I have painted the waterfall on the left and painted over Neptune on the bottom left because she will be coming out of the mist from the waterfall. I will overpaint parts of her to bring her out.

The next two pictures are the Planet Uranus as I begin to add color to his jacket and after he is filled in with color. Understand that this is just the under painting. All these characters will have more detail as the painting progresses.

Moving below the waterfall, here's a detail of Neptune as I'm beginning to bring her out of the "mist".

In the next photo, you can see the Moon between the waterfall and the rainbow has been filled in. "Moon" is not in the Moon yet. Jupiter has color in his guitar and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is gold.

There you have it as the year closes out. Still missing are the planets Saturn and Pluto. After they are placed, then I'll add the details and all the stars and nebulae.

Happy New Year!

Venus Gets a Dress

2006-11-19T20:05:00.000-06:00

Today, I gave Venus a pink cloud gown, painted Mars' trumpet, which you can barely see in this shot, detailed Mercury a bit, also hard to see here. I forgot to take a close up picture because I was talking to one of the other artists at the time -- distracted.

You can see, I roughed in Jupiter (on the rainbow). I still haven't decided on how to handle Saturn. I've got a couple of ideas but not sure which way I'll go with him. I need to go to a music store and look at a saxaphone from different angles.

By the time I get back to this painting after Thanksgiving, it should be dry enough to work on Uranus's waterfall and create the mist for Neptune. I hope so anyway. I used Viridian for her dress and Irridescent White mixed with Titanium White. Those colors may take some time to dry.

All in all, it was a good two days of painting.

Neptune Emerges

2006-11-18T19:58:00.000-06:00

I'm having fun now! Got some painting done today. Here is a full size view with Neptune (lower far left panel) filled in. She will have to dry before I can paint the mist around her. Also, this is just the under painting. I'll be building her up along with the others after they are all in the picture.

Tomorrow, I will work on Venus and I'm not sure what else I'll paint at this point, but I'm gallery sitting from 11 to 4, so I'll have plenty of time. I also have another "tangle" painting to finish, so maybe I'll work on that. I also want to add some panels for displaying my paintings in my real studio area at Main Street Art Works.

At the left is a close-up of Neptune playing the flute, Mercury playing a keyboard (not finished), Venus (not finished) singing, and Mars holding a trumpet (not finished) and directing the musicians.

Actual Progress

2006-11-12T20:06:00.000-06:00

Two things: I’ve been working on the canvases and I remembered to bring my camera.

In the first picture, I enlarged Jupiter. He’s the planet sliding down the rainbow. After I got these canvases to Main Street Art Works in Hilbert WI, where I’ve moved my studio, I had enough room to stand back to get a good look at everything. I could see that Jupiter (the largest planet) was not large enough.

In the second picture, I began painting the small planets, Mercury and Venus. Then I got curious about Mars and how he’d look with the others, so I got out the red paint and worked on him.

What I’m trying to accomplish in this layout is
1. a subtle Nautilus spiral using the postures of the planets to create the arch of the spiral and
2. preserve their personalities from the original set of individual planet portraits and
3. have them relate to each other as they play music. (What am I, nuts?)

In the third picture, I’ve painted the blue night sky, using almost a whole tube of French Ultramarine. I still have to get Saturn and Pluto in there.

Oh, get this. In today’s Sunday paper, I came across a headline “Pluto discussion at LU”. LU is Lawrence University, a local private liberal arts university in Appleton WI. I get all excited because poor Pluto has been down graded to a dwarf planet, knocking him out of the big 9. I’m thinking I could get some great information. The article begins “Lawrence University astrophysicist Megan Pickett sorts through the controversy surrounding Pluto’s recently down-graded status . . . .” The article is going along just fine until I read “A self-proclaimed ‘Pluto hater’ who has long argued against planetary status for the tiny sphere.” Pluto hater! PLUTO HATER!!!! What kind of talk is that for an astrophysicist? How can smart people be so dumb? What is the point of hating a chunk of ice in the sky? Don’t let me get started on useless uses of negative emotions. But, I digress.

I have plenty of room for Saturn and Pluto on the canvas. I needed to get rid of that large white area in order to see how the layout would change and to see what I need to do next.

Class dismissed.

Descriptions of the Planets

2006-10-07T06:25:00.000-05:00

I am in no way an astrologer or an astronomer. I'm simply fascinated with the night sky. My Night Sky project is a combination of astrology, the study of celestial bodies on the influence of human affairs, and astronomy, the science that deals with the material universe beyond the earth’s atmosphere. And, think about it. Astrology came before astronomy.

Back to my night sky fascination for a bit. Speaking mere mortal to mere mortal, do we really know what goes on in the night sky? It's dark out there. What if, when we close our little eyes and go to sleep, the planets leave their rotations and get together for a jazz jam session? Imagine the fun they are having! My painting is all about the question, "what if?" What if we woke up, looked out and saw it the planets playing jazz in the night sky? What would that look like?

My images of the planets were derived from the astrological descriptions of Susan Miller in her book “The Year Ahead 2004” (so you see I’ve been working on this project for a time now). I meditated on each description until I could begin to see, in my mind’s eye, an image of the planet and which instrument the planet would play. I wanted to intuit everything in the paintings. These are the descriptions I worked from.

Moon
Rules your private life, especially your home. Feminine in nature, rules how you perceive women. Rules your history, your background, emotional development, and your ability to get in touch with your feelings. Drives your deepest feelings, the fine-tuning of your character, instinct, intuition, emotions and reactions. Rules the stomach and the breasts.

Mercury
Little planet. Messenger, communicator, non-emotional, rational, objective thought. Quickly moving, flexible, responsive, and adaptable. Disburses information. Rules perception, language, writing, editing, research, speaking, learning experience, and assessment of data. Rules telecommunications, computing, software, electronic gadgets, mail, shipping, couriers and transportation. Also rules sibling relationships, maps, letters, travel plans, appointments, roadways, vehicles, advertising, publishing, sales and public relations. Close to the sun.

Venus
Rules affections, heart, love life and pleasure. Feminine. Also rules gifts, beauty, adornment and art. Governess of all that is beautiful. Venus is alluring, magnetic and receptive, never aggressive. Uses charm instead of force. Can be seen as hedonistic, not deeply thoughtful, ethical or moral. Like Mercury, stays close to Sun. Brings opportunities to hear music, eat good food, enjoy a beautiful perfume, appreciate a fine wine or see a great art exhibit.

Mars
Energizes other planets. Aggressive, assertive, forceful, energetic, competitive and daring. The Red Planet governs the whole spectrum of masculine elements from sex to war. (Warrior Planet) Known for its courage, passion, strength and stamina. Governs sharp instruments, fire and anything combustible. Mars allows you to keep progressing even when the going gets rough.

Jupiter
Planet of good fortune. Rules wealth and financial or material gain. Brings vision, faith, optimism, loyalty, justice confidence and wisdom. Paints a broad picture and makes you think big. Physically larger than all the planets combined. The expansive planet – The Great Benefactor. Allows us to philosophize and find a higher meaning or purpose. Encourages reflection, study, and attainment of higher education. Inspires us to travel far and wide.

Saturn
Planet of concentration, permanence, tangible rewards, tenacity, ambition and productivity. Also rules caution, delay, constriction, limitation, responsibility, rules and regulations, pain, fear, authority, discipline, control and denial (task master planet). Without Saturn we would have chaos. Saturn forces us to confront reality. Saturn is cold and icy. A great teacher. Brings maturity and teaches us the value of patience and sacrifice. Rules the base structure of everything from teeth and bones to organizational hierarchy of a company. Governs historical, artistic and archeological artifacts.

Uranus
Rules surprises and all things unexpected, the future and new technology, all that is unimagined and yet to come. The father of electricity. Rules creativity and scientific genius. Innovative, unpredictable, resourceful, imaginative, idiosyncratic and experimental. Uranus’ job is to break rules and demolish established patterns or structures, creating sudden – even radical change. Works in sudden ways and is called The Great Awakener. Gives strong impulse for rebellion, independence, even shock. Exciting and liberating. Will overturn anything traditional or orthodox that it deems has outlived its usefulness. Produces quick, liberating results, blending fact with intuition in its quest to discover universal truths. Considered the higher octave of intellectual Mercury, strongly objective and brainy with no emotional side.

Neptune
The planet of inspiration. The higher octave of Venus, Neptune brings beauty to a higher, more spiritual level. Holds sway over dreams, the subconscious, illusions, fantasies and all things magical and enchanting. Intensifies intuition and teaches us to be deeply compassionate. Asks us to sacrifice for the greater good or for love of another. Refines, purifies and cleanses any visitors. Cannot bear coarseness. Gets us in tune with subtlety and increases the artistic side of one’s personality. Neptune rules all visual communication such as photography, movies, ballet and other dance arts, music, painting and poetry. Rules the sea and all other bodies of water. Governs rain, ice and liquids of all kinds including beverages and alcohol. Rules drugs – those that make us suffer and those that makes us well. Known as the Planet of Mist. Makes us want to escape the mundane, everyday reality and enter a more ideal, heavenly state. Urges us to excel and reject limitations.

Pluto
Rules transformation. Father of the Phoenix as it rises from the ashes. Symbol of rebirth. Governs the act of ultimate survival in the never-ending cycles of beginnings and endings. Catalyst for change and metamorphosis cannot be overemphasized. Intensifies and strengthens any sector or planet if touches. Rules obsessive behavior, taboos and compulsions, even crises. Rules fundamental issues including life and death, the ultimate transformation of energy. Rules all that is hidden, unseen or buried, including secrets, undercover work, strategic planning and even the roots of plants. Drives the unearthing or unmasking of that which is concealed.

Goings on in the Night Sky

2006-09-17T19:07:00.000-05:00

I'm going to let you follow my progress as I work on my second installment of the planets playing jazz in the night sky, entitled "Midnight at the Moonlight Lounge".

On the first set of 9 paintings, each planet is in its own 24 x 24 inch square. (See website.)

In this work in progress, there are 6 canvases that make up the 6' x 8-3/4' mural. The canvas sizes are based on the Fibanocci numerical sequence of 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, etc. My canvas sizes are (square) 9, 9, 18, 27, 45, 60 inches.

I had an artist-carpenter-canvas maker build the stretchers because they had to be precise. If the dimensions were off, they wouldn't fit together and I had to have the rectangle (the outside edges) perfect or it would look awful. Lucky for me, this guy is a perfectionist. He had to stretch the canvas around the stretchers so the corners didn't have any bulk. To get these all to fit together, he had to complete the two 9" squares, bolt them together and measure the exact dimension to get his measurement for the 18" square, then bolt the 9s and 18 together and measure to get the dimension for the 27" square and on and on. As these things were getting larger and larger, he took it upon himself to build me an adjustable easel so I can raise and lower the whole unit depending on where I'm painting. I'm glad he thought of that because I didn't and I was beginning to wonder how I was going to paint at the bottom edge.

It's difficult to see everything that is going on in the photo right now, but it will become clearer as I begin to fill it in. Not all of the planets have made an appearance on the canvase yet. Some of them are still deciding where they want to go and how they want to look. Prima donna planets -- who knew?

Idle Time

2006-09-04T19:54:00.000-05:00

It's the end of the Labor Day Weekend and the end of "idle time" . . . for now.

Idle time is a necessary time not only for rejuvenation, but also for creativity, so says Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book Creativity, Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. (Good book. He’s explaining creativity to me.)

And, I believe it. I certainly have experienced times of clearer understanding and have had flashes of enlightened thinking over creative problems when I have let go and allowed myself to relax. There is nothing that can compare to a “get-a-way” weekend when you can mentally get away, too.

One of my very favorite ways of enjoying idle time is to bathe my mind in the creativity of good music. Around here, jazz fests are popular over Labor Day Weekend. Man, I love sitting in a park with a couple hundred people having a good time watching a bandstand crammed with jazz musicians whose bodies are totally involved with the music they are making. The music is so unifying. We are all one. It glues our souls together.

I believe idle time, when you are fully focused on something other than your project, allows your problem-solving, rational-thinking, critical-analyzing thoughts to rest, to turn off for a while. It’s like in the movies when the story is building and building and then the violins begin to play and everyone relaxes and the scenery becomes greener, the sky bluer, the leading actors become even better looking and you in the audience feel your muscles, that you didn’t even know were tense, begin to relax. Relax and just be. Be there.

Then, pop, poppity pop. New neurons are firing. Or maybe it’s the old ones, but the corrosion cracked off. Whatever. You’ve got a solution or new path to get to a solution and you feel great.

I love idle time. Vital idle time.

It's Your Job

2006-08-26T11:25:00.000-05:00

From Spending by Mary Gordon, page 277

"The moment you finish a painting is the death of hope. The death of possibilities. You've sent it out into the world. . . .

". . . If you don't saturate the canvas with everything you saw, if you haven't used all your skill to create that impossible congruence of form and vision, then it simply won't be in the world. It's possible not to care about that, to say that the world doesn't need your vision, that there's more than enough expression, God knows, even about beauty, in the world already. But if, through some accident, you feel the urgency of making that connection between your vision and its form, if you feel that, however superfluous a job it is, it's your job, you simply have to do it as well as you can, attending to every line and surface, and then to the way they all relate. You absorb your inevitable sense of failure. And then you say: it's finished. There's nothing more for me to do."

Two Books

2006-08-20T20:27:00.000-05:00

While I was on vacation last week I read two books, novels, about the art world.

The first one, Spending by Mary Gordon, is about a woman artist who is a respectfully successful painter in NYC. She meets a man who offers to be her muse. He is rich and pays for everything. He replaces her salary from her teaching job at a girls school so she can quit and give all her time to her painting. He buys her an apartment with lots of windows, a terrific view and great light where she can paint and he lets her use his summer home in Cape Cod as her own. He only uses it when she allows him to come there. If she needs to go to Rome to see paintings in museums, they go. Whatever she needs to do to create her paintings he gives her.

I'm not writing a book review by any means. I'm enjoying the fantasy. What if? How luscious.

The second book was The Art Fair by David Lipsky. This is about a woman artist, a mother of two young sons, who breaks into the New York art scene and is adored by her gallery owner because her sales are off the charts only to be dropped when her personal life interferes with the creation of her paintings. It's a twenty year climb for her to get back into the acceptance of her once adoring gallery owner's graces. The book is partly autobiographical as the story is based on the author's artist mother's experience.

While this book didn't have the fun flair of "what if," it did have the example of perseverance and tenacity it takes to keep pounding the pavement and sending out slides. The mother artist in this story always kept producing work and kept pushing to improve year after year. I was really taken with that. While the story was full of sizing up the art world and how to behave to certain people in this made up art scene, it did make the point of her single mindedness in always improving, always asking herself how she could make her paintings better and then making her paintings better.

Both books offered the light, relaxing vacation reading that I was looking for. And when I got home, there was an acceptance in the mail to an art exhibit I really, really wanted to get in. It was a great vacation.

Quote

2006-08-12T09:11:00.000-05:00

Life is pure adventure and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art.
-- Maya Angelou

Twenty Reasons

2006-07-30T09:11:00.000-05:00

In Twyla Tharp's book The Creative Life, she takes an idea from Leonardo da Vinci who, in his notebooks, makes lists of twenty "aspects of rivers and currents he intended to study". She suggests as an exercise in thoroughness to write "twenty things you want to know about" whatever it is you plan to approach.

I'm doing this in hindsight since I've begun my Tangle series. Here's my list of 20 things I like about tangles.

1. The toy is fun to play with.
2. Invented by a sculptor.
3. It never makes a straight line.
4. I can "pose" it.
5. Creates a 3D calligraphic line.
6. Painting it feels a lot like painting the human figure.
7. Creates shadow patterns that are different from the image.
8. Looks like something that explains something else.
9. It's colorful.
10. It keeps the eye moving around the image.
11. It keeps the mind busy.
12. It looks like you could crawl into it.
13. Has multiple connotations.
14. Produces more ideas on how to represent it on canvas.
15. It challenges my ability to push the idea.
16. It's different from my usual subject matter.
17. It's objective.
18. The background color is subjective.
19. It's contemporary.
20. I like it.

What's in a Word?

2006-07-23T13:47:00.000-05:00

On the whole creative vs. innovative thing. That's just my take on the words. The word "creative" used to mean more than it does now, in my estimation. It's gotten watered down by kit crafters putting together someone's mass produced idea of an art object and receiving praise with the well-worn phrase, "Oh, you're so creative!"

To me, the word "creative" doesn't mean the dictionary definition "resulting from originality of thought, expression, etc.; imaginative" any more. Whereas, the word "innovative" denotes (again to me), something new and exciting, a change from the established, an idea tweaked, pushed, moved forward even just a little bit. As another artist refers to it, "a visual speed bump." Something that makes you slow down and take a second look.

Jenny Saville's paintings, for instance. She's a British artist who does huge paintings of large figures, usually women. She took painting the nude to a new level. She went huge with huge. There are many more elements to her paintings that make them innovative, but even just that one element was the result of innovative thinking. We can take one scale and change it to make it different. We've all learned that in one class or another. However, she took it way further. Her paintings are several feet by several feet. The woman has to use a scaffold to paint!

Here's more on Jenny Saville, the bravest, gutsiest paint-pusher this side of Lucian Freud.

The Medium and the Medium

2006-07-22T11:18:00.000-05:00

In the summer of 1994, I went to a woman of psychic talents with two questions. At the time, I had a green boot box (bigger than a shoe box) with tubes of oil paints that I had not touched in 10 years. My questions were, Should I paint? Or, should I throw the paints away?

That might seem like one question with two parts, but, to me, they were entirely two questions because the answers could be life changing. This or that?

Her answer was, "Oh, yes, you must paint. You are an artist. You have been an artist in many life times."

Well, I didn't feel like an artist and I denied being an artist and we went back and forth about it and then she introduced me to my spirit art guide. Whoa. OK, now I was feeling like I was floating in salt water, but that's another story.

My point is, I opened the green box of oil paints and I began to begin. To back up a moment, the paints were left over from classes I had taken at the university in my town. I had only ever painted in a class setting. I wasn't the child who drew all the time. I didn't "think" with a pencil and was constantly making pictures. Actually, I "think" in words and have to force myself to "picture" the words in order to make a painting. I have to be able to "see" it before I can paint it.

So taking this green box off the shelf was a really big deal. I decided I wasn't going to take a class to get back into painting. I told myself I had plenty of instruction (or was it my guide talking?) and it was time to let the medium (paints, brushes, etc., not the psychic) be the teacher.

Back then, I was totally terrified. It was lots of things. The responsibility, the fear of failure, the fear of success, the "what if"s, the blank canvas, the unknown. Looking back, it's like, geez it wasn't heart surgery, but it was huge for me then.

I learned some important stuff:

Set up a space for your art. I ended up finding a space to rent.
Be in your art space every day. Even if you're not creating something physically, you are creating something psychically.
You can be your own teacher. Work with the materials and pay attention to what they tell you. Yellow paint will tell you something different than blue paint. They are as different as yellow and blue.
Trust what you "hear". Your guide/s are talking to you. If it's different from what you'd say, then it's them taking.
Take a chance -- do what they say. Some call it experimenting. I call it listening.
There are no mistakes. Everything is a next step.
Be grateful. Love what you are doing, making, being.
You'll get better. Better and better. Better than ever.

Go to Your Nearest Gallery -- Now!

2006-07-16T08:44:00.000-05:00

The Sunday newspaper suppliment, USA Weekend, in a special health report in partnership with Prevention, point out "A Swedish study found that people who viewed and talked about art had lower blood pressure, and they were happier." Hmmm. Does that apply to people who make art?

Get the Idea

2006-07-12T21:23:00.000-05:00

In the July 12 NY Times, Holland Cotter has a review of Atta Kim's long-exposure photographs. Mr. Kim is Korean and a photographer and making his NY solo debut in a show at the International Center of Photography. It's a very insightful review and I encourage you to read it.

To me, the fascinating points Mr. Cotter brings out are these: First, he says Mr. Kim takes an old technique and uses new subjects. Secondly, he says Mr. Kim pushes the boundaries of a traditional method. Quoting Mr. Cotter, "Mr. Kim's work is more distinctive for it's ideas than for its technology."

Yes! Yes! Yes! This is exactly what I've been pushing to anyone who will listen. It's all about the idea. You can have beautiful technique and craftmanship and still bore your audience if the idea is not there.

Getting the idea is the big step the artist takes to go from "creative" to "innovative." You can feel the move into innovative thinking. Thinking is a brain exercise. When you pump up that muscle you can feel the difference. Your ideas will be fuller, pithier. It might happen that you won't be completely comfortable with your new idea, but you just know you've got something. Now your "intuition" is guiding you to believe.

Having said all that, I am reminded of the old adage, "we teach what we most need to learn." I may have been typing "you" this and "you" that, but what I've been saying, I've been saying to myself.

The Lizard's Tail

2006-07-10T22:32:00.000-05:00

Cynthia Sommer writes a wonderful essay on Intuition on the "This I Believe" page of the NPR website. Here's the link: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5545896

Creativity and the Good Listener

2006-07-09T11:24:00.000-05:00

For the better part of this morning I've been working on layouts for my next three paintings. In doing so, it occurred to me that many of my ideas have geminated from bits of conversations that may or may not have been about art, specificially, but, more to the point, have sparked an idea that resulted in a painting or even developed into a series of paintings. And thinking further, it hasn't been strictly conversations but also music lyrics, book passages, and whatever else has come my way along the communication highway I'm traveling.

I must get back to what I'm doing, which is the beginning of three, 30 inch square paintings focusing in on a close-up of an object and the shadow it casts. With any luck, the paintings will be more exciting than the description.

Music as Muse

2006-07-03T21:36:00.000-05:00

Music enlivens the artistic juices. Music entices the brush to dance. Music flirts, winks and seduces the image to appear on the canvas. Music sets and keeps the pace.

Music is so important to me in my creation of art. What I listen to while I'm working influences what I'm working on, therefore, I must be careful in my selection of music for the painting. I don't mean I'm painstakingly careful in my selection. I just mean I wouldn't choose, for the most part, anything in the "easy listening" catagory.

I like music with a strong, driving beat, like a pounding rain. Soak me in the sound. Vibrate every cell in my body. Shake me. Move me. Thrill me.

What happens a little later is that I'm not even conscious of the music. The music becomes the muse. Now painting is vibrating every cell in my body. I'm conscious and unconscious at the same time. I don't feel my body. I'm alive inside the paint. I exist on several planes. I travel. I commune. I'm drugged. I'm drunk. I can't explain it. I'm different. I'm fluid. I am so in love!

So what about you? What happens when you create? Does music play a part in your creation of art?

Intuition and Possibilities

2006-06-29T18:31:00.000-05:00

I think intuition can take us seemlessly into more possibilities. When I'm stumped and ruminating about how to fix something or how to move to the next step, I have to remind myself to ask. Put it in the form of a question, then, wait for the answer. Sometimes I argue over the answer, but I always get an answer.

So who am I talking to? Sometimes I say it out loud and sometimes I just think the question. So, who am I talking to? There. I put the question out and let's see what answer I receive.

"All of us." That's the answer I received. Who's "us?"

"Joe, Pat, Harriett -- you want names? We can give you names, but more to the point is that we are your guides. We are here for you, Kate, and anyone who finds this message. We are always ready to help with whatever you need, or think you need help with. We're just hanging around waiting for you to ask."

Reasons for this Blog

2006-06-27T17:43:00.000-05:00

I decided to go ahead and blog (that's such a funny word and it kind of sounds like you're spewing words --BLOG -- I guess so!) because I wanted to talk to myself with a purpose and if anyone was "listening" they could pop in for a visit with their ideas on creativity and how it all comes to be. You know, that driving force that pushes, pulls, prods, then starts with the yelling and shouting when we don't heed the gentle nudges to get down to it and do what we do -- in my case, paint. So, you're invited to share your thoughts here. Welcome to Studio de la Paloma!

I read a “This I Believe” article by Loudon Wainwright III on creativity on the NPR website from June 19, 2006. He speaks of creativity as a mystery. He does what I’ve been trying to do for some time now, to find a way to speak about inspiration without sounding hokey, sappy, weird or strange. Here’s what he says.

"When I write what I consider to be a good song, when I realize it's going to hang together, when I somehow manage to get it into the boat, so to speak, I invariably find myself looking upwards and thanking something or even, dare I say it, Someone. . . .

"I believe in the power of inspiration, in the mysterious gift of creation -- creation with a small 'c' that is -- creation as in one's work, hauling in the day's catch. When I write a song, I'm happy for a few days and it's not just because I've been reassured that I still have a job, though that's certainly part of it. Mostly I'm happy, I think, because I've experienced a real mystery. I haven't the slightest idea how it happened or where or from whom or what it came. I'd prefer not to know."

I, too, believe in the power of inspiration. I depend on it. Inspiration is so much better than my own ideas. It’s exciting, exhilarating and feels so right. That’s how I know the difference.

Creativity is a subject I’ve long been interested in. I think there is Advanced Creativity called Innovation. I think innovation requires one to go deeper. Look further. Think harder. Question more. Push the obvious out of the way. When the new thought becomes familiar, do the process again.

Along with Inspiration there is Intuition. That thing in the creative process that you just put in or make because it feels right or you feel compelled to do without knowing why. That happens to me when I’m painting. I can remember putting in a checkerboard floor pattern in a painting of a mother and her daughter. At the time, I thought it was because I liked black and white checkerboard floor patterns. After the painting was finished and hanging in a show someone asked me if the floor asked the question, “Who was going to make the next move?” Maybe. It certainly worked with my thoughts as I painted the piece. Inspiration? I think so.

The Muse: Another “inspirational” something or other. Usually referred to as the feminine inspiration of a creative male, but why not the inspiration to the creative female? Like a girlfriend. Ya. Hey, Girlfriend! Whatcha got for me?

Getting Started

2006-06-26T18:57:00.000-05:00

Ok, here's me sticking my big toe in cyberspace to get the temperature and see how I like it.

As an artist, I'm an oil painter, I'm frequently asked to write an Artist Statement about a painting or a series of paintings. It always seems like that's a sure way to freeze my thoughts. Sometimes I'm really lucid about my work and I'm hoping to use this space to capture those thoughts, and, generally write about the creative thought process.