Fly Away

Today I want to fly away,
(no thinking)
to rise,
(no planning)
to ride on a cool breeze;
(no worrying)

no thinking.
no planning.
no worrying.

Drop a bundle of regrets
into the deepest sea.

forget all boundaries.
just be.

today
I want to fly away.

Transformation 18 (state II): recycling

I'm doing some more of these small pieces, since they're what the gallery's selling right now. This is an old piece that I wasn't happy with; it had been put in the "scrap" pile. Sometimes old throwaways can spark new ideas. So I re-worked it, adding more things, subtracting others. These collage pieces are a great way to recycle things that don't work out, giving them a new "life". I've found that the oddest little bits of things can come in handy later on- you just never know. Of course, this does nothing at all for the organizational state of my studio!

Butterfly Girl (Little Mona Lisa)

This was another Photoshop exercise. I took this photo at a recent butterfly show at the Krohn conservatory. Unfortunately, it was a very dark and rainy day, so it turned out pretty grainy. But I liked the image because the girl had such a mysterious expression- an inscrutable smile, you could say. She reminded me of a young version of the Mona Lisa, so I wanted to see if I could fix the photo. I thought it would be cool, since it was grainy, to make it appear to be an old sepia print, with the butterfly in color to make it stand out more. I ended up calling my son, who guided me through the process of making a mask, etc., to accomplish this, which we finally did. Another problem was that the girl's face was at the edge of the frame, so there was a lot of unwanted space behind her. We were able to kind of blur this out and make it darker, but the yucky composition still bugged me, so I cropped it. My son said it was not "professional" to crop the frame, and that it was still too grainy. I had hoped to enter it in a photo contest, but because the quality isn't what it should be, I guess I'll just chalk it up to a learning experience. I still like it this way, though.

4 pieces sold!

I was happy to hear from the gallery that 4 of my pieces sold this past weekend. One couple bought 3, and then a woman came in wanting to buy 4(!), but there were only 2 left. she took one, but wants more, so the gallery owner has asked me for 6- 8 more pieces. So I ordered frames last night, and spent the day matting, with the help of my daughter. Anyway, here are some of the pieces that I'm going to take, as soon as the frames get here!

Time's Dance

Time's dance
is carved of stone and bone,

asleep,
dreaming in secret phrases,
once written, invisible
once spoken, silent

born of countless instants,
collected, gathered,
deposited
one by one, one upon another
by the flow of minutes, hours,
centuries

she sleeps
in silent stone
but once
she danced.

Gardening

I apologize for neglecting my blog for so long, but I've been too busy with my regular springtime activity, i.e. gardening. I love my flower garden, and consider planting and playing in the dirt to be a wonderful act of creativity. A garden is truly a living work of art.

Creativity is allowing oneself to make mistakes.
Art is knowing which ones to keep.
- Scott Adams



I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.
- Claude Monet

Take thy plastic spade,
It is thy pencil; take thy seeds, thy plants,
They are thy colours.
~William Mason, The English Garden, 1782



I have never had so many good ideas day after day as when I worked in the garden. ~John Erskine

Creativity is our true nature; blocks are an unnatural thwarting of a
process at once as normal and as miraculous as the blossoming
of a flower at the end of a slender green stem.
- Julia Cameron



Don't underestimate the therapeutic value of gardening. It's the one area where
we can all use our nascent creative talents to make a truly satisfying work of art.
Every individual, with thought, patience and a large portion of help from nature,
has it in them to create their own private paradise: truly a thing of beauty
and a joy for ever.
- Geoff Hamilton, Paradise Gardens



"The secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all
the details of daily life, and in elevating them to art."
- William Morris

Gardening is not a rational act. What matters is
the immersion of the hands in the earth, that
ancient ceremony of which the Pope kissing
the tarmac is merely a pallid vestigial remnant.
- Margaret Attwood



"Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts."
~ Rachel Carson

"Nothing is more the child of art than a garden."
-- Sir Walter Scott

Icarus Reborn

This is a piece that I finally finished after several re-workings. I think I washed the figure off and started over at least 3 times; hence, the title. I probably should have just given up, but I guess I'm not made that way. I'm very stubborn about certain things, which can be good or bad, depending on the timing and circumstances. I always tell my students, though, that perseverance is the key to success. As Einstein said, "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." There's a lot of perspiration in this piece, and I'm NOT re-working it again! (Even I have my limits.)

I think it has a very 'fairy tale' kind of feeling. Fairy tales were a favorite reading matter for me as a child, and the illustrations from those stories have had a substantial influence on my artistic expression. When I was growing up, I often drew princesses, knights, horses, and dragons, which I would then cut out and play with, creating my own imaginary world.

The story of Icarus has always fascinated me. Of course, you could get into some really deep and complicated psychological and archetypal analysis here, but I'll leave that to Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell. In many paintings of this subject, Icarus is seen falling into the ocean after flying too close to the sun, and my first version of this piece focused on that moment as well. But then I thought, why not go back to the point BEFORE he took flight, when any outcome was still possible? Why not; it's my imaginary world, isn't it? And so, Icarus is reborn, just at the moment of hope.