Thursday, July 10, 2014

Studio Music

My Messy Studio Table
Half of the battle of getting to work once I've finally made it to the studio (after getting caught up in distractions like cat feeding, email reading and the vortex of Facebook) is choosing the perfect soundtrack to complement my practice.

This usually involves scrolling through my iPad and not being in the mood for ANY of the 3,989 songs on there. Eventually I will hit on something intriguing that I haven't listened to over and over again, or find something that I have listened to over and over again but can't get enough of and the music and work will finally begin. No more excuses!

My playlist is eclectic. I am a punk rocker from way back but have gotten old and less angry so my musical choices are mellower these days. At the moment I am on an country-ish jag and am listening to the Avett Brothers, Gillian Welch and a couple of songs from the soundtrack of "Nashville," a TV show that is my current guilty pleasure, solely for the music I swear! Also on heavy rotation are: St. Paul and the Broken Bones, Fleet Foxes, Joy Division, Florence + the Machine, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, the Shins, Danger Mouse and Danielle Luppi, and when I need a serious pick me up, Wild Flag and Flogging Molly.

I can't imagine painting without musical accompaniment. Since I'm also a lapsed musician, it's like the best of both worlds. Now if I could also write while painting and singing, my head might explode!




Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Precise Women

Work in Progress and Electric Substations Behind
I've started a new series of paintings based on industrial scenes. There is an abandoned rice silo next to my studio that is my latest inspiration. A few years back, I did a series of electric substation paintings and I found all the mechanics and wires oddly intriguing, probably because I was looking at them from an artistic rather than a functional standpoint. I'm equally intrigued by industrial sites and rusty warehouses, and have been looking at the work of the "Precisionists" for inspiration. Precisionism was a painting movement in America from about 1915 to 1941. The best known Precisionist was Charles Sheeler, whose work I love, others include Charles Demuth, Ralston Crawford and Joseph Stella. What surprised me was that there were several female Precisionists as well including Elsie Driggs, Virginia Berresford, Imogen Cunningham, and most notably, Georgia O'Keeffe, before she moved on to her more famous organic themes. From what I've read, Elsie Driggs wasn't concerned about the politics of the time or the "masculinity" of her subject matter but rather the stylization and the shapes that could be found in industrial scenes. I can definitely appreciate that.

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Why Anyone?

Cool Looking Crepe Myrtles
The time after my first solo show has invoked what I imagine what most bands feel like after they release their first album. They have spent their lifetimes building up to that big break and once they have released the album and it's successful, all they hear is "when is your next album coming out?" and "what are you working on now?" While I didn't spend my lifetime preparing for my show, I was immersed in the series for three years. I went through the during the show publicity and chatting it up period, the post-show exhaustion period, the post-post show giddiness of "that was a really cool experience" period, and now I am in the experimenting, exploring and figuring out what am I going to do next period.

Life and its various curve balls have come at me while I have been working on ideas, sketches and studies. I have begun teaching at the Art League, which I love, and I've been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, which is just bullshit and has me an alternately stoic superwoman who isn't going to let a stupid disease stop me from doing anything to a bawling mess trying to pull it together so I can leave my car to go into the grocery store to buy a dozen eggs.

The good news is that this bullshit disease has been caught early and I'm not dying and it's chronic but treatable and it could be very much worse and I can still paint and draw with minimal pain and I know that I should be very grateful because other people are going through much worse shit than this, but all the rationalizing in the world doesn't stop the fact that I have to process this before I can move on. Don't worry, this will not turn into a "why me" or disease chronicle. Anyone who knows me knows that I don't give up easily or ever, so I'm sure that this will eventually register as just another minor blip on the radar. Right now though, it's fresh and I've gotta get it out so I can get back to painting those pretty pictures!