Mapping a Past...and a future

I have been working on a double secret painting that I may post latter on---when it's at a sharing point.....Today I delivered my work to Ross Gallery for the Mapping the Past exhibit. It is a sort of mini-retrospective of some work done between 1987 and 2006. It has been a strange and interesting ride reviewing all the old work, much of which I had to pull down from attic storage, thinking I would never show them again.

The two larger images on the postcard are older images, while the smaller ones are from the last couple of years. There are three different series in the show, but all the series are somewhat related. The two larger images represent the Underground Landscape series, which was influenced by strip mining in eastern Kentucky. The smaller images are a cross between Underground Landscapes and cellular images---particularly blood cell images relating to lupus or other autoimmunity diseases. Most of these images use oil, wax, sand and enamel on Arches paper or canvas. They are of all different sizes, but many of them are on 40x60" 1114lb. watercolor paper.

There is also another set of images that focus on roses; specifically, roses or flowers that have been given to me. The roses/flowers stand in for people in these images. They are also done on the 40x60" watercolor paper, so these rosebuds are the size of a head or larger. They create an interesting contrast to the landscape and cellular images.

So, I have been feeling no small amount of confusion in the studio in the past few weeks. Suddenly I have the summer to paint a little and nothing is good enough. But, looking at these images in the process of pulling together this show, I realize that there is much more to be said and done here and I think I can do it better than I did in the past. So, I thank Peggy for suggesting the show, and giving me the opportunity to see it all with a more objective eye at a time I really needed to believe in what I'm painting. Now my brain is busy with ideas and my fingers itch to get in there and get to work :-)

Little painting of St. Peter's

Reality check time! Of all the kinds of paintings I make, I suck the most with architectual paintings. Trust me, St. Peter's isn't nearly so crooked as it appears in this little study. I took a snapshot of the dome from the Vatican, while trekking the 19 million miles of hallway galleries to the Sistine Chapel.

I do love Rome, and the Vatican/St. Peter's is achingly lovely. Hmmm, what is most memorable about the Vatican and St. Peter's? Well, several things come to mind....the grounds are gorgeous, for one. The hallway galleries are not that exciting to me, which is a good thing, because the sea of people heading to the Sistine Chapel will sweep you along with them----it's as if they are in a horse race and cannot be distracted from the finish line. The Sistine is breathtaking. Mary pointed out to me that we tourists enter the Sistine with the dammed in Michelangelo's The Last Judgment....haha! So Christ sends the souls of the saved to heaven on the left, and cast the dammed to hell on the right....enter the tourists.

As all the dammed walk in to view the chapel, we hold our possessions and our arms close to our bodies, tilt our heads, and slowly turns circles, mouths agape as we drink in the ceiling. We sort of gently bounce off one another----like a slow motion pinball machine. If I were an installation artist, I would have fun with this imagery :-)

St. Peter's was also stunning....and I was so please I was able to receive communion while there. I wanted to go to the top of the dome, but felt it would take an act of God to get me there.

Little painting of St. Peters is now in private collection.

A flower made of wood

I love the idea that objects can transcend their materials and appear to be something totally different. I guess I get a childish sense of delight from this---and maybe more----an appreciation of mastery, I guess.

My mother gave me a set of whittled flowers last Christmas. I have forgotten the type of wood, but I have divided the group and have placed some in my studio. It seemed a natural thing to paint them with some left over paint on the palette. I like the way it stands tall. I have been wondering about the significance of shadows----like in Limbourg's Book of Hours, they signify a turn from preoccupation of the spiritual self to a consciousness of more earthly things. A cast shadow can tell so much---time of day, type of light---morning, afternoon, etc.

Back to transcending materials...while I appreciate it, I have no desire to create trompe l'oeil paintings. I love the surprises of paint too much to want to have complete control over it. Like when an edge appears unexpectedly. Or when the abstraction of brushstrokes is just pure fun.

I do enjoy painting realistically sometimes...there is a certain magic to making something look real. But it's that sense of play that keeps me coming back to the studio. The idea that I don't know what's going to happen, and sometimes my time there is spent mapping new territory.

Little paintings....

I am suffering from a short attention span, so I have begun working on some little paintings. I have always believed that more headway is made by working through these spells than thinking through them. So, without regard to the possibility that I may paint over them tomorrow...I am painting whatever catches my eye. I have no grand concept to push me in one direction or another....yet.

Chuck Close:"Inspiration is highly overrated. If you sit around and wait for the clouds to part, it’s not liable to ever happen. More often than not work is salvation."

This is a little 5x7" oil of a lovely tree that sits in the sloping front yard of my parents home in eastern Kentucky. I don't do many landscapes anymore, but what fun to push color around this little canvas, keeping things loose and working from dark to light. This afternoon I was listening to NPR do story on coal (link to the story at the bottom of this post), which provides 50% of the energy used in the US. I knew it used to be quite prevalent, but hadn't realized the country was still so dependent on it. There is a movement afoot in the government to make us even more dependent on coal. If this happens, the speaker (whose name I didn't catch), stated that eastern KY would become essentially an industrial wasteland. From my parents home, which sits on top of one of the highest peaks, the evidence of this is already visible. The photo at left is the view from my parents backyard. This section of the strip mine is slowly being reclaimed by vegetation and elk, but it is still an ugly scar on the vista. Twenty years ago I was in grad school in Knoxville, and I would come home to visit and stew over the scar being ripped into the landscape. Yes, I know the miners must feed their families, and the options are not all that plentiful in eastern KY. But, there had to be a better way. There still has to be a better way. In the late 80's I learned that land on many strip mines were not reclaimed after the mining was completed because it was cheaper to pay the fines than to reclaim the land. I don't know if this is still the case...I hope not.

But, what I've always understood is the incredible beauty of this land. It's a quiet, rugged, introspective kind of beauty that may be evident only to those connected to the space. I don't know. I'm not sure how objectively I see it, or if the nostalgia of childhood memories cloud my thinking. And I'm not sure that really matters in the great scheme of things anyway.

NPR Story on our dependence on coal:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11254947