to study

Last summer a friend of mine gave me some simple advice about how to approach painting:

Take it easy, he said.

I was in a horrible mood, grumpy from a day of fighting with paint, so I did NOT want to hear it. I was determined to learn things the hard way. 

But of course he was right, and I think I am just now catching on. 

I used to feel too rushed to do a study for each portrait, and the result was that I would put more pressure on myself to get it right the first time -- ironically creating more work by incessantly "fixing" the places I'd messed up. 

Now I really see the value of the study, not least because that's where I take it easy:

And that feeling of looseness and spontaneity might be more important than getting the nose just right.

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peonies

A few weeks ago, my dad & step-mom's peonies were in full bloom. My dad brought in some of the blossoms, which usually topple under their own weight if they bloom on the bush. They are so blousy, so ridiculously extravagant with all their petals, that I had to attempt a painting:

"Peonies"

oil on paper, 8 x 10"

I think I did a better job on the vase than the blossoms, but I still kind of like the look of them, mucked up as they are. It's a real trick to be deft and daft with that palette knife...

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the lake

Our camera of eight years bit the dust not long after we got to Michigan. It was a good excuse to do some plein air painting at the beach:

If I were going to do justice to the lovely Lake, though, I would need a few more panels of just water in the middle there.

It was great to free up with the palette knife some more, and to work quickly before the light changed.

I think the Impressionists did their work after the advent of the camera -- they were free to paint a loose approximation of the scene because they no longer had to render things in exacting detail.

We've since gotten a new camera, but for me, photographs can't compare to haphazard blobs of paint arranged on a canvas.
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clementines

When we buy a bag of clementines, we put them in this turquoise blue ceramic bowl, and they sit there looking gorgeous, and every time I think, I have to paint those colors together. 

So, I finally did:

"Clementines"

oil on canvas, 8 x 10 inches

I did it on a whim, using mostly palette knife, and finished it in one sitting. It was incredibly satisfying. It has all the looseness and serendipity in it that I want for my portraits. There's this really magic thing that happens when I'm uninhibited and unconcerned -- the paint has such life and freedom in it. I can never get that feeling when I try too hard. So, I either need to treat everyone's faces like bowls of fruit, or I need to do all my painting at the end of the day, with only an hour to go.

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then again

Speaking of time capsules... all of my artwork is turning out to be an accumulation of years and bits of inspiration and ephemera. I do have a special fondness for geological phenomena, so maybe it's an unconscious nod to layering on a planetary scale.You know, it's like, The Way Things Happen.

This is the partner of piece I posted recently; I started them both together, so it's only fair that they evolve together, too: 

"Then Again" 

12 x 12 inches, oil and mixed media on canvas

I think it's done.

(But did you know the Himalayas continue to grow a centimeter every year?)

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time capsule

I was going to write something about how packing things into boxes during a move makes each box an unlikely little time capsule.

I thought of it when I was taking apart my drafting table: loosening wing nuts was like reading a log of all the other times I have taken it apart and packed it away. Songs and conversations and the kids just the way they were at that moment -- it all gets lodged into the things I'm packing up, like an entire exact snapshot of my life, revealing later the things I don't see right then, busy as I am with my screwdriver and sharpie.

And, to accompany this witty and poetic something about time capsules, I was going to put in a photo that Jason took in the midst of our packing, of Isla, gracefully contorted in a wee box and taken from above; her sweet little face the very specimen I most wish I could preserve.

But I couldn't find the picture anywhere (and OH, I looked). It's probably on the hard drive of the big computer, the one that got packed away and stayed behind, and that's just it, isn't it? That's just the rub.

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where we go from here

Two semesters of school swallowed me up. Only 4 classes, and they weren't even that hard. I think this is why they leave college to the young and childless.

I came up for air twice... once around Thanksgiving and once briefly during spring break (not really a break). Some days going to classes felt like a relief from all the overthinking that goes into my painting (and my parenting, too, for that matter), and other days it felt like a yawning drag to sit still for two hours at a stretch and take notes and write essays in bluebooks. I enjoyed it for the most part, though, and got along famously with my professors. Probably because I am closer in age to them than to my fellow students. 

I don't know how to tally up yet another random year in the patchwork medley that is my higher education; but while the outcome of getting an art degree remains somewhat undefined, there are two things I know I got from taking classes this year:

1. permission to make mistakes

2. I'm so glad I'm not 19

Both invaluably valuable, those.

So, things got intensely local for a while there... there was energy in the hive and for the hive, but anything outside of a 10 mile radius, I did not know about or have the time to find out. Or that could just be what happens when you live in Rhode Island. 

But here's a kid with some long-term vision, or, as he puts it, "I'm a distance-seer."

And when distance calls, you get dressed...

And you learn to speak the language...

And then you take apart the furniture...

... and put everything in boxes and get ready to go.

So, yes, distance...

Japan!

How could we say no?

Even as hard as it is to pull up our nascent roots here, to maintain the momentum that gathers no moss, it is also unspeakably good to imagine navigating again the enchanted city of Kyoto, whose moss is composed, cultured, cultivated. We shall borrow hers, then.

Countdown to leave Providence has begun, and we have a lovely summer in Michigan ahead before we go abroad, so of course I am a jumble of sadness and nerves and utter giddy delight. How can it be true, this life?

It's less like stacking cards -- carefully, one on top of the last -- and more like flinging the deck and jumping on whatever lands face up. We keep moving: I keep making amazing friends and I keep taking classes and I figure that it amounts to something, somehow, but how do I hold it all? How do I assemble it and make it useful? Maybe it's less important where we go, and more important how we go from here.

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