The Creative Struggle

Navigations [scanned quilt piece with digital embellishments]

 

things that do not seem to be working with one medium, come alive in another --

it's sometimes a frustrating journey, even from one step to the next --

sometimes it means going backwards to move forward --

and then again, maybe one doesn't want to move forward

but rather scuttle sideways . . .

how often do we get lost in the tangles of good intentions and great ideas?

quite often, for me anyhow --

the clock always seems to be ticking, a constant drip on the brain --

so what is one to do?

The creative process.  It's an arduous journey, a slow trek, a humbling process that demands your respect yet also your faith.  It reminds me of "Jacob wrestling with the Angel," that has been depicted by many artists over time --

Who at some point has not felt like Jacob, a mortal struggling with the Divine, holding fast to the angel all through the night and refusing to let go until, at dawn, he prevails and receives a blessing – an answer to his prayers. 

 Since the Renaissance artists have found in this tale a metaphor for the creative struggle. Rembrandt depicted it as a tender embrace . . . while Donato Creti portrays the struggle as more like a dance with the angel seeming to struggle more so than Jacob.

The British film director Sally Potter used the painting in yet another manner to depict the very basic struggle between the masculine and the feminine in The Tango Lesson.

So I suppose those of us who attempt to create should not despair as this has been going on since the dawn of time.   Ah, I feel so much better now -- 

"If you decide to enter the page

take a knife and some matches,

and something that will float. Take something you can hold onto,

and a prism to split the light and a talisman that works,

which should be hung from a chain around your neck:

that's for getting back."   

                                                 Margaret Atwood

Altered Lines

The last few days have been filled with rains and wind, slowly washing the snows and ice away. This is the first time I've seen green grass since the end of 2010. In a few weeks the gardens will demand my time and attention, so am trying to get in as much painting and sketching as possible.

Last weekend I worked on two paintings for the gallery: an oil of a sunlit harbor filled with sailboats but in a very non-representational manner, working only with slabs of cold wax and a palette knife. It's a large one -- 22" x 28" -- and was begun last summer, then placed against the wall in frustration. But when I pulled it out last week, the colors sprang to life and gave me a thrill. See what a few months' worth of snow can do?

Below is another ink sketch of my daughter, using walnut ink and a double-pointed knitting needle (ha!). I found the knitting needle a bit more blunt and that it didn't gouge the paper.

Then, on a particularly rainy night, I took the scanned image and played with it.  I applied several layers of texture by Jerry Jones at Shadowhouse Creations, then used the difference and exclusion blends. Suddenly I could see constellations appearing, the sketch lines now altered to look like celestial navigation lines of some old map. A few custom brushes and added text and a totally different image!

Digital Pre-Raphaelite

Rossetti's Orchids

In 2008 I visited my brother in San Francisco. The first place we headed for was the Botanical Gardens, both being gardeners -- where else? These dainty blossoms were so white that the original photograph did not come out very well, so I decided to play with it in Photoshop.

After working from the negative, altering hues, adding textures and custom brushes, I felt that the image seemed to hail from a William Morris print or by one of the Pre-Raphaelite artists, such as Rossetti or Waterhouse. And the way the light acts in the negative format warms the entire piece. Sometimes moving into the realm of the fantastic works wonders for one's spirit -- hope you enjoy!

"Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye . . . 

it also includes the inner pictures of the soul."    

~  Edvard Munch

Available as a matted print; click here
Available as greeting cards; click here

Thoughts of Solstice

encroaching

silent light

solstice

approaching

light shifting

mutating to bleak 

listen to the hush . . .

Commuting Art

driving the commute, car hurtling past autumn woods . . .

a glimpse, a glimmer flickers on the windshield, on the inner eye . . .

then gone.

sitting in the office, the image remains a faint impression . . . light, textures, a sense of earth, of sky and water . . .

in the moments between budgets and meetings, how to capture, to evoke . . .

gather up a texture file, another, one more . . .

graft and meld, crop, enhance . . .

add the mark of scratchings, faded text, the hint of a compass as a talisman to find the way back . . .

all ephemeral, a chimera, a sweep, a smudge as the car hurtles past . . .

fragile structures continued

slightly frayed
silken petals
at the point of stillness . . .

seed pods
encased, brittle with life
needing only
a breath,

a whisper
to begin again . . .

fragile structures

flight

Taking some time off from work, playing with a series of digital images -- Fragile Structures -- using manipulations of the software to enhance, to obscure, to render the ordinary into something "other" -- why?

Because we so often disregard what we see everyday, the mundane, the simple . . . and yet when closely examined, these structures are pure, even in the midst of decomposing.

As I begin to play with these images they often take on a new life, as in the hosta leaf above.  It appears to be soaring off into space, on a trip of discovery . . .

 

detachment

This image has an altogether different feel -- dark and brooding, perhaps threatening.  The detachment from the stem, I think, adds to this sense, and the leaf reminds me of O'Keefe's skull paintings, all bones and sharp edges.

The textures I used are from a wall of graffiti I photographed while walking through Fort Mason Park in San Francisco with my brother.  It lends itself to the sense of times past . . .

I feel that autumn demands that we keep some kind of tracing of what is transpiring all around us before winter slips over the threshold and covers all in a blanket of white.

One can never study nature

too much and too hard.

Vincent van Gogh

Serendipitous Moments in Blogland

It's funny how our sites and blogs and thoughts seem to intersect at varying points -- some of us have been writing about spring and this bout of warm weather we've been having; others are writing about their writing and poetry, while others are highlighting a favorite artist or inspiration.

I just visited Eva Macie's blog and she wrote of Pat Dews, a wonderful artist who inspires many via her books, workshops and DVDs. When I saw Eva's work, I had to chuckle because I had just loaded this digital image to my Redbubble site. I titled it "Dark Topography," which is what Eva's work reminded me of -- an intricate topographical surface -- filled with amazing cracks and fissures, crevices to investigate -- to let the eye wander over, again and again.

This image was a shot of a water-damaged wall. I inverted it to a negative, then played with the hues, etc. It reminded me of a moon shot, those grainy images of pitted and scarred surfaces of the moon that are relayed back to earth!

And then one of those moments when you stumble across a quote, a bit of writing and -- wham! There it is: image and text mingling and merging in the mind's eye:

my way is in the sand flowing
between the shingle and the dune . . .

Samuel Beckett

So -- not a moonscape but rather looking down at the dark sands while drifts of water hide or reveal flotsam & jetsam, a catch of pebbles, a ripple of seaweed, little secret colors and textures that disappear as quick.

Don't you just love these serendipitous moments? Way cool, as my son would say!

The Metamorphosis of a Young Stream

A Delicate Blush
original photograph by artist

While another storm has spread a thick skin of ice and snow, I played "pretend" with my photographs, working with different techniques learned over the past few weeks.

When working with this image, I kept recalling the images and illustrations from children's classic literature, particularly those by N.C. Wyeth (Andrew Wyeth's father), Arthur Rackham and Maxfield Parrish.

There is a kind of woodcut look to this particular technique and believe me, it was pure hit-or-miss.

Sometimes we stumble along various paths, not quite sure where the path is taking us, just letting the mistakes and back-tracks lead and guide.

So, digitally, I wandered -- until I reached this point.

I had to stop, not because of any pride at what I had done (that was the question: what had I done?), but because the nature of the image had morphed, had spread little delicate wings and offered me a peek at the blush of its' newly softened hues, the quiet of its' waters and the dreaminess of its' new self.

I was honored.

Give us unquiet dreams
leaning softly out
from ferns that drop their tears
over the young streams

William Butler Yeats

Mid-Winter Thoughts

"Winter Trees"

original photograph by artist
(background texture by Telzey)

Closing in on the middle of Winter. Although the light is slowly returning -- what a delight not to drive home in the dark -- the bleakness of it all is wearing me down. It's right about now that I yearn for tropical colors that punch and pulsate and for fragrances that make one swoon.

I feel like I have been wearing black, brown and gray for decades. The house is filled with cooking smells and the scents of frustration, entrapment and just plain old crabbiness.

So, I feel a shift in palette coming on -- let's break out those fiery reds, those neon yellows, those party-animal oranges! Turn on the salsa and brazilian jazz and dance around the living room, scaring partners and the mailman alike . . . or not.

The spring will be here soon enough, along with the list of gardening jobs to be done, the spring cleaning -- all of which I am anxious for, don't get me wrong. But that also signals to me that my quiet hours of being holed up inside my studio area are over for the time being.

So, it's a catch-22. We humans are such an odd lot, never satisfied with the here-and-now, always glancing over the next ridge, hoping for a quick skirmish, a climb up Mt. Everest, a leisurely swim across the Channel.

Another thought to leave you with, my blogging friends . . .

" . . . the living world is the natural domain of the most restless and paradoxical part of the human spirit. Our sense of wonder grows exponentially; the greater the knowledge, the deeper the mystery and the more we seek knowledge to create new mystery."

Edward O. Wilson, Ecologist

Serendipitous Emphasis

Sometimes, when least expected, odd things happen. You're tripping along, doing this, doing that -- and then wham! Now this could be a good wham or it can be a bad wham. Today, it was a good one.

I was working on a new digital image and, after two hours' work, I decided to take a break. I needed to just play for awhile, poking at some old flower images I had stored on the computer. Here is the original photo, nothing special except for the beauty of the blossom itself --


I then shifted it into its negative state and played with the hues until I reached this point --


Now I was intrigued. I opened an image of water in a glass vase I had taken this summer, overlaid the blossom and began to fiddle some more. After a few minutes of experimentation, this is the final result --

"Abstract Rhodie"

I feel like the photographic nature is almost gone except for the shape of the blossom, while the painterly aspects of the manipulation have evoked another image altogether, filled with energetic brushstrokes, highlights and a palette of colors I would not have thought of on my own.

Like I said -- wham!

"It is only by selection, by elimination,
by emphasis that we get at the real meaning of things."

Georgia O'Keefe