This is the beginning of a painting started yesterday celebrating my new birthday, one year after cancer surgery. I am one happy camper. Now I have a few paintings I’ve started. That is the easy part. I have to go back in and adjust or take care of areas that don’t work. This gets tricky because each stroke I make changes the whole painting, so I have more problems to solve. As, Henry J. Kaiser used to say, “Problems are opportunities in work clothes.”
This is Not a Flower Pencil and watercolor
Unfinished Blue Painting acrylic on canvas 52″ x 36″
Try double clicking on image to see detail
One year ago today, I was operated on for cancer at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. During my stay at the hospital, I made little paintings in a moleskine sketchbook. The whole time I was there, I was surrounded by an extensive collection of art. There was a volunteer who brought a cart full of paintings into my room each day. Patients could choose a painting to be hung in their room. Today, I’m going to work on a larger painting started yesterday. A lot can happen in a year. Art heals.
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May 18th acrylic on canvas 42″ x 29″
I just got back from an intensive ten day painting workshop. I came back a better painter. When I went back to the studio and started painting, I had a new vocabulary. The old favorite colors came back in a new context. I knew what I wanted to say. This brought me back to my familiar warm palette, but the variation of color and shapes changed. It’s now very exciting and intriguing for me to paint. I have given myself so much more to work with. May 18th was painted on Friday. It might be finished or it may tell me, hey, where did you go? You need to work with me. What do you think? Is the painting finished?
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Lifting the Veil 50″ x 40″ oil on canvas 1998
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Mixed media on paper 6″ x 8″
Guess I’m into pink this week. This one looks pretty tame compared to yesterdays post.
Using the Bhutanese woodblock as my inspiration, I made a scroll about the Wind Horse.
I use a wood box-like form to hold the paper off the floor before I apply the hot wax. When I first started experimenting with wax I painted right on the floor. Not a good thing. The hot wax and paper adhered firmly to the floor! This scroll is about 60 inches long. The materials I used were watercolor, gold fluid acrylic, bleached beeswax 100% pure domestic imported from Germany, sumi ink, and pastels on mulberry paper. The ‘Precious horse’ and linear areas around it was done first, using hot wax. When the paper was dry I applied watercolor which filled up all the untouched paper – the wax stopped the pigment creating a batik. (click on image to see it larger)
The Wind Horse, shown on the the imprint of a prayer flag is a luck-bringing symbol. This horse can bring good luck, life force, health, influence and merit. On his back is the Flaming Jewel, a spiritual warrior, capable of fulfilling all wishes. The spiritual warrior is carried past the many obstacles leading into the sacred world. The word for Wind Horse (Lungta) has come to mean luck.
I found the wood block in Thimpu, when I was snooping around the shops near the contemporary art school. Using printers ink, and stamps on mulberry paper I made up some small pieces. I started to make an limited edition of five Artist’s Books on mulberry paper. They are scrolls about 62″ high. Now there are only four. I tore up one last week while working on an idea. The torn pieces may be incorporated in the finished product. This print shown above may be added to one of the scrolls. It’s a work in progress. (As usual click on the image to see it bigger)
In Morocco, moushrabiyas or geometrical screens
keep Muslim women hidden from view.
These screens allow women to observe
their surroundings without themselves being seen.
Fragments, Fadings and Feelings
Mills College Art Museum
When I was in China the abstract beauty of calligraphy intrigued me. I bought some children’s textbooks on how to write Chinese script. For centuries the children have learned how to write by copying characters within boxes in order to understand their structure and proportions.
I started to copy the lessons. Soon my strokes freed themselves from the grid. The “correct” version of the letters was replaced by the “wrong” solution. Using sumi ink, wax and acrylic paint on xuan paper I put down marks. The shapes and colors mixed and spread into new compositions and brushstrokes. The biomorphic forms of nature took over.
As I painted I thought of the world’s largest hydroelectric dam on the Yangtze River. The Three Gorges Dam transformed the river into a deep reservoir flooding farmland, cities, villages and archaeological sites. People were relocated to new structures of mass produced design, buildings with slick, cold, white tile.
Today’s mass production and permanency of materials is replacing an intuitive expression of life. These paintings are made of materials that are vulnerable to the effects of weathering and our touch. The sun will fade some of the brilliant colors into muddy earth tones. Fragile paper will tear. But the way xuan paper transmits light, the way people carried out their everyday life on the Yangtze. These memories will stay in my heart.
A prayer flag wraps the woodblock print I made of the wishing horse. A young man saw me sketching and took me to a secret meeting place where artists were making non-traditional art. We all painted together on handmade paper given to me by my new friends.
Painting at the Teshu festival in Paro with drippy nosed litle boys hugging my knees.
Druk Yul 2001
“Land of the Dragon” Name of Bhutan in Bhutanese
Paintings on handmade paper from Bhutan, Saunders Waterford, Arches 90wt., rice paper
Gouache, watercolor, pen and ink, Caran d’ache crayons, bamboo, prayer pages,
Collage, postage stamps, Xerox from traditional school of art in Thimpu,
Woodblock print, silver rubbing wax, graphite, fabric, color Xerox, transfer prints
10 x 8 inches
