The Empty Studio

This, then, is the house that became home, and the big beautiful room over our garage. Since we moved in, the room's only purpose has been a catch-all, a junk magnet. But I can assure you that's not where it ends. This room is the reason I bought the house. This room is my studio. 

It's empty now because it's under construction. I did move a few boxes of art materials down from the attic, but the only painting I'm doing is windows, doors and front porches. This too shall pass!

It would be easy to turn this website into another house blog with step by step blows on DIY decorating, but I'll do my best to avoid that. What I hope to do is share my art, and the odyssey that's leading me back to it. 

Hold On

The Silent Studio

Talking about how deeply unpleasant making art is and describing the process as "hazing" is rather telling...

This too is art.

What's the worst thing an artist can do? Stop. So of course that's what I did. But no matter how hard we try, it's pretty hard to stop creativity. It kind of bubbles up and resurfaces everyplace else. For me it was houses. I guess I'm allowed to acknowledge that, so here's what turned into my biggest creative undertaking— a beat up old doublewide trailer that became my art medium. Click the following link for all the gory details.

Trashe Royale

The Future of the Past

Would you believe it has been ten years to the day since I last posted here? How is that even possible?

I think it's safe to say that in ten years the world has changed. Because of course it has. It's called evolution. We've been evolving at least since the Sun was formed 4.6 billion years ago. Why stop now?

Speaking of the Sun, in just two days we will experience an extraordinary total solar eclipse. If now is the beginning of the next ten years, what a spectacular phenomena of a threshold for this to begin!

In my own little stardust way I am also evolving and passing through a threshold. After decades of living in cities, I moved up to the mountains and surrounded myself with trees, where I've always belonged.

I found a house, wasted no time making it right, and now I am ready to begin work on the room upstairs. Everything I've worked for over the past ten years - if not my life - is in that room.

I have an art studio.

The drawings I've included here are from a blog I wrote and illustrated during the first 100 days of lockdown. I am truly honored that my work is now a permanent part of the California State Library COVID DIARIES. 

Art Lockdown

California State Library COVID DIARIES

Don’t Think One Year Into the Future — Think 10.

NOVA: Great American Eclipse

Joni Mitchell: Woodstock

Evolution, it transpires, is everywhere

Bulbs

Lao Tzu, 5th - 4thC BCE : "To see things in the seed, that is GEN-I-US."

To see things in the Tulipa L. (Liliaceae) bulb, that is GEN-US.

Matisse et Moi

Henri Matisse speaking about drawing and painting:

"Personally, I think painting and drawing say the same thing. A drawing is a painting done in a simpler way. On a white surface, a sheet of paper, with pen and ink, one creates a certain contrast with volumes; by changing the quality of the paper one can give supple surfaces, bright surfaces, hard surfaces without using either shading or highlight. For me, a drawing is a painting made with reduced means, which can be totally absorbing, which can very well release the feelings of the artist just as much as the painter, but painting is obviously a thing that has more to it, that acts more strongly on the mind."

LINKS

How To Be An Artist, According To Henri Matisse

Vintage Film: Watch Henri Matisse Sketch and Make His Famous Cut-Outs (1946)

Matisse, drawing and painting

Arabesque by Henri Matisse
Poésies illustration by Henri Matisse
Red Jacket by Henri Matisse
Little Aurore by Henri Matisse
Figure Assise, Bouquet de Fleurs Devant La Mer by Henri Matisse
Matisse and the Artist Book

In the Studio: Matisse by Henri Cartier-Bresson

after 'Arabesque' by Henri Matisse

after 'Poésies' illustration by Henri Matisse

after 'Red Jacket' by Henri Matisse

after 'Little Aurore' by Henri Matisse

after 'Figure Assise, Bouquet de Fleurs Devant La Mer' by Henri Matisse

Highly Sensitive Painter

It's one thing to step outside myself, intellectualize and give myself advice, but saying truly is easier than doing. One of the most oft heard pieces of advice is so simple it's irritating: "Don't think about it, just do it."

Well, what if I'm HSP?

HSP, or Highly Sensitive Person, (yeah, it's a real thing) is "a person having the innate trait of high sensory processing sensitivity. HSPs process sensory data much more deeply and thoroughly due to a biological difference in their nervous systems."

A large percentage of HSPs are also creative, and they make up about 20% of the population. The other 80% think we're disfunctional, but we're actually the opposite; we are super-functional. HSP is not a disorder. It's a gift.

It has to do with how our brains gate all the stimuli going on around us. Since we take in so much more, we have to do a lot more thinking to process it. I know my brain never goes on vacation. That's why telling myself something like "Don't think about it, just do it" is absurd at best. So. Rather than try to turn my thinking off, I have to turn the dial and change HOW I think.

I have to turn all the negative thoughts down to the lowest audible volume and turn the positive ones on full blast. Instead of thinking "No I can't" I will think "Yes I can." And I will think it constantly. I will bombard myself with: "Oh boy! I'm going to draw! I will be so happy!" whether I believe it or not. Because you know what they say: If you repeat a lie often enough people will swallow it.

I will think it in the back of my head, think it in the front of my head, think it right out loud. I will post signs around the house, make moodboards and scrapbooks. I will write, I will blog, I will collect things that inspire and move - like great words and pictures and music. I will pretend I'm 8 years old again, practicing the piano 30 minutes a day.

I will think it with every biological cell in my biological body every biological second of the day: "I WANT to draw!"

"Yes, you great dithering idiot, pick up the goddamn pencil and start drawing!"

I am so sensitive.


HSP LINKS

• Susan Biali, MD: "Every person who has a talent that they long to play with and develop, but thinks it's silly or a waste of time or too late, needs to understand how important this gift is and understand its worth in their very cells."
• Dr. Elaine Aron: Are You Highly Sensitive? The Self Test
• Are You a Highly Sensitive Person?
• Top 10 Survival Tips for the Highly Sensitive Person (HSP)
• Why It's Hard to Be a Highly Sensitive (HSP) Introvert
• Wikipedia: Sensory processing sensitivity
• Elaine Aron: The Highly Sensitive Person
• The Creating Brain: The Neuroscience of Genius

Filling the Gap

Last week I watched a little animated film called The Gap, with Ira Glass talking about how to work through creative blocks. This is what he has to say to people who are starting out:

1. Your work is not as good as you'd like, but you can see this because your taste is killer

2. This is normal

3. Do a lot of work

4. Put yourself on a deadline

5. Fight your way through

In an effort to do a lot of work, put myself on a deadline and fight my way through, I am trying to sketch every day. Precisely as Ira Glass says, my work is not as good as I'd like, but as long as I can see that, there's hope. To reach a happy point I must do volumes of work and push myself to finish something every week. One of the reasons I started this blog is to give myself deadlines and, I promise you, I will do my best to meet them and post as much as I can.

Today my creative gap took me to Big Rock Ridge overlooking Lucas Valley, one of my favorite geological gaps. My resulting efforts aren't the greatest but at least I can see that. So I guess there's hope.

On the radio along the way, NPR's Terry Gross was interviewing filmmaker David O. Russell (American Hustle, Silver Linings Playbook.) Right as I stepped into the car he was talking about difficult setbacks he'd been through and he said: "If I'm going to come back from this, I'm going to do it from my heart." 

Listen to Terry Gross on NPR: David O. Russell Interview
Watch David Shiyang Liu's version 1: Ira Glass on Storytelling
Watch Daniel Frohlocke's version 2: THE GAP by Ira Glass