Mom

This painting of my mother has been sitting, in this state in my studio for several years. It is meant to be the companion of one I did of my father a few years earlier than that. It is both my bane and my inspiration. I feel like as long as she sits in my studio, a 4x5 foot presence that confronts me every time I walk by, I have to keep considering myself an artist. I have to believe that I will finish that painting, and even show it somewhere, sometime even though portraiture has never been my strong point. (I'll certainly never hang it; I haven't got a wall large enough.)

New skills

Been sketching for mosaic sculptures made with the pear tree logs, and also trying to figure out how to turn some of them into lincoln logs to make a bench (which could also be mosaiced). One of the logs turned out to have insect damage under the bark (maybe why the tree fell over) which is rather beautiful.

Woodworking or carving is a new skill, but I think we're am at right now is thinking of it more like a new surface for the line over line drawings, using dimension and mosaic rather than pastel and paint.

Anyway, from what I read on line about how to fit together logs lincoln-log style, I get to buy an axe. What's not to like.

Line

I've always been fascinated by edges-- the transition. From one thing to the next, from one moment to the following, from line to field. Lines create shape, and definition. They tell us the difference between the natural and the artificial. Our eyes are trained to follow; disruption of the line creates tension, interruption introduces conflict.

Here's a flickr set where lines are made by human, or nature, and sometimes intersect.

Underfoot

An ongoing photo set, started after the cast for my broken ankle came off, late summer of 2008.

It's a start

Started a new blank book. Sketches of ideas for the logs from the pear tree, with carved and mosaic components. A very disappointing, in fact devastating discovery is that all of my art journals and sketchbooks from the late 70s through the early 90s (which is when I stopped keeping them) are missing. I have no idea where they are. Many tears. Figure drawing sessions start up again in a month, and I'll use the intervening Thursday evenings (which is class day) to do figure studies, clothed, of friends and family.

How late is too late?

Recent connections with old friends and lost family have shaken me up, so I'm turning this blog, started to track various sewing projects, into an art blog. We'll see where it goes; I'm decades out of the loop on art, not that I was ever IN the loop, which was part of the problem. I'm pretty good at keeping up with the blogging, maybe this will get me back in the game, at least virtually.