anonyrrie

Something Different

A Place to Bark ~ 12" x 12" x 1" ~ mixed media on wood panel

I don't usually do cute paintings, but this one is for a very good cause. I am currently showing several landscape and animal paintings at The Flatbread Company in Canton, CT. Flatbread's philosophy is very community oriented and committed to helping organizations and charities raise money. Part of this approach invloves local artists who show their work and then demo a painting on two evenings during their show. At the end of the show, the demo painting is auctioned and the proceeds go to a charity of the artist's choice.

My show is coming down this weekend, and on Friday night we will hold a silent auction of this sweet little painting. I will donate the proceeds to A Place to Bark, Bernie Berlin's animal rescue. She is doing such an amazing job of rescuing animals from high-kill shelters, getting them the medical attention they need and fostering them until they can be properly placed. Please consider donating to her mission (because that's truly what it is) and helping some of God's little creatures who don't have a voice of their own. You can make a donation by clicking on the link below:

Anyone who happens to be in the area this weekend, please stop by and bid on the painting! The auction will run for three days, and in addition to helping a worthy cause, you can take home a really nice painting!

Sigh...

journal page - 8/26/07

I look up and see the leaves changing; I look down and along the sides of the road are piles of dry leaves that have already begun to fall. And this morning, the alarm sounded at 4:45, officially sending me back to my academic routine. I wonder where I will carve out the time to paint and write and visit. I've never been one to make resolutions, preferring instead to formulate strategies. We'll see...

Fall Reverie

If I seem to run in
circles, forgive me,
I am used to chasing
my own tail until the giddiness
of spinning cools me down.
Then breathless,
I may take a moment or two
to settle and see the multicolored
glory of fall,
gold-fanned leaves
pressed flat and sodden
after a day of rain,
a season at its peak of beauty
full but fragile
so you know from experience,
bound to disappear.

- Bhikshuni Weisbrot

Visitor on Ancient Wings

On Ancient Wings ~ !6" x 20" x 1" mixed media on wood panel

The Moment

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

- Margaret Atwood (1939 - )

The painting above is a smaller incarnation of an earlier painting Tiny Sky, which sold during my show last May. In addition to being a bit smaller and on wood instead of canvas, there are several subtle differences in color, composition and content. It is available for purchase at The Insiders/Outsiders Gallery.

I miss her already...

I finally finished my painting for Susan Tuttle's book and sent it off yesterday. It's funny... I am discovering how those paintings that give me the most trouble end up being my best. I also become very attached to them. Many people liken the creation of art to giving birth, but I think the process of painting a challenging piece is more than that; it's like raising a child through an easy birth, a hyperactive childhood, a troubled adolescence, and then experiencing the magical transformation that often occurs in early adulthood. After all I've been through with this painting, I'd love to keep her around for a while to enjoy her beauty, her wit, her multi-faceted personality, but... she has places to go and people to meet. I'll see her again sometime next year, first on the pages of Susan's book, and finally when she returns home for a visit.

Oh she was a rare thing, fine as a bee's wing
So fine a breath of wind might blow her away
She was a lost child, oh she was running wild
She said "As long as there's no price on love, I'll stay
And you wouldn't want me any other way"

- Richard Thompson - from Bee's Wing

Stalling...

journal page - 8/19/07

...by playing around in my journal. There are four paintings in my studio that must be finished within the next few days, but my muse is indolent and I simply can't trust her with the last details of these pieces.

In the meatime...

And water lies plainly

Then I came to an edge of very calm
But couldn’t stay there. It was the washed greenblue mapmakers use to indicate
Inlets and coves, softbroken contours where the land leaves off
And water lies plainly, as if lamped by its own justice. I hardly know how to say how it was
Though it spoke to me most kindly,
Unlike a hard afterwards or the motions of forestalling.

Now in evening light the far-off ridge carries marks of burning.
The hills turn thundercolored, and my thoughts move toward them, rough skins
Without their bodies. What is the part of us that feels it isn’t named, that doesn’t know
How to respond to any name? That scarcely or not at all can lift its head
Into the blue and so unfold there?

- Laurie Sheck

Guilt-Free Procrastination Zone

journal page - 8/16/07

Scribbles are the lianas of the forest of our selves. Clinging to them, the primate still in us frolics free. - Orlando González Esteva

While Writing

Someone inside says, "Get busy."
But I've got appointments to keep,
I have an abstemious love of equations calculated quickly
While the tepid day melts into design.

And the high cheekbones of the beautiful life
Bear the loose look of a calendar by lamplight.
I search for patterns in everything.
I am tied in knots of comprehension.

I think, how useful it might be
To pierce all the hands of the earth
With an oath of pins encircling snarling planets
But talent and shallowness sewn together

Is nothing but a kerchief tied around a survivalist's head,
And it helps to know the feet wriggling through a hole
In the universe will land for an instant
Upon the cushions of the dark,

And that after marching one doozy of a kilometer after another,
We each come upon the same poem scribbled in invisible ink
Taped to the door of a room
In which an austere justice is burning for us.

- Noelle Kocot

There are those days when I never get around to doing what it was I had intended to do...

Silence

journal page - 8/14/07

My father used to say,
"Superior people never make long visits,
have to be shown Longfellow's grave
nor the glass flowers at Harvard.
Self reliant like the cat --
that takes its prey to privacy,
the mouse's limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth --
they sometimes enjoy solitude,
and can be robbed of speech
by speech which has delighted them.
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;
not in silence, but restraint."
Nor was he insincere in saying, "Make my house your inn."
Inns are not residences.

- Marrianne Moore - (1887 - 1972)

...more about silence here...

Weeds and Butterflies

A friend recently laughed at my end of summer blues (which really aren't too bad this year), saying, " you know, most people who have their summers off go through the same process, a sort of mourning for the freedom they're about to lose. They don't seem to remember what a treat it is to have all that time off!"

Well, she wasn't chiding me, really; just reminding me that in the world of people who go to work, those of us who do have our summers free are pretty darn lucky. Nevertheless, the daydream of a different structure to my days becomes more and more insistent...

There's a studio available at a local arts center. What would it be like to go there to work each day, surrounded by artists of all kinds doing their thing in their studios? I mulled it over as I walked with Heidi this morning, mentally spending a day in my own away-from-home studio, and by the time we returned, I was thinking that anything is possible. It's just a matter of dumping out one's life-puzzle on the table and figuring out another way to put it together. But for once, I didn't feel that clawing sense of urgency... I have to figure this out now..." When the time is right, opportunity and action will coincide.

In the meantime, I've been pretty busy puttering around in my little home studio. In addition working on some paintings, I transformed an old wooden cigar box my friend kj gave me a while ago, and returned it to her yesterday as a birthday gift! She and jb hosted a delightful art fair in their yard, followed by a party in the afternoon that is probably still going on as I write. Jol and I drove north to spend a few hours with them, and there I had the pleasure of meeting Ces, who had flown in from far way to celebrate kj's birthday. We had such a good time... lots of family and friends and actvity... and a gorgeous day as well.

And today... fresh bread from the bakery, fresh fruit and vegetables from the farm down the street, and a bath for stinky Heidi!

The Texture of a Day

journal page - 8/7/07

Each day has its own texture, and I wear it like a cloak around my shoulders. Sometimes the fabric is woven from the remnants of the day before, but more often than not, I have managed in my sleep to unravel yesterday's garment, and I start weaving again as I rise...

Today I found myself in front of William Holman Hunt's painting, The Lady of Shalott, which is based on the poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. The poem tells the story of a woman who lives in a tower on the island of Shalott, on a river that leads to Camelot. She spends her days weaving a tapestry of the world outside her window, under a curse to view the landscape only by reflection through a mirror. Although she is happy to weave, she has come to realize that the outside world is full of love and beauty that she can never experience sequestered in her tower.

The Lady of Shalott - William Holman Hunt (1827-1910)

One day as she is working at her loom, she hears the singing voice of gallant Sir Lancelot as he rides along the shore of the river and on impulse, turns to look directly through her window at him. At that moment, her tapestry begins to unravel and her mirror cracks. Fleeing her tower, she finds a boat in the river which she loosens from its moorings in order to float to Camelot where she can find life and love. She dies before she reaches her goal.

The Lady of Shalott - John William Waterhouse (1849-1917)

There are numerous and diverse scholarly interpretations of Tennyson's poem, ranging from reading it as a metaphor for the isolated artistic life to a statement on the role of women in Victorian society. The Pre-Raphaelite painters were attracted to the story for its Arthurian themes and depiction of tragic love. But today, Hunt's painting of The Lady of Shalott reminded me of the importance of experiencing the fullness of the world and my life as I weave my own tapestry. Too often, I find myself adding or subtracting elements based on what I see in the mirrors others put in front of me. Sometimes those mirrors appear from the caverns of my distant past, and sometimes they're bright, shiny new mirrors. Either way... the reflection is never as clear as the real thing.

Illustration Friday ~ Missing

Fill the Spaces ~ 10" x 10" x 1" ~ mixed media on wood

Keeping Things Whole

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

- Mark Strand (1934 - )