July 2009 Archives

Its the sound of my brain splitting in half. It is the sound of going from a blissful focus on painting, and creating in the fine-art tangible, touchable and tactile to the cold, dark, digital.

Can you tell which one I prefer right now?

Truth is I love them both when I am in them. Creating with the amazing digital tools that we have today would have made me salivate twenty years ago and I appreciate what they afford now. It is not that I don't love the tools and what they accomplish in both realms...

its the switching gears that I find painful, especially considering my last blog post.

This week I need to downshift back into digital world because I have some catching up to do in my "job". But the more I shift back and forth the more I start to wonder if I shouldn't just stay put in one realm or the other. Once creating full bore, I am just fine..

I guess it is the transition.

Like some sort of creative Stargate, the shift is like stepping into an uncomfortable space with the expectation that you will emerge on the otherside in one piece, powered up and ready to go. Once I am fully applied to something and all focus is turned on, it is great and wonderful and I get so much done.

It just takes some effort to get to that point.

So for the next couple of weeks I need to focus on the digital which means I may be on another planet for a while. I may try to paint in the middle of it, but that might be like mixing matter and anti-matter.

And that wouldn't be good.

We'll see.

Started this last wednesday. I was completely ambushed by the muse on this one, with no plans of painting at all. Spending time with our dear friends, the Myers, prompted some sort of depiction of their family and the beauty of their relationships to one another. I was also somewhat confounded by the muse's choice of palette, as it is not what I would have chosen off the top of my head, and I confess really wrestling with it as I painted.

sheesh.

This was a true example of just showing up at the canvas and holding on for dear life. And it is going to required the same sort of follow up as I have NO idea where it is supposed to go.

quite the ride.

So, I will be obedient to the next appointment and pick up my brush and paint and see what comes next. All I know is the "feeling" of the family in our presence, and I am assuming the muse needs to coax it out of me.

A wonderful outing to the National Gallery with visiting friends brought me face to face with Vincent again. The last time was at the Musee D'Orsay four years ago where I had to hold back tears viewing his work and specifically his self portrait.

Sure, I love "Sunflowers", and all the rest, but there is something arresting about his self portraits.

It's the eyes.

The vibrant, even joyful colors and energetic, flowing brush strokes of the rest of the painting contrast so strikingly with the solumn expression of his eyes. Looking at his eyes is like sitting in the center of a merry-go-round with the sensation of everything spinning around you while you remain still.

I wonder how he felt when he was painting it.