Mandalas

I did these 2 mandalas last night while having a Jane Austen marathon. I read that it was a meditative exercise so i looked up the basic structure of a mandala and tried some stuff out. 


It is actually really calming. I forgot that about line-work - that you have to become very still in your body and mind. I also find that it makes me take long and deep breaths, not unlike Pranayama techniques so that my body doesn't shake while I draw. 


All in all it was v fun and v calming so I will keep this up. Enjoy!

Mandala 1

Mandala 2

Witness

A moment of blinding realization. Sitting on the water's edge, the sky was grey and the tides low. It was maybe 3 degrees out and I sat huddled on a big boulder. Over the valley I could see the sun spreading slowly as the clouds behind me parted. When the light reached and warmed me, I turned behind to see the brilliant sun breaking through the heavy purple clouds. Up above me, flying over me and over the valley was an eagle. A real, live eagle. In that moment it came to me. All this life, all of human consciousness - we are witnesses. 


Does a tree fall in the woods if no one's there to hear it? Of course it does. We put value however on the witnessed account. Our eyes, our senses, our cognizance - what we do best is tell stories. As an artist, I am a medium through which my cumulative life experiences are sorted, weighed and re-stated through pigment and form. 


So that eagle could fly over that valley every day as might be the case, but its significance to you who read this and I who experienced it, is framed by my single afternoon's reflection. That changes things. We can be such self important animals. I've found that life is richer and more worthwhile when I understand myself as part of a large, moving tapestry of creative experience. My eyes and my hands are no more significant than any other, but what is unique to me is my narrative, that is, my position in the tapestry - my literal point of view. 


My senses are the windows through which all the world around me is contextualized. So as people, we are many points of reference and many re-imaginations of the same earth and our space within it. 

Eyes

Eyes 1, Acrylic on Canvas 

Eyes 2, Acrylic on Wood Panel 

Ugly

I want the freedom to be ugly.

Social expectation, misogynistic bosses and generations of mothers echo in my mind.

From my mother - brush your hair, clean your shoes, dress properly or what will the various men in your life think of you?

From Men - Look pretty or I won’t give you the time of day. Wear high heels, be charming to me and laugh coquettishly at my stupid sexist jokes or I will simply cease to see you.

From Society - Look pretty, dress pretty, buy more, make yourself up - it doesn’t matter who you are, provided that you’re trendy.

I look at women my age and how trapped we are in trend, conformity and social expectation. Consumerism meets patriarchal advertising campaigns and we think we are making individual decisions about how we present ourselves to the world, when in fact we are playing a game - falling into a scheme - often to our financial ruin.

How do I push past pretty? How can I step over into the sublime with my work? I feel like i skim the surface of pretty and hardly reach into the grotesque which is often the most beautiful to me. As a woman, how do i reach ugly, without my instinct to beautify it? How do you reach into crazy when I have built a world around crazy - I have corseted its miscreant strands and pasted down its wildness with a thick layer of beeswax. That step is difficult. It’s terrifying.

But my work is too safe. It’s like there’s 2 artists inside of me. The one who is instinctual and terrifying and then her sister who follows close behind neatening edges and mopping up muddy footprints. How do I get miss bliss to take a hike for a little while so i can get some work done?

Yellow Morning

Yellow Morning, 2'x4', Acrylic on OSB

I finished this piece today. It's been on my easel for the past month. This piece came very easily after a couple weeks of sketching. It was born out of a poem I wrote a few weeks ago after sketching at Horse Palace. The poem was a memory of visiting the horses at Union Park (racetrack near my house in Marabella) with my Dad. It's been a very fun painting to work on. I made a new brush to make some of the effects I wanted.  

Hope you enjoy it. 

Tlalocelot - Tiger of the Feilds

Tlalocelot

36 x 48", Conté on Wood

Tlalocelot is the Mexican Aztec name given to the ocelot. It translates to mean Tiger of the fields. I have been working on it for the past month and finished it earlier this week. This is the largest piece I have done in Conté and the first that I have done on wood. However, I have a stack of the same size and texture of boards lined up for the rest of the animal series I am doing. The boards that I chose have a lot of texture to them, but the effect does not totally comes across in the picture (it's better in real obviously).

When I started doing this piece I had no idea how to approach it. Coming to the point of drawing it felt a bit like pursuing the cat - and for anyone who's ever pursued a cat, it isn't easy. One night during Savasana after a great practice, when I had totally surrendered my pursuit, I had this lovely moment of imagination / vision. This feral beauty (mr ocelot) slinked up to me and laid down on my chest. He looked at me with those omniscient eyes and silent magnificence. The feeling was full, exultant and I think I might have laughed out loud. After that the drawing came easier. I believe the message the ocelot brought to me after all was the power of surrender.

In Yoga today the teacher was telling us about balancing steadiness with sweetness in our poses and our breath. I find that that applies to my whole life. When I attempt to make art of any kind it's that balance that I have to create in order to get through the self doubt and the burden of expectations. Another image came to me today that will probably follow into my next piece / animal investigation. The next animal I think is the horse.

I hope you enjoy the work. Comments / criticism much appreciated.

Disillusionment of Form

Disillusionment of form

30 x 40, acrylic on canvas

This piece was a long time coming. I mean it sat ‘completed’ on my easel for a long time – and every time I looked at it I felt a little angry that it wasn’t what I wanted it to be. Then one day I got really angry at it, put on the Blitz album by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (thank you elfie) and finished it. I like it a lot more now which I guess is the point. It has something to do with feeling invisible and cold but still knowing there's smthg powerful in you that will not be silent. Or smthg… I don’t like saying what my pieces are about really but I had a while to think about this one. If I was gonna say it I’d write a poem. As it is I painted it – so there it is.

I have a problem of space that I didn’t have in Trinidad. If I wanted to prime the wood panels I have home to paint on them – I’d take it outside and do it. Here however, I am renting so I can’t do it inside – plus its winter so the fumes would be trapped inside and I can’t go outside right now to prime it because the veranda is covered in snow and I’m not sure how the paint would dry in below zero conditions. One of these good days I am going to bite the bullet and rent some studio space. This is getting ridiculous.

Hope you enjoy.