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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. 

Fading Light

Here is the piece that I wrote about yesterday. I've decided to call it Fading Light. My final exam for A-level Art was to paint something under the title Fading Light. I had decided then to paint a reclining nude in a half dark room. My friends graciously agreed to pose for it but unfortunately it was not one of my better pieces. This painting I guess comes many years too late but when I thought about what to call this one, Fading Light was what popped into my mind. So here it is. Hope you enjoy.

Fading Light, 30 x 40, acrylic on canvas, 2011

Recent thoughts

I left Toronto with my mind unsettled about what would come in the future and how i might get to a point in my life where I loved what I did from day to day. Over the past month I've had time and space to let my mind wander over one of the most beautiful landscapes I've ever encountered. I feel like I am rediscovering things I forgot since high school days when i basically lived in the art room. I haven't felt this connected to nature and my environment in almost a decade. Yesterday I sat for nearly an hour just listening to the wind in the grass. I have this delicious sliver of time in which to recover as I prepare for things to come.

I've decided to apply for art school. I don't really want to talk about it too much in case I don't get it. One of the things that has become clear over my evening strolls is that I want to learn more about art and what's more, I want to one day teach it. I look back at my life and I think about the darker places where it was painting or drawing that pulled me out of my misery. I want to share that with other people and to help other people who need that like I did / do.

I finished a painting today. It's too dark to photograph it now. I am gonna have a shot at an exhibition proposal to send to a couple of galleries. I have enough work now to have a show i think. I don't really know any galleries around here but I figure this is a good way to get integrated into the artistic community. Crossing fingers something works out.

Will post new painting soon.

Sea Bird

Sea Bird, 36 x 48, acrylic on wood panel

This is my first paintings since I've moved. I love how the textures and colours worked out in this piece. I used a paint roller for alot of it as well as a fan brush and washes of colour to tone things. The bird form was influenced by an osprey. 

self revisited

Self Revisited, Ink & Oil Pastels on OSB

Eyes

Eyes 1, Acrylic on Canvas 

Eyes 2, Acrylic on Wood Panel 

re thinking

I haven't done much work in the past few weeks. Things have been so busy and work so mundane, I haven't felt really inspired to do much of anything. No yoga either. BUT I saw some amazing art in New York a couple of weeks back. I went to the Moma as well as the Gagosian Gallery. Both had some pretty mind blowing stuff. Since seeing those exhibitions I've felt much more free about the way I express things. Seeing the way that Picasso time and again went against the norm and broke through barriers of what people thought were beautiful actually stole my breath. That exhibit at the Gagosian Gallery was perhaps one of the most moving exhibits I've seen. When I went to the Moma I saw so many great works too. What touched me most in so many of those enormously famous pieces, were the little flaws that suggest an artist in haste or an artist doing just another piece. In Van Gogh's starry night for example, you can see through gaps in the paint to the raw canvas below. He was just expressing himself - he wasn't trying to make something perfect. Perfection is boring and impossible. I read a book of interviews with Francis Bacon as well that felt really reassuring. Initially, none of these men knew that their art would shape society's perception of the very notion of art. It's encouraging, not because i aspire to fame and enormous wealth, but because it means that i can chill the hell out and skip the step of trying to make 'good' art and just do whatever i feel like. The relative success of some pieces over others have to do with clients, collectors, galleries and markets. Success and Art have nothing to do with each other. 

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. 

Drawing Horses

On Saturday mornings for the past couple of weeks I have been going down to Horse Palace at Exhibition place. Horse Palace is today a riding academy for aspiring urban equestrians. It's also the stable for the police horses. The building was built in 1931 and it's said to be one of the finer equestrian facilities in Canada. Luckily, I stumbled onto it from a quick internet search and a couple phone calls. Its such a beautiful building and the horses are amazing. There's something about being there that totally calms be down. The horses are tame and the people there don't mind me petting them. My favorite at the moment is a brown mare named Tess. Her coat is the perfect color brown and she's really gentle but strong.

My sketches are getting better. It's been pretty sobering to realize how different it is to sit and sketch a building vs sketching a moving animal. In the beginning I had tried drawing horses from pictures but it was all too stagnant. Plus I've noticed that in sketching and observing  I'm learning things about their shape and the way that they move that I didn't realize before. Capturing movement is the most difficult thing. I think that this is going to be something I do for a long time, rather than as a short term project. It's really rewarding in ways I can't describe. I feel so much more alive and connected to the world around me when for most of the rest of my time these days, I feel so separate.

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.

My First Ocelot

This month I've started learning how to draw animals. I'm going to work on certain creatures one at a time, the first of which has been the ocelot. It's been such a cool experience, having never drawn animals before in any real capacity, to try to figure out their unique geometries. At first I found that my cats looked alot more like dogs. I guess because I've spent much more time around dogs. To help me learn more about the anatomy of the cat, I got this book called Cyclopedia Anatomicae ( http://www.amazon.com/Cyclopedia-Anatomicae-Illustrations-Animal-Figure/dp/1884822878 ), which showed me the skeleton and muscles of the cat and the way that it's joints bend. I also used a bunch of photographs of ocelots that I founds online, most notably from National Geographic sources. There's something really beautiful about the form of the cat as it follows the agility and the power of the species. For example the curve of their backs down toward their hind legs and tail, comes from how much power they exert through their hind legs and how much influence their tails have over their ability to balance when they climb and jump. In the case of the Ocelot, I was also really fascinated by their coloring and spotting which was hard to get a hang of. I mean are the spots random, or is there a pattern. There was so much I took for granted until I started drawing them. I think I am almost at the point to be able to move on to the large piece I had planned. I am still having some trouble with the proportions of their whole bodies. With humans there are a billion books on the geometry of the body, but with the cat, I kinda have to figure it out from pictures. Anyway - I had a great time with these sketches. The ocelot is such a powerful and graceful creature. I feel they are the epitome of feral beauty.

Will keep u posted on further developments!