Saturday, June 4, 2011
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.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
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?
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?
Saturday, April 23, 2011
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.
Friday, April 15, 2011
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.
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.
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