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.