Woebegone Art at Lake Oswego Festival of the Arts, June 2016
I can’t believe it’s been a week since the festival end.
It was incredibly successful, and absolutely worthwhile endeavor. I’m very proud of myself for fulfilling a long-held dream, standing with my art well outside of my comfort zone, and interacting freely with everyone. It was exhausting but well, well worth it.
I’m just getting caught up, stocking available inventory online and once more making progress with my projects. I have many commissioned pieces, paintings and dolls, a potential newspaper feature, and new inroads in electronic marketing. All signs point towards it being a crazy, amazing summer.
Today is the first day of Spring, but in the Portland area it arrived early: yesterday the weather was comfortably in the 60s with lush sunshine and lazy clouds overhead.
Of course, today we woke up to nothing but rain. It is Portland, after all.
But a week of extended daylight hours and the assurance of warmer weather ahead has seemed to soothe frayed nerves like a miracle tonic, and the world appears filled with flowers and a vulnerable optimism. I’ve been taking advantage of the time by spending even more time in my studio. And by painting flowers.
In Springs past over the last few years, I find myself drawn towards depicting the little, quiet things: insects, birds, flowers. As the world begins to come out of an internal hibernation, they often seem to usher in a more subdued, yet infectious jubilation. I watch them, and enjoy the grace in their unfolding: the quiet elegance of their reveal.
Work in progress: oil painting of poppies (first session), March 2016
(All except mice. Mice and rats skeeve me the hell out.)
I’ve started a new painting of poppies that will grow to encompass a spotted towhee bird, modeled after one who visits me just outside my studio window. And I feel like I may have to revisit caterpillars in my work, as caterpillars seem to me such busy, jolly emissaries of the hope of transformation, and the promise of Spring.
But as I mentioned, it’s raining outside this morning. Luckily, rainy days are perfect days to paint.
On a day when the world-at-large celebrates being in love, I found myself wondering how that translates to my art. But like with other artists and self-portraits, my work tends to veer off more traditional paths.
‘Devotion (2011)’ is a painting in which I tried to explore the notion of loving someone or something that is not — by nature — capable of loving back in a reciprocal fashion.
Five years later, and I’m still exploring alien love.
COSSET | 2016 | oil on canvas, 10″ x 8″
This week, I just finished an oil painting that I’ve titled ‘Cosset (2016).’ In it, a fancy goldfish floats on air towards a feathery mum, whose petals attempt to communicate an urgency with the fish. the language of the petals and the fins are mirrored in the soft colors of each. But what they are broadcasting I couldn’t say.
I find the concept of the sin-eater to be of great comfort.
A depiction of Tlazoteotl, styled as in the Codex Borgia manuscript.
According to Aztec mythology, Tlazoteotl acted as sin-eater to her people. By consumption of their sins, she absolved one of their mortal misdeeds, allowing them to transcend this mortal coil pure and unblemished into the next realm.
These are the things I think about: at what cost would this be to Tlazoteotl? Would the sin accumulate; would it be a heavy burden? Would it carry a strong distaste? Or would the legacy of the deeds — apart and away from the presumed guilt and purported shame — convey only the delicious taste of unbridled free will?
SINEATER | 2016 | oil on canvas, 7″ x 5″
As part of an exploration of this theme, I painted Tlazoteotl as a corpulent rabbit, gorging on sin portrayed as forget-me-not flowers; her eye shines with an wild intelligence. This is a small canvas, 7″ x 5″, but I think it’s effective in its space.
It’s a theme I look forward to diving into more in the coming year.
