Showing posts with label watercolor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label watercolor. Show all posts

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Nostalgia

The artwork in this post is all on 8.5 x 11" paper in some combination of ink, watercolor, and oil pastel. Shipping is included in the listed prices.



SOLD


When I was five years old, I knew I wanted to be two things when I grew up: an artist and a writer. Though these desires have never flagged, at times my confidence has. Therefore, my life has occasionally strayed — quite unhappily — far from the mark.

About ten years ago, I was working construction by day and dabbling in (but mostly feeling discouraged about) my writing and art at night and on the weekends. Perhaps it was the day that I learned to run the jackhammer that things began to change.

Running a jackhammer was a secret dream since childhood. It seemed entirely outside of my grasp. After all, I only saw jackhammers on construction sites in the hands of muscle-bound men in hardhats. Construction sites, not to mention hardhats, seemed completely inaccessible. Great big biceps seemed, well, not exactly desirable. But the day I ran the jackhammer I learned that not everything that looks hard is hard.

Perhaps it was a true epiphany. Perhaps my brain had just been jostled out of complacency by a loud, violently vibrating machine, but very soon thereafter it hit me: I was already both an artist and a writer. And not only that, but: I can run a jackhammer! It didn't matter if I believed in myself. It didn't matter if I was "successful" in any sense of the word. I am free to dedicate as much energy and resource as I can muster to my cause: the full realization of me.

These drawings/paintings of grapes come from that time. In fact, they were the first thing I did after realizing that I wanted to keep my art and writing as the central creative pursuits of my life. I gave a bowl of grapes to myself as an assignment, a drawing challenge, a creative inspiration, and finally, after several nights' work, a snack.

I hope you, dear readers, invest in yourselves similarly.





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$125






SOLD




SOLD






$125






$125






$125







$125







$125


Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Art as Play



17" x 14" ink, watercolor, and gouache on heavyweight bristol paper


This painting reminds me of a time, some years ago, when I decided to paint a masterpiece, I felt ready, I felt willing, I felt inspired to make a masterpiece, but try as I might, nothing would come. I stared at the blank page, pen, brush, pencil poised. I showed great discipline. I felt great energy. But still, stubbornly, the page remained blank.

Luckily, I let myself off the hook, declaring that if the creative process can't be steered, then I would try letting it steer me. Half an hour later, I had unpacked my sewing box, ostensibly in an effort to organize, but instead I had become absorbed in a collection of buttons, fingering them and sorting them, enjoying their shapes and colors and textures. Part of me worried that I was wasting time, but I tried not to pay attention to that part of me. I was having fun.

Next I unpacked beading supplies, and for several days, spent all my spare time stringing beads, taking pleasure in color.

And finally, I found myself drawing and painting again, making this, the first of what became dozens of paintings in a new style: intricate, colorful, increasingly fanciful. And fun. That was the missing piece in my determination to paint a masterpiece. I forgot that art is play. I've posted some of these play-paintings, and I'll be posting more, but this is the one that got me started.

Friday, July 11, 2008

Dreamville

Vivid dreams lately prompt me to share a couple mixed media drawings/paintings I made some time ago about sleep and the creative experience of dreaming:

Road to Dreamville

This one comes out of thinking about that very fleeting instant at the beginning of sleep, when we've relaxed enough to sense all the adventures and companion adventurers glimmering before us in our potential dreams. In that moment, all that remains is to release, to let go, to allow. Sometimes, there is apprehension in that moment.



mixed media (ink, watercolor, pencil, crayon, gouache, pastel)
on 8.5 x 11" 100% cotton paper


Perchance to Dream

The title says enough on this one. No apprehension in this dreamer.



mixed media (ink, water color, pencil, crayon, pastel)
on 8.5 x 11" 100% cotton paper